Episode
Pain and Sorrow
- Published
- Oct 20, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 600
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://javiertruben.substack.com/p/pain-and-sorrow
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Summary
It’s been a while since I have sailed to Palamós, still a small fishing town in 1962, where Truman Capote sought refuge for three semesters—always escorted by his obliging life partner Jack Dunphy and various pets—alternated with his cottage in Verbier, at the top of the Swiss Alps. In Cala Sènia, a secluded Mediterranean cove, the American author found the necessary peace, far away from New York’s social life. The fishermen went out to sea in the wee hours, causing such a ruckus that, according to Capote, not even Rip van Winkle could sleep through it, and that helped to keep a rigorous writer’s schedule for his most accomplished manuscript, In Cold Blood . Local old-timers who met Truman still recalled him doing his errands–two bottles of gin, dry vermouth, and olives for his martinis—the sad day that Marilyn Monroe had tragically overdosed. He was at the newsstand reading the headlines, and with that high-pitched lisping voice I cannot even dare to mimic, because it’s way beyond my range, Truman moaned, “My lady friend died!” He had badly wanted her for the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s . But Paula Strasberg, her acting coach, deemed it inappropriate for Marilyn’s career to play a “lady of the evening” character, especially after being pigeonholed as the sex bomb of the 50s. Truman was very disappointed and began to spread the rumor that he felt betrayed when Audrey Hepburn was cast instead. The movie producers thought that a whitewashing of a courtesan was needed. And if I have to judge for the cross-generational audience of Breakfast at Tiffany’s , they rightly did so. Another paradox duly noted, it would be now unthinkable for another Holly Golightly than Audrey Hepburn. Truman, feeling so at ease in Palamós, invited some of his friends to vis…