An unknown Capote. The American writer’s juvenilia and unpublished short stories

Abstract

The article sets out to acquaint readers with early works by Truman Capote that have never been published in collections of his early prose. It concerns his school exercises, some of which appeared in The Trinity Times newspaper, as well as short stories penned before 1942 during his time at Greenwich High School. A brief abstract of these works gives an idea of the talent of the writer, who became aware of his vocation very early in life. The article discusses Capote’s other manuscripts discovered in American archives, including a draft ‘Article about a group of young people in Moscow’, referred to by Capote as ‘A Daughter of the Russian Revolution.’ This documentary piece describes the children of the Soviet elite whom Capote met during his visits to Moscow in 1956, 1958 and 1959. Among his other important finds, D. Zakharov mentions the manuscript of the short story Another Day in Paradise, dedicated to the writer Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano), whom Capote met in Sicily. The article raises the question of including the aforementioned works in the writer’s general bibliography, offering arguments in favour of their subsequent publication.