TRUMAN CAPOTE IS DEAD AT 59 -  NOVELIST OF STYLE AND CLARITY - NYTimes.com
TRUMAN CAPOTE IS DEAD AT 59
TRUMAN CAPOTE IS DEAD AT 59; NOVELIST OF STYLE AND CLARITY
By ALBIN KREBS
Published: August 26, 1984
Correction Appended
Truman Capote, one of the postwar era's leading American writers, whose prose shimmered with clarity and quality, died yesterday in Los Angeles at the age of 59.
Mr. Capote died at the home of Joanna Carson, former wife of the entertainer Johnny Carson, in the Bel-Air section, according to Comdr. William Booth of the Los Angeles Police Department. ''There is no indication of foul play,'' he said, adding that the county coroner's office would investigate the cause of death.
The novelist, short story writer and literary celebrity pioneered a genre he called ''the nonfiction novel,'' exemplified by his immensely popular ''In Cold Blood.'' He died apparently without having completed his long- promised ''masterwork,'' an extensive novel called ''Answered Prayers.''
Mr. Capote's first story was published while he was still in his teens, but his work totaled only 13 volumes, most of them slim collections, and in the view of many of his critics, notably his old friend John Malcolm Brinnin, he failed to join the ranks of the truly great American writers because he squandered his time, talent and health on the pursuit of celebrity, riches and pleasure.
''I had to be successful, and I had to be successful early,'' Mr. Capote said in 1978. ''The thing about people like me is that we always knew what we were going to do. Many people spend half their lives not knowing. But I was a very special person, and I had to have a very special life. I was not meant to work in an office or something, though I would have been successful at whatever I did. But I always knew that I wanted to be a writer and that I wanted to be rich and famous.'' Success, both as a writer and as a celebrity, came early, when he was 23 years old and published his first novel, ''Other Voices, Other Rooms.'' It was a critical and financial success, and so were most of the volumes of short stories, reportage and novellas that followed, including ''Breakfast at Tiffany's,'' ''The Muses Are Heard,'' ''The Grass Harp,'' ''Local Color,'' ''The Dogs Bark'' and ''Music for Chameleons.'' Claim to Literary Fame
But the book that perhaps solidified his claim to literary fame was ''In Cold Blood,'' his detailed, painstakingly researched and chilling account of the 1959 slaying of a Kansas farm family and the capture, trial and execution of the two killers.
Published serially in The New Yorker and then as a book in 1965, ''In Cold Blood'' consumed more than six years of his life. But it won him enthusiastic praise, mountains of publicity, millions of dollars and the luxury of time to work on ''Answered Prayers.''
But he accelerated the speed of his journey to celebrity, appearing on television talk shows and, in his languid accent, which retained its Southern intonation, indulged a gift for purveying viperish wit and scandalous gossip. He continued to cultivate scores of the famous as his friends and confidants, all the while publishing little and, he said later, developing a formidable ''writer's block'' that delayed completion of ''Answered Prayers.''
To keep alive the public's interest in the promised work, in 1975 he decided to allow the magazine Esquire to print portions of the unfinished novel. The decision was catastrophic to the grand social life he had cultivated because, in one of the excerpts, ''La C^ote Basque,'' Mr. Capote told apparently true and mostly scandalous stories about his famous friends, naming names, and in so doing forever lost their friendship and many other friendships as well.   Alcohol and Drug Problems
Soon his long-simmering problems with alcohol and drugs grew into addictions, and his general health deteriorated alarmingly. The once sylphlike and youthful Mr. Capote grew paunchy and bald, and in the late 1970's he underwent treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse, had prostate surgery and suffered from a painful facial nerve condition, a tic doloreux.
In ''Music for Chameleons,'' a collection of short nonfiction pieces published in 1980, Mr. Capote, in a ''self-interview,'' asked himself whether, at that point in his life, God had helped him. His answer: ''Yes. More and more. But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius. Of course, I could be all four of these dubious things and still be a saint.''
Named Truman Streckfus Persons after his birth in New Orleans on Sept. 30, 1924, he was the son of Archulus Persons, a nonpracticing lawyer and member of an old Alabama family, and of the former Lillie Mae Faulk, of Monroeville, Ala. Years later he adopted the surname of his stepfather, Joe Capote, a Cuban-born New York businessman.
Mr. Capote's mother, who eventually committed suicide, liked to be called Nina and was not, according to her own testimony as well as her son's, temperamentally suited to motherhood. Living with her husband in a New Orleans hotel, she sent Truman to live with relatives in Monroeville when he was barely able to walk, and for the first nine years of his life he lived mostly in Alabama under the supervision of female cousins and aunts.   'A Spiritual Orphan'
In that period, he said years later, he felt like ''a spiritual orphan, like a turtle on its back.''
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