When Susan Akers discovered an irritated reply from Truman Capote among some papers she was going through, what surprised her was the identity of one clueless reader who had sent Capote a note after his first published story appeared in Mademoiselle magazine. That clueless reader was her mother, a junior in college at the time — which was mid-1945. Ms. Akers discovered the letter among papers her father had set aside after her mother’s death at 91 in 2014. The letter was a brush with not-yet greatness: Capote was 20 when he tapped it out on a typewriter in his mother’s apartment on Park Avenue. Capote had to write in a missing letter here or a missing word there — “understand” needed an s, “experienced” needed a d and a sentence needed a “was.”

Source: New York Times May 13, 2018 15:11 UTC