At other times he was shuttled between the homes of various relatives in Alabama. Louis, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky.

Although his parents did not formally divorce until he was seven years old, they never created a stable home for young Truman, and some of his earliest memories are of accompanying his mother, Lillie Mae, on job-hunting excursions to St. Truman Capote drew on his own youthful experience in rural Alabama to write “A Christmas Memory.” This story, which he called his personal favorite, is an idealized recollection of one of the few relatively secure periods of his unstable early childhood.Ĭapote was born Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The story is also an example of a common theme in Capote’s writings: the friendship forged among social outcasts, many of which are eccentric women. The nostalgic mood has prompted some critics to dismiss the story as “saccharine.” However, the story also contains darker elements such as loneliness, poverty, social isolation, and death, which demonstrate that the innocence of childhood may protect young peopleįrom the elements of the human condition, but not remove them from it. Autobiographical elements in “A Christmas Memory” are apparent: Capote lived with relatives in the South as a child, and during this time his older female cousin, the childlike Sook Faulk, was his closest companion. These nostalgic stories evoke a gentle, simple, and secure childhood uncorrupted by the complications of adulthood. Nance in The Worlds of Truman Capote calls Capote’s “fiction of nostalgia,” in which the author looks back fondly upon his Southern childhood. The story is a prime example of what William L. The story of a seven-year-old boy and his aging cousin’s holiday traditions was made into an Emmy Award-winning television movie starring Geraldine Page in 1968 and continues to be produced by high-school and regional theaters throughout the United States. Though “A Christmas Memory” had initially appeared in Mademoiselle magazine in December, 1956, and was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963, it was the 1966 edition that established the story’s enduring popularity. “A Christmas Memory” was issued by Random House in 1966 during the holiday season in order to capitalize on Truman Capote’s growing popularity following the release of his true-crime novel, In Cold Blood.

Truman capote reads a christmas memory