Retracing Truman Capote's Moment in the Mediterranean Sun

'Before the author reached the height of his fame, he escaped to seaside idylls in southern Italy and Spain to write, swim and bask under the sun with his great love.

Long before the alcohol and depression, the drug-fueled nights at New York’s Studio 54 and the promise of a Proustian novel that would never fully materialize, Truman Capote was heralded as one of the country’s most promising young writers. It was this Capote who met fellow writer Jack Dunphy in 1948. The two would end up devoted companions for 35 years. But first, Capote needed to win him over. So he hatched a plan: they would head to Italy.

After brief stopovers in Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples, the couple headed to Ischia, a volcanic island off the coast of Naples. They trekked by horse-drawn buggy, with children clinging to their carriage, and bleating goats scurrying past, to Forio, then a small fishing village, where they stayed for nearly three months.

That time would reverberate: It cemented the still fragile legs of the new relationship, and it established for Capote a routine that would serve him well — escaping to the Mediterranean to write.

It was here, in Forio, and elsewhere along the Mediterranean in later years, that he immersed himself in the novels “Summer Crossing,” “The Grass Harp,” and his masterpiece, “In Cold Blood,” which came to define the true crime genre.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/travel/truman-capote-mediterranean.html