From the Notebooks

One theory about the origin of homosexuality holds that it stems from a dysfunctional relationship with one's father. If a boy lacks the natural love of a father, the desideratum surfaces in a warped way later. I ran across the following piece of anecdotal evidence in a recent review by Joseph Epstein of Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote:

Truman Capote was of course gayer than a leap year Mardi Gras. Small, delicately featured, with a famously high and piping voice, he would have had a tough time passing, to use the old-fashioned phrase. Not that it often occurred to him to do so. He appears to have been perfectly at ease with his homosexuality.

In a letter to Perry Smith, Capote provided a quick sketch of his childhood: 'I was an only child, and very small for my age--and always the smallest boy in school. When I was three, my mother and father were divorced. . . . My father (who has been married five times) was a traveling salesman, and I spent much of my childhood wandering around the South with him. He was not unkind to me, but I disliked him and still do. My mother was only sixteen when I was born and was very beautiful. She married a fairly rich man, a Cuban, and after I was 10 I lived with them (mostly in New York). Unfortunately, my mother, who had several miscarriages and as a result developed mental problems, became an alcoholic and made my life miserable. Subsequently she killed herself (sleeping pills)."