Berlin & New York: lost stories by Truman Capote Are Published
by Venetia Kapernekas
This is amazing!
The news just came out and while I was reading it, I wanted to share as has been published at the New York Times but really it started here in Germany as Four of the stories, believed to have been written from 1935 to 1943, appear in German translations in Thursday’s edition of the German publication ZEITmagazin.
The Swiss publisher, Peter Haag, was searching for chapters of Truman Capote’s unfinished final novel last summer when he stumbled upon a different find. While poring over Capote’s writings and papers at the New York Public Library, he discovered a collection of previously unpublished short stories and poems from Capote’s youth.
Those stories will be seen in German more than a year ahead of the scheduled release of the full collection, a dozen poems and roughly 20 stories, by Random House in English and by Kein & Aber in German. David Ebershoff, who is editing the book for Random House for a December 2015 release, said the decision to publish the four first in German was a nod to Mr. Haag’s research.
Mr. Ebershoff said in an email. “Reading the manuscripts — with his corrections and edits — is fascinating. You can literally see a young genius at work. I don’t use that word lightly, but these early stories show that Capote’s talent and way of experiencing the world was with him from a very young age.”
Even in translation, Capote’s style is immediately recognizable in the short stories, under the titles “Miss Belle Rankin,” “This Here Is From Jamie,” “Saturday Night” and “The Horror in the Swamp,” laced with his incisive attention to detail and themes of longing for love and acceptance, and the transience of life.
Capote, who died in 1984, at 59, is believed to have written these works between the time he was 11 and 19, although not all are dated.
more here http://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/leben/2014-10/truman-capote-erzaehlungen-roshani-haag
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.’ (Albin Krebs on Capote at NY Times, 1984)
what Albin Krebs wrote on August 28, 1984 on Truman Capote after his death ” A Novelist of Style and Clarity”
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-obit.html