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# From the Notebooks
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/7316/
- Published: 2009-01-13T07:06:26.000Z
- Updated: 2009-01-13T07:06:26.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: TWE, #wpChunk

![notebooks.jpg](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/notebooks.jpg)

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)."