An unfinished story by Truman Capote (1924-1984), written around 1950, when the American writer lived in Sicily, was published for the first time in the most recent edition of the literary magazine The Strand Magazine.
The magazine’s editor-in-chief said he found Truman Capote’s short story “Another Day in Paradise” in the Library of Congress, the United States Parliament, inside “an old Florentine-style notebook, with a red and gold cover.”
In an editorial, Andrew Gulli said the text, written by hand and pencil, was so difficult to read that a specialist had to be hired to prepare for publication in the magazine, known for publishing rare works by writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. .
Capote was in his early 20s and a rising star when he moved from New York City to Taormina, Sicily, in 1950, where he lived in a picturesque house called Fontana Vecchia, once occupied by the British writer D. H. Lawrence.
Later, the writer would describe the move to Europe as a necessary escape from the American literary scene, which he compared to living inside a light bulb, and would speak of Sicily as an ideal setting to work.
Capote biographer Gerard Clarke says the author moved to Sicily partly because his partner, Jack Dunphy, wanted to live abroad and because the strong US dollar made Italy more affordable than New York.
The author of the book “Understanding Truman Capote” stated that his stay of just over a year in Sicily left him with the feeling that many authors have when they are away from their countries: a growing sense of distance.
But also, Thomas Fahy added, a greater clarity, which he later used to write works such as The Herbal Harp and his memories of childhood in Monroeville, Alabama.
“Another Day in Paradise” tells the story of Iris Greentree, a middle-aged American heiress who uses her mother’s inheritance to buy a house in Sicily, but ends up betrayed by a local man and too poor to even return to the United States. .
Although much of Capote’s fiction is set in New York or the American South, this work shares the pace, sometimes cruel humor of his best-known books and the themes of loneliness, fear and regret, he said. Thomas Fahy.
The author says Capote probably related to Iris Greentree’s feeling of displacement and alienation.
“As a kid, I was constantly going back and forth, from New Orleans to Alabama, from New York to Connecticut,” Fahy says. “You can see how his life has become very lonely and isolated,” he added.
Source: TSF
