Sylvia Plath hears Truman Capote

On Tuesday, 16 December 1958, Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal about hearing Truman Capote read at Harvard's Sanders Theater. It is not clear when she and Hughes decided to attend the event, which the Boston Globe promoted on 11 December as "An Evening with Truman Capote", but attend they did.

On the 14th, this ad appeared:

Plath wrote, "Truman Capote this weekend: a baby-boy, must be in his middle thirties. Big head, as of a prematurely delivered baby, an embryo, big white forehead, little drawstring mouth, shock of blond hair, mincy skippy fairy body in black jacket, velvet or corduroy, couldn't tell from where we sat. Ted & men hated the homosexual part of him with more than usual fury. Something else: jealousy at his success? If he weren't successful there would be nothing to anger at. I was very amused, very moved, only Holiday Golightly left me more chilly than when I read her" (442).

From this we can deduce that Plath read Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, which was published on 28 October 1958 by Random House (it was also published in the November issue of Esquire magazine and it is unclear which SP read). And after the reading, they attended a party at Houghton Mifflin editor Gerta Kennedy's. Kennedy lived, according to Plath's address book, at 134 Brattle Street in Cambridge.

Back jacket of Kennedy's 1956 volume of poems Native Island

Following the Kennedy party, they went to the Fassetts' up Chestnut Street.

The Boston Globe reviewed the reading on Monday the 15th:

All links accessed 20 November 2021.

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