Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, and he is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe.

The critical success of "Miriam" (1945) attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf and resulted in a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948).

He achieved widespread acclaim with Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)—a novella about a fictional New York café society girl named Holly Golightly, and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966)—a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home.

While still attending Franklin in 1942, Capote began working as a copy boy in the art department at The New Yorker,[15] a job he held for two years before being fired for angering poet Robert Frost.

[21] Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote a continual flow of short fiction, including "Miriam", "My Side of the Matter", and "Shut a Final Door" (for which he won the O. Henry Award in 1948, at the age of 24).

[26] The critical success of one of his short stories, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of the publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract with Random House to write a novel.

With an advance of $1,500, Capote returned to Monroeville and began Other Voices, Other Rooms, continuing to work on the manuscript in New Orleans, Saratoga Springs, New York, and North Carolina, eventually completing it in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Arriving at Skully's Landing, a vast, decaying mansion in rural Alabama, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy, debauched transvestite Randolph, and defiant Idabel, a girl who becomes his friend.

Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988) described the conclusion: Other Voices, Other Rooms made The New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for nine weeks, selling more than 26,000 copies.

Gerald Clarke, in Capote: A Biography (1988), wrote, "The famous photograph: Harold Halma's picture on the dustjacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside.

The Broadway stage revue New Faces (and the subsequent film version) featured a skit in which Ronny Graham parodied Capote, deliberately copying his pose in the Halma photograph.

[30] Traveling through the Soviet Union with a touring production of Porgy and Bess, he produced a series of articles for The New Yorker that became his first book-length work of nonfiction, The Muses Are Heard (1956).

[35] Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (1958) brought together the title novella and three shorter tales: "House of Flowers", "A Diamond Guitar" and "A Christmas Memory".

The story described the unexplained murder of the Clutter family in rural Holcomb, Kansas, and quoted the local sheriff as saying, "This is apparently the case of a psychopathic killer.

In a 1992 piece in the Sunday Times, reporters Peter and Leni Gillman investigated the source of "Handcarved Coffins", the story in Capote's last work Music for Chameleons subtitled "a nonfiction account of an American crime".

The dearth of new prose and other failures, including a rejected screenplay for Paramount Pictures's 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, were counteracted by Capote's frequenting of the talk show circuit.

In July 1973, Capote met John O'Shea, the middle-aged vice president of a Marine Midland Bank branch on Long Island, while visiting a New York bathhouse.

Longtime friends were appalled when O'Shea, who was officially employed as Capote's manager, attempted to take control of the author's literary and business interests.

It comprised "Unspoiled Monsters", "Kate McCloud", and "La Cote Basque 1965", but not "Mojave", which Capote had "removed from the novel's master plan" and instead published in the collection Music for Chameleons in 1980.

[53] "La Côte Basque" begins as Jonesy, the main character, said to be based on a mixture of Capote himself and Herbert Clutter,[54] the serial killer victim at the center of In Cold Blood, has a rendezvous with Lady Ina Coolbirth on a New York City street.

The characters of Gloria Vanderbilt and Carol Matthau are encountered first, the two women gossiping about Princess Margaret, Prince Charles and the rest of the British royal family.

It is rumoured that Ann Woodward was warned prematurely of the publication and content of Capote's "La Côte Basque" and proceeded to kill herself with cyanide as a result.

The aftermath of the publication of "La Côte Basque" is said to have pushed Truman Capote to new levels of drug abuse and alcoholism, mainly because he claimed not to have anticipated the backlash it would cause in his personal life.

[62] On the rare occasions when he was lucid, he continued to promote Answered Prayers as being nearly complete and was reportedly planning a reprise of the Black and White Ball to be held either in Los Angeles or a more exotic locale in South America.

The ashes were reported stolen during a Halloween party in 1988 along with $200,000 in jewels but were then returned six days later, having been found in a coiled-up garden hose on the back steps of Carson's Bel Air home.

[69] Capote also maintained the property in Palm Springs,[70] a condominium in Switzerland that was mostly occupied by Dunphy seasonally, and a primary residence at 860 United Nations Plaza in New York City.

[73]One of his first serious lovers was Smith College literature professor Newton Arvin, who won the National Book Award for his Herman Melville biography in 1951 and to whom Capote dedicated Other Voices, Other Rooms.

He traveled in an eclectic array of social circles, hobnobbing with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, royalty, and members of high society, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In the early scenes as Joel leaves his aunt's home to travel across the South by rickety bus and horse and carriage, you feel the strangeness, wonder and anxiety of a child abandoning everything that's familiar to go to a place so remote he has to ask directions along the way.

Later on, when Joel tussles with Idabel (Aubrey Dollar), a tomboyish neighbor who becomes his best friend (a character inspired by the author Harper Lee), the movie has a special force and clarity in its evocation of the physical immediacy of being a child playing outdoors.