“The Knight of Capote”. In Search of the Unknown Works by the American Writer

The article tells about a decade of Russian scholar Denis Zakharov’s studies dedicated to Truman Capote’s literary heritage, his quest and discoveries of the unknown stories, feuilletons, poems and school essays by Capote, found in the 2014–2024 in American libraries and archives. Among them — the u...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Denis V. Zakharov
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: Russian Academy of Sciences, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature 2024-12-01
Series:Литература двух Америк
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Online Access:https://litda.ru/images/2024-17/09-Zakharov.pdf
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Summary:The article tells about a decade of Russian scholar Denis Zakharov’s studies dedicated to Truman Capote’s literary heritage, his quest and discoveries of the unknown stories, feuilletons, poems and school essays by Capote, found in the 2014–2024 in American libraries and archives. Among them — the unfinished manuscript about Moscow “The Daughter of the Russian Revolution” (1958–1959), unfinished novella “The Wrong Mrs. Rockefeller”, made famous by the publication in 2023 in The Strand magazine as unknown short story “Another Day in Paradise”, and a draft of the notes (the precursor of a chapter from “La Côte Basque, 1965”), which could become another unknown piece by Truman Capote, worthy of publication as posthumous legacy of the writer. The article describes Denis Zakharov’s personal archive which contains more than fifty Capote's works in various genres, little known among Capote’s researchers. The article also sheds light on the history of the appearance of the writer's manuscripts in the archival funds of the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, and describes the experience of incorporating information about these finds into Capote’s scholarly research. Denis Zakharov reveals the details of his attempts to organize the publication of Capote’s works, his communication with Russian publishers, editors of foreign magazines, the writer's biographer Gerald Clarke and the copyright owner lawyer Alan U. Schwartz. The article summarizes the results of the scholar’s ten-year research and traces the vector of further studies in the field as well as the prospects of publishing the unknown works of Truman Capote found by Denis Zakharov.
ISSN:2541-7894
2542-243X