Capote’s family shares memories

Some rare family photos and a collection of Truman Capote’s letters to his favorite aunt in Alabama -- on topics including Harper Lee, Tallulah Bankhead and his longing for down-home butter beans -- are going on permanent display in Monroeville, Ala., where the writer spent some of his boyhood.

The collection, while apparently containing no riveting new material on his life and times, is a coup for the town that was spun into memorable works by Capote and Lee, his childhood friend and neighbor. It was assembled by Capote’s cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter, who donated it to the Monroe County Heritage Museums for an exhibit that opens April 27 in Monroeville’s Old Courthouse on the town square.

Capote, who died in Los Angeles in 1984 at age 59, had close emotional ties to his aunt, Carter’s mother, Mary Ida Faulk Carter, the younger sister of Capote’s mother. Capote wrote the bestseller “In Cold Blood,” about the men who murdered a family in Kansas.