In the footsteps of Truman Capote

A frightened man, illuminated by the flames blazing in the woods behind his house, seeks refuge by the sea, clutching the only thing he truly cares about: the manuscript he is working on. That man is Truman Capote; the manuscript is that of "In Cold Blood", the seminal work of the non-fiction novel genre of which Capote considered himself the creator. It is the most powerful anecdote among the many scattered throughout "In the Footsteps of Truman Capote" by Leila Guerriero (translated by Maria Nicola), an Argentine journalist and winner of the 2026 European Strega Prize for La chiamata (also published by Sur), who has chosen to focus on the years the writer spent in Palamós, where he had retired in 1960 to complete the draft of In Cold Blood. Capote had chosen the unassuming village on the Costa Brava, perhaps to follow in the footsteps of his colleague Robert Ruark, who had settled there a few years earlier, describing it as the perfect retreat for writing in peace, far from the cocktail parties of Manhattan. After several changes of residence, Capote settled in Sanià, a villa now converted into a ‘retreat’ for writers by its current owner. It is here that Guerriero begins to follow in Capote’s footsteps as he grappled with the book that would establish him as an author and lead to his personal downfall. The writer would never again manage to match the resounding success of "A sangue freddo", which remains to this day a benchmark for journalism written in a narrative style, and that intense confrontation with the brutal murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959 would devastate him psychologically. Guerriero is well aware of the difficulty of writing an entire essay on a period of Capote’s life to which other biographers, starting with Gerald Clarke, have devoted only a few pages. Today, Palamós seems to have forgotten its illustrious guest from the past. “They’re all dead, and those who aren’t dead don’t remember, and those who do remember embellish the story,” says Guerriero, who is not content merely to examine the correspondence – which she quotes effectively – but ventures out to conduct field research. Thus we have the tentative identification of the patisserie where Capote used to go (a detail, perhaps, but one that speaks volumes about the journalist’s meticulous approach), the visit to the bookshop – the only place in the village where foreign newspapers arrived – where, whilst leafing through a daily paper, Capote learnt of the death of his friend Marilyn Monroe; and the testimonies of those who, as young people, knew the writer (of all these, the most vivid is that of Carme, Ruark’s maid). From the pages of Guerriero, the contrast thus emerges between the sleepy daily life of the village and the torment of a writer grappling with the book of his life.

Leila Guerriero
: In the Footsteps of Truman Capote
. Sur, 142 pp., €12.50