I would add that Taormina is steeply hilly and craggy. It is best enjoyed at a vigorous age.
3
I doubt that this author has read In Cold Blood if she calls it Capote's masterpiece. Ii is psychologically vapid. I doubt that she has read Clark's bio of T. Capote where you can read how he paid someone to break Jack Dunphy's legs because he was so full of anger and hatred towards him. Truman's masterpiece was The Grass Harp in which he shows that he still had some human feeling and could express it.
1
Truman, living on and on and on...............
How could you have failed to mention the Waltons' famous garden La Mortella on Ischia?
Gore Vidal having cast Capote as a mediocrity, I have absolutely no discomfort ignoring the man and his work, at minimum permanently back-burnering him.
2
I’d be happy to have been the bulldog.
1
Forio, I want to go there!
Beats me how any visiting American writer lover or whatever at the time could put a blind eye to the horrendous poverty surrounding them everywhere on the Mediterranean shores let alone the suffering under the merciless horrors of the Franco regime on Spanish shores. The beautiful article might have remembered. Just a leetl leetl bit.
10
Wish the author of the article had explained Capote’s financial situation - was he born rich or something? Prior to his success, how could he afford to gallivant around the Med writing novels in romantic villas? Sounds delightful - I certainly can’t afford to live like that.....
5
@Kilgore.Trout,
Off the cuff, he was born of separated parents, and brought up in Alabama as a neglected child with a grown cousin in a cold house of relations who held them in disdain. He spent some time with his father as a boy, and his telling of a Christmas holiday is that they were unable to establish an understanding.
Gallivanting around the Med, prior to his success as an author, was not prohibitive in those times where the cost of living was minimal after the region was left in shambles after WWII for the next decade and beyond.
10
By the time I was old enough to know about TC, he was already a caricature (comedy-relief, really) on daytime variety shows like Merv Griffen and Steve Allen. Ha-ha, wink-wink, nod-nod stuff that, combined with his strange little voice, gave the teenage me little reason to investigate. But he was always good for a witchy bon mot. Asked what he thought of Jack Kerouac's work, with its stream-of-consciousness style, he responded: "that's not writing; that's typing!" In later years there were, if not sober, then deadpan, interviews. But the genre he inhabited had no draw on me.
I have read this article with interest, and am a bit more curious. We'll see!
7
I enjoyed this article, but unfortunately ever since reading Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and seeing the film adaptation, whenever I picture young American men sharing each other’s company in small idyllic Italian coastal villages in the 50’s, rather than thinking of Truman Capote and Jack Dunphy, I think of Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf. I half expected to see their names on that hotel register.
3
A tremendously inspirational piece. Our "modern" life offers nothing like this as time has moved on. As the article suggests, in many instances all that are left are "plaques."
7
'Darling do not let me commence' is one of my favorite sayings by Truman Capote. When my mother died a few years ago in Paris, I hopped on a plane, and took Capote's Music for Chameleons, where the book opened mysteriously on his Handcarved Coffins.
For this admirer of his work, Tru is revealed as spiritual and compassionate in some of his conversational portraits, where in a Day's Work he accompanies his cleaning-lady, Mary Sanchez, to the apartments of her other clients; they end the day by praying in a New York church:
TC: 'I'm praying for you, Mary. I want you to live forever. Mary: 'Don't pray for me. I'm already saved'. She takes my hand and holds it. 'Pray for your mother. Pray for all those lost souls out there. Pedro, Pedro.
Little did he know in penning a short story in his youth, 'Shut the Door' that it was a forecast of his literary obituary. He is smiling now, and his dog is sitting on the bench beside him.
A friend and I went to see 'Tru' on stage, played by Robert Morse, and funny, moving and eerily real, when he is alone at Christmas. The audience left quietly after the curtain dropped, but a young woman is weeping, and it was tempting to tell her that Truman is with his guardian angel, Miss Sook of Alabama, where high in the twilight skies, two beautiful paper kites remain eternally intertwined.
6
I just finished reading (well, listening) to Leading Men by Christopher Castellani, which though fictionalized, is based on Frank Merlo and Tennessee Williams. It is partly set in that place and time, and includes Truman Capote. The book is excellent.
Thank you for returning me to these parts of the world.
1
Ischia in the 60s
Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrrante
5
Elena Ferrante’s depiction of Naples in the 50’s as well as Ischia Island comes to life in the stunning HBO series My Brilliant Friend. Highly recommend.
2
A lovely article. Ischia is a magic place that I had the great pleasure of visiting often during my two and a half year tenure as a "medic" in the Navy hospital in Naples in the early sixties. The ferry came into port passing Cleopatra's barge, a relic of the movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, two stars who were invited, but failed to attend, Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. Capote knew just about everyone, including my grandparents. Two close friends are in Taormina as I write this. That the world is small is a comfort, don't you think?
6
I read all of Capote's writing when I was in my 20's - I was enamored with his fiction and couldn't imagine why he stopped writing. I felt, as I do now, that he was one of our greatest writers and not given his due. His words made my imagination soar and I was in Capote's world. His words are perfection.
“If some wizard would like to give me a present, let him give me a bottle filled with the voices of that kitchen, the ha ha ha and the fire whispering, a bottle brimming with its buttery sugary smells . . .”
From "The Grass Harp"
I was a very naive young man. Now as I have aged and read more, I understand the pain he took on writing "In Cold Blood," his self-medicating with alcohol and the loss of his partner Frank in 1963 all conspired to short-circuit his talent. It's painful to watch the old videos on youtube of Capote on talk shows, drunk and babbling. I read the comment on the gin-soaked nights and yes I agree they were fun when we were young. For Truman Capote these nights extended until his premature death and we lost a brilliant writer to drink.
“It was a tricky quality that suggested, well, magic and things read in books,” - From "Other Voices, Other Rooms"
52
@ScottC,
After Capote went up against Bill Paley in his 'Answered Prayers', he was dropped from the social registry, much enjoyed, and his Swan Song can be seen in what was trumpeted The Black and White event of the century.
1
Wow! I too could be a writer in settings like this. Not just a brilliant writer (Capote, not me), but brilliant in choice of where to head to. Wonderful article. Research must have been painful.
34
Thank you for this lovely respite
46
"... a curving slip of pebbly shoreline that overlooks a beautiful nature preserve of the same name in Taormina, Italy."
Shorelines, as a rule, cannot overlook anything.
32
@Clotario, The reserve might be the bay itself? Plus that shoreline is on such a bay that at one side of the U, one could overlook a nature reserve on the other side of the U. The beautiful bay and writing has earned all the poetic license Ratha Tep wants, feels.
3
@Clotario
Actually, they have to "overlook" - be elevated in comparison to the water -or they would be under it.
4
@Clotario they tend to accompany a sea, or at least a large lake.
2
Why do writers and other artists need to meet and be around other writers and artists? Probably to steal ideas from each other and then pretend it didn't happen.
There is a myth that writers have to be isolated in some country farm or other bucolic setting to do their work. No, they just need to be a place that meets their needs. Writing is lonely work and human companionship at the end of the day is vital for many, writers or otherwise.
Every writer searches for their "Ischia", the place that brings enough quiet to write but doesn't also inspire leaping boredom and complete isolation. Truman's appetites for nightlife and the need to be out and about drove him to Italy, just as they encouraged a contemporary, Gore Vidal, to set up semi-permanent residence in Amalfi. Alex Halley took to sea on merchant ships to write his books.
Tangiers, a flowing cultural crossroads in North Africa, once attracted many poets and writers, having been set in motion apparently when William S. Burroughs fled Mexico to avoid charges of murdering his wife. The persecution of gays and others out of the ordinary was probably one of the draws in Tangiers just the idea of being around creative types. Never forget the lure of drugs and alcohol where using would not be condemned.
I am fortunate to have been to Ischia where I spent the better part of a night fascinated by watching a hillside above our hotel burn in a wild fire. Most people go to Capri but this article should change a few minds.
22
Well. And then there was James Baldwin! Since color is easily forgotten. Note his 17 year stint just above Nice in St. Paul/de/Vence, France.
23
@Gordon Thompson
But JMO ..is that the people that have spent time reading this also know about Baldwin's life in Europe from his own writing and photographs ,and admire him as much as Capote and Williams. I think Baldwin is not mentioned here it that this is about Williams & Capote in Italy at the same place and time.
14
@Gordon Thompson
I remember arriving at la Colombe d'or in the Mid 70's
only to find James Baldwin and Simone Signoret in deep conversation sitting at a table right next to the entrance to the hotel. No tourists around.
6
Has no one else noticed the other name on that hotel registry: Williams, Thomas Lanier -- our own Tennesee Williams.
54
@Mitchell Yes, the writer of the article:
Yet little has changed at the Pensione Di Lustro, where Capote and Dunphy were only the ninth and 10th American guests since the pensione was established, and where the playwright Tennessee Williams also joined them briefly.
26
@Mitchell Read below. Many have noticed.
12
@frank Merlo is listed on the register as well.l
1
The bulldog had a name: Charley Fatburger
47
@Guy Walker Thanks for giving the dog's name. I had wondered!
3
@Guy Walker,
Funny! I was just looking a photo of Truman Capote and his bulldog taken by Slim Aarons on the cover of his short stories, and what a hoot! Thanks for your input.
Speaking of owls, Capote wrote a list of moments in time revisited. In 1968 he was staying at the Ritz in Paris when he received the visit of a young stranger, bearing a bouquet of lilacs and an owlet in a cage. He felt that there was something odd about him. Perhaps he sensed that a tragedy was about to take place, and I believe he could have written the above with the compassion it deserved.
Gide was in Taormina at the time. It was a major reason Capote visited there. There was another writer freind visiting Gide there as well who Capote saw.
13
@Guy Walker And who was the other writer?
1
Kudos to Ratha Tep for writing such a beautiful article. The whole time I was reading this I felt like I was in Italy or Spain. That got me thinking, "Why can't I get a gig like this...traveling around in the Mediterranean visiting old haunts of an American author?" Then I checked out Ratha Tep's resume and saw that she has done this many times before. It must not have been easy and the competition must have been stiff.
19
Wonderful! Thank you. Palamos was the home-away-from-home of renowned author Robert Ruark (The Old Man and the Boy, Something of Value), and I enjoyed sangria at Hotel Trias when I visited Ruark's grave in the seaside cemetery (my mother had been Ruark's hometown Wilmington NC school friend). Movie star Ava Gardner (NC native) also visited Ruark's Palamos home.
17
@Anne
Thanks for pointing that out. An author whose books I enjoyed reading during my early years.
3
Quote: “...Capote would rise to become arguably New York’s greatest literary and social lion of the ’60s…”
I will argue the point.
A "literary and social lion of the ’60’s” who was far more prolific and influential than Mr. Capote, was Norman Mailer.
How soon we forget.
26
@Michael Hoffman The difference was that most people in "society", literary or not, loved and were enchanted by Truman and his humor and stories in the early 60s. Whereas Norman Mailer was an abrasive boor likely to start a fistfight at a party, no matter how brilliant he may have been as a writer. Do you think Mailer was a "social lion" the way Truman was? He wasn't, a lot of people thought he was a self-aggrandizing bully who ruined parties with his grudges against other writers.
It's fine that you clearly think Mailer was a better writer than Capote in the 60s, but this opinion is not universal. And socially, whoo, people really wanted to be with Truman, not Norman.
15
@Michael Hoffman,
And yet 'Breakfast at Tiffany' lives on.
3
@Michael Hoffman
Norman Mailer? He was common, crude and a lousy writer. Please do not confuse notoriety with fame.
7
Totally beguiling article.
Compelling to read about him in love and beauty rather than dissipation.
Thank you.
64
Why do these accounts of literary giants, always end in tragedy, written by people who clearly have never drunk a martini, had a hangover, smoked a joint, sniffed cocaine, or danced until dawn? Or woke up with someone they have never met before and will probably never see again? One feels that these people probably drink nothing stronger than Perrier with lime, go to bed early, and jog. In an earlier time they might have been founding members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union or an off-shoot. Capote, Williams, and countless others lived great lives. Full of, yes FUN!
35
@MDeB Some of the things you list can be dangerous and the notion fun cannot be had without drugs or drink probably contributes to the substance abuse issues some people face. It's been shown in studies that writers are at higher risk of depression and anxiety: some of the drinking and drugging habits were likely due to self-medication before the anti-depressant era.
"Fun" is also relative. The things I find fun - trekking up to the top of a mountain at dawn, walking through the woods on a snowy evening, swimming in coral reefs - others would consider torture.
34
@ms
I, too, enjoy those things you label fun, because they are fun. But I don't think Tru, Tennessee, Gide, et al. did any of them very often. Or ever.
1
@MDeB
As a recovering alcoholic I can testify that "fun" is the first thing to disappear from such an otherwise "great life." If one is lucky such a great life becomes a short life.
Have you ever gone to bed praying that you will never wake up? A more sincere prayer is never said.
5
What an odd coincidence. Just a couple of weeks ago, I read Leading Men by Christopher Castellani, a fictionalized (semi) account of Tennessee Williams and his longtime partner Frank Merlo, much of it taking part in the seaside towns of Italy in the late '40s. Truman Capote and Frank Dunphy have a small, but integral, part in the book as partners in partying.
As this article barely mentions, it was a definitely a time of partying, drinking, drugs, random sex of all kinds (and yes, with the boys in the villages, as mentioned in a comment), and a fascinating look at post-war culture, with moneyed Americans cavorting among, for the most part, destitute, war-ravaged villagers.
You can see Tennessee Williams', Thomas Lanier Williams, and Frank Merlo's names just below Capote's and Dunphi's (sic) in the hotel register. It actually gave me a bit of a shiver to see that.
The premise of the book is fiction, but the whole of the book, describing their lives and travel, for the most part is not. Historical references are included at the end. I found it fascinating.
27
@Kate I neglected to say this was a lovely article by Ms. Tep. It could have included more "truthiness" about both Mr. Capote and those times, but it made me want to read more. And that, to me, is a sign of a good writer. Nice work, Ms. Tep.
20
@Kate The young men whose company Truman, Tennessee, Gore Vidal et al enjoyed in the 1950s and 60s were not, "destitute, war-ravaged villagers". The war had ended at least fifteen years before.
They were certainly broke and poor, but these young men did not mind being wined and dined by well-off foreigners, they did not have your particularly moralistic American attitude about trading sex for money in the 1950s, where gay people were being jailed and denounced and hounded out of jobs and US society. I can understand the unfairness of power and money, but when has that never been the case in that eternal business?
I understand it does not gibe with our era and ethics in 2019. But male prostitutes were plentiful in Italy then, the gay writers you're condemning in that vastly different era in another country.. no, they weren't starving war orphans, they were young Italian men (not boys) without our incredibly repressive American attitudes about sex for money. I'm not approving that, but to gay writers and artists in the 1950s it was incredible liberation from the unbelievably punitive and restrictive anti-gay laws and hysteria in the US then.
If you hate authors who had sex with prostitutes, there's a thousand straight ones you could go after. Oh, but if it's with Italian men (again, NOT boys) it's a problem for you? I find your comment rather homophobic.
8
Conceding that I enjoyed "In Cold Blood," I was never a big fan of Capote's fiction. And what I have read of his personality did not strike me as overly appealing. Still he seems to have had remarkably good taste in his travels. The Mediterranean has always had a special appeal to me (I lived in Italy for two years in the mid 1980's) and it must have been wonderfully rustic and romantic in the years following the war, long before it was overrun and spoiled by the tens of millions of tourists that swarm over it today.
15
@John C.
Leaving New York, and arriving in a Mediterranean village in Spain as a child in the 50s with your parent, it does help to be invited and welcomed by family friends. It was Teeny Duchamp, married to the French artist, who suggested to my mother to join them because of a love affair gone awry. I well remember the first evening which ended with a bang.
The 'Foreigners' came later. In hindsight, it was surrealistic and on occasion even slightly 'sinister'. But I would not have it any other way.
'Cold Blood' is the one work of Capote which this reader is loath to revisit. Wondering if any of the commentators know if a movie or documentary was made of this masterpiece. By some accounts, Tru was to have a nervous breakdown after eight years of working intensely on researching his material and becoming close to one of the killers.
In his 'Answered Prayers', Truman Capote is graphic about his coming to New York as a young man; in his acting as a male prostitute on occasion in order to survive, and launch his writing career. It is not for the faint of heart, heart-breaking at times in his descriptive narration of the down-and-out in the hell pits of The City that never sleeps.
1
Your photo caption should note that Capote is in the guestbook adjacent to Tennessee (Thomas) Williams and his partner Frank Merlo. I would have loved to hear that dinner conversation!
27
The first thing I thought of was 'Suddenly, Last Summer.'
37
@apparatchick,
Truman dedicated his 'Music' to Tennessee Williams.
This article is so exquisite, truly a masterpiece.
24
Amazingly beautiful places. Many of Capote’s short stories are based in Italy — I’m specifically remembering “Lola” from “The Dogs Bark.”
If you’ve only read “In Cold Blood,” you’ve missed out on some of the most beautiful writing of the twentieth century. Capote’s short stories are as lyrical as they are entertaining, brief masterpieces of the spare style proposed by Strunk and White in their seminal work, “The Elements of Style.”
At his best, Capote had few, if any, equals.
42
nothing like cemented legs to ground a love affair.
4
@cherry elliott
Yes, that made me whoop too--another example of the NYT Travel Section prose
All this beauty. Incredible.
Please remember: Sir William Walton (British composer) also lived on the island of Ischia. But his output dwindled--as he retouched and revised earlier works.
Is there something about spectacular natural beauty that dulls or inhibits human creativity? Taking in--day by day, night by night--the splendors that fall (unretouched, unrevised) from God's almighty hand?
Might not the thought recur--why bother?
Well, I don't know. Just a thought.
And I remember two great poets of ancient Greece--Sappho and Alcaeus. From the island of Lesbos--but I guess they dodged the curse. They certainly produced fine poetry. Most of which--long gone. Fate has not been kind to ancient Greek literature.
I have read an account of Mr. Capote. Long ago. Sitting on a jet plane--four or five miles above the earth. His companion--Joanna Carson was it? I do believe so.
Maybe they were sipping drinks--nibbling hors d'oeuvres or something. That's what I'd have done.
"I wish," said Truman Capote, "that this moment could go on forever and forever." At peace. At rest. Don't we all get moments like that--tossed down (as it were) by a merciful Providence? Looking out for us.
And maybe La Bella Isola supplied too many of such moments. 'Cause--
--for the hard grunt work--his masterpiece as you call it, New York Times--
--he went to Kansas.
Where else?
29
@Susan Fitzwater - the Waltons left behind on Ischia a famous garden, La Mortella, featured in Monty Don's fabulous "Around the World in Eighty Gardens".
@Susan Fitzwater
And, he got it right, about Kansas. I’ve been here for 20 years, and I’m still a foreigner.
Thank God.
2
What a lovely tribute to place
40
Very interesting article! However,
“In Cold Blood” became a best-selling book, marking both the height of Capote’s fame and achievement, but also the beginning of his eventual downfall.
We all begin our eventual downfall, death, the minute we are born. One can be larger than life. However, no one is larger than death. And once we die, only our fame and/or good deeds survive, mostly in the hearts of people our lives have touched.
73
@Jay David and once several generations past, we too become forgotten, except for those who may have left some notable work of art or political achievement behind. Living the most and best you can every day is all you can do.
18
@Jay David
But once several generations pass, we too become forgotten, except for those who may have left some notable work of art or political achievement behind. Living the most and best you can every day is all one can do.
7
Mr Clarke's book also extensively and in graphic detail treats Capote's contacts with local "boys" in Sicily. Sicily was grindingly poor at the time, and I hope these kids didn't feel they had no choice but to accommodate this American tourist's desires. I hope those interactions were life-enhancing for the local boys, because it was pretty tough to read.
51
@Grevillea I am sure these kids did feel they had no choice but to accommodate this American's carnal desire. And I am sure those interactions were indeed life enhancing for them.
5
@Grevillea, we know they weren't.
19
@joan
I'm sorry, but unless you were one of those young men, you don't know what they felt.
28