Imagine a person with unparalleled success: he throws the most lavish parties, is adored by the public and belongs to the most elite social circles. Now imagine their success crashing in a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol, and a festering obsession with money and fame. A perfect example of this would undoubtedly be Truman Capote. Capote was a literary mastermind who achieved the American Dream at a relatively young age , only to have it ripped away from him because of his own recklessness and self destructive decisions. Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons in 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana (Boon 2). Truman had a childhood that was far from ideal in all aspects. His mother was Lille Mae Faulkner, a former Miss Alabama who would later commit suicide and his father Arch Persons was a businessman whom Truman was never close to (Boon 4). Capote’s parents divorced when he was young and his mother who saw herself not fit to be a mother, sent a young Truman to be raised by her relatives in Alabama. Truman developed a close friendship with his next door neighbor, Harper Lee. As children, Lee and Capote both knew that hey wanted to be authors and would later serve as inspiration for the other’s writing. Truman’s mother who had relocated to New York City remarried a wealthy Cuban businessman, Joseph Capote (Patterson 10). After she suffered from multiple miscarriages and come to the realization that she could no longer have children, Truman’s mother called for him to be sent to live with her. When he arrived in New York, Truman was legally adopted by his stepfather and began using the surname Capote (Boon 6). Truman attended the Trinity School but completely disregarded his education and earned extremely poor grades due to the fact that he already knew he wanted to be a writer (Patterson 4). Capote left school at seventeen without graduating for a filing job at the New Yorker, where he was openly homosexual. Although Capote’s job at the New Yorker consisted of mainly of errands, his primary focus continued to be his writing and produced multiple short stories, many of which were never published or that Capote burned in the years prior to his death (Patterson 5). In June, 1945 the publication of his short story “Miriam” in Mademoiselle magazine brought him the widespread attention that he had been seeking (Goad 5). “Miriam” garnered the O.Henry award in 1946 and led Capote to sign a contract for a novel. Capote’s first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms was published in 1948 (Goad 5) and demonstrated his talent for writing. However, the book’s early notoriety was not gained because of Capote’s writing, but rather because of the book’s homosexual theme and the photo of Capote on the dust jacket. The publicity of the novel caused the then twenty-three year old Capote to become a bestselling author. Yet the identification between Capote and the main protagonist of Other Voices, Other Rooms, specifically because they were both homosexual gathered outrage and forced Capote to go into exile in Europe. Capote traveled around Europe for ten years with his partner, Jack Dunphy (Boon 4). During this time, Capote mainly wrote nonfiction travel essays as well as short stories, one of which was A Tree of Night (Goad 6). After Capote returned to the United States, he wrote the fiction piece Breakfast at Tiffany’s which was first published in Esquire magazine and then in book form in 1959 (Goad 8). In 1959, after the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s Capote was desperately looking for a subject that he could write his planned nonfiction novel on. On November 16th of that year, capote read an article in The New York Times about a family murder in Kansas (Patterson 7). In a period of a few days, Capote along with his childhood friend Harper Lee had traveled to Holcomb, Kansas where a wealthy farmer and his family had been murdered. Capote spent the following six years devoting his time to investigating and writing about the crime. The result of Capote’s efforts was In Cold Blood a piece that made him more money than all of his previous works combined and caused his social status to skyrocket to that of a celebrity (Patterson 8). The success of In Cold Blood made Capote a prominent literary figure and allowed him entrance into the most exclusive Manhattan social groups. Furthermore, Capote delved deeper into his drug and alcohol addictions in addition to throwing sumptuous parties with select guest lists. During this time Capote became depressed due to writers block and had an affair with a married man which led to a separation from his longtime partner Jack Dunphy (Goad 8). Nevertheless in the early 1970’ s Capote became infamous after early chapters of his work in progress Answered Prayers were published in Esquire. In these chapters, Capote revealed the secrets of his famous friends, causing him to be shunned in various social circles (Goad 9). This caused Capote’s drug addiction and alcoholism to grow and he became a caricature of his former self . While visiting friends in Los Angeles on August 25th, 1984 Capote overdosed on barbiturates which led to his imminent death. In conclusion, Truman Capote was a literary genius whose mastermind was beyond that for any normal person to achieve or comprehend. He lived the American Dream to its fullest, only to have it crumble before his eyes like a house of cards because of his own destructiveness and obsession with fame. A perfect summary of Capote’s life can be put into one word, calamitous because to an outsider, Capote’s life was filled with more tragedy than happiness.