“The Ghost of Truman Capote” (The difficulty of the ghost. Truman Capote in the Costa Brava), by Leila Guerriero, translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Delphine Valentin, Rivages, 190 p., 13 €, digital 10 €.
The Ghost of Truman Capote opens in a cemetery in Palamos, a seaside town on the Costa Brava, while the narrator is looking for a grave : that of the American writer Robert Ruark (1915-1965). The grave of this man, the one who, it is said, convinced Truman Capote (1924-1984) to come and take refuge there to write his future masterpiece, The sang-froidends, with a little “common sense”stubbornness and 4G, to be found. But how does this discovery help the author, Leila Guerriero, in her investigation? How does identifying Ruark’s final resting place allow us to understand anything about the three stays (each of six months) made by Capote in this corner of Spain between 1960 and 1962? What does it give us to understand about the writing of “ book that led [son auteur] to Olympus before dragging him to hell » ? And, moreover, did Ruark really play the role that history attributes to him?
This is the first in a succession of impasses and aporias that the Argentine journalist and writer will confront, so many obstacles whose story forms the framework of the Ghost of Truman Capote. An enlightening and fascinating text on non-fiction writing, this literary vein of which The sang-froid remains the absolute model almost sixty years after its publication, in 1966, and of which Leila Guerriero, 57 years old, is today one of the great representatives. Evidence of this A simple story (Christian Bourgois, 2017), The Suicides at the End of the World or The Other War (Shore, 2021 and 2023).
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