It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.
Every year we do this. Now through Halloween we'll occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.
Today: Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Willa Cather
Truman Capote:
 |
| I actually have 1/2 of Capote's ashes, too! |
Truman Capote got by in life on three things: a unique name, drug/alcohol addiction, and verbally clawing the eyes out of almost every writer that existed during his time. (Gore Vidal was a popular target. But it was Gore Vidal after all.)
Capote had a whirlwind life. Crazy parents, an early life being neighbors with Harper Lee, vagabond teen years, time working at
The New Yorker, pissing off Robert Frost*, fame and notoriety, friendships with a cast of characters (like Andy Warhol), and a liver that was a beast all kept Capote going into his 50s.
Then the liver gave out. He officially died of liver cancer at the age of 59, although a coroner's report claimed there was a fantastic concoction of drugs in his system, too, which didn't help matters.
Tombstone Notes:
Capote's life was timid compared to afterlife. Shortly after dying he was cremated, with his ashes potentially split between two individuals--Jack Dunphy and Joanne Carson (the ex-wife of Johnny Carson). Except maybe not. Dunphy claimed he received all of the ashes, not half. Carson, meanwhile, said she kept her share of ashes in an urn in the room where Capote died.
 |
| When in doubt, claim you have some of the ashes. |
In 1988, Carson claimed her ashes were stolen, along with $200,000 in jewels. Capote's ashes were later returned, hidden in a coiled-up hose in the backyard of Carson's home. A year later, the ashes were nearly stolen again during a dinner party. Cremated remains = hot commodity.
After Dunphy died in 1992, he was cremated as well. It took two years, but in 1994 Dunphy's ashes were taken with his own alleged stash of leftover Capote, and both scattered in various spots of water around New York.
All we really know for certain are two things: Capote bought a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, where maybe no one is buried, and Dunphy had a memorial stone placed at one location where someone's ashes were tossed about.
Dylan Thomas:
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our next literary alcoholic, Dylan Thomas!
Nothing much of note has ever really come from Wales, especially on the writing front. A Welsh person will rattle off twenty names for you, half of which sound like real names--but there's not a chance you've ever read anything by them. That is, of course, unless Dylan Thomas is mentioned.
Thomas wasn't a stellar student, and largely did nothing of note academically--yet he wrote poetry feverishly. In his teen years he gained some small popularity, and built a reputation off that. He also gained an appetite for smoking and drinking, and built a bigger reputation off those.
Writing doesn't pay terribly well, and it didn't pay much back in the 1940s and '50s. As a result, Thomas often embarked on reading tours to generate more money. It was on one of these reading tours of America that Thomas, while looking ill to everyone he encountered, went out drinking in New York City. After spending all night at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, Thomas went back to his hotel and loudly proclaimed, "I've had 18 straight whiskeys! I think that's the record!"
He spent the next couple days still drinking, before falling even more ill. Eventually he ended up in the hospital and died within the week. Pneumonia was the official cause of death, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver contributing.
Note to self: Quit at 17 straight whiskeys.
Tombstone Notes:
Wales isn't known for its writers, and it isn't known for stylish looking tombstones.
Thomas is buried in the over-spill graveyard of St. Martin's Church, Laugharne, Dyfed, Wales, under a simple white cross with garish writing from someone we can only assume just started out with amateur calligraphy. Although bonus point for trying to squeeze "memory" in diagonally on the cross and putting his name off-center.
Paul Laurence Dunbar:
Good news! Dunbar eschewed the trend of trying to kill himself via addiction!
The bad news? Death gets us all in the end.
Dunbar lived a short life, but a life packed with a vast amount of publications, from poetry to novels to short stories. Born of two former slaves--including a father who joined the Massachusetts 55th Infantry Regiment (the second all-black infantry in America's history, after the 54th Regiment portrayed in the movie Glory)--Dunbar had the stereotypical childhood all writers hope to have.
Unhappily married parents?
Check.
Divorced parents?
Check.
Dad dying while Dunbar still a kid?
Check.
Off and running with the sad story, Dunbar didn't allow it to keep his ambitions down. By the age of 16, he started publishing poems. Yet, despite initial luck in being published, he still lacked fame. That is until William Dean Howells, editor of The Atlantic Monthly and author himself, gave rave reviews to the young poet.
Throughout his 20s Dunbar gained popularity, so much so that he toured Europe to read his work. But it generally went downhill after that. By the age of 27, Dunbar was diagnosed with tuberculosis and advised by doctors to go to Colorado for the dry air, and to drink whisky to alleviate his symptoms. (Oh, no...) Dunbar and his wife started to drift apart because of his dependence on alcohol (...not again!...), and they separated.
At the age of 33, his health damaged even further from his addiction to whisky (...this wasn't supposed to be about booze!...), Dunbar died, officially, from his bout of tuberculosis (...but alcohol won again).
Tombstone Notes:
Buried in his hometown of Dayton, OH, Dunbar's tombstone includes a plaque bolted to a giant, irregular boulder. On the plaque is a verse of his poetry written in what was called "Negro dialect" of the antebellum south.
The verse is about death, just to really drive the point home.
Willa Cather:
This time, I promise, a writer who didn't find friendship at the bottom of a bottle. I swear.
In fact, compared to most, Cather's life was downright homey and lovely. Born to two stable parents, her family initially lived in Virginia. Before her 10th birthday, with a father fearing tuberculosis running rampant throughout the region (hello, Paul Laurence Dunbar!), the Cathers picked up stakes and moved to Nebraska.
It's in Nebraska that young Willa Cather became affected by the sprawling land and unique personalities. As a freshman at the University of Nebraska, she intended to go into medicine and become a physician--but a publication of an essay in the Nebraska State Journal convinced Cather she could write. She'd end up graduating with a B.A. in English.
As the years passed, success found her. Short stories, magazine articles, and novels came forth, as did awards like the Pulitzer Prize. She never married, instead living with a female friend for most of her life, especially after moving to New York City.
Nothing major afflicted Cather as she aged into her 70s, although biographies note her health faded for nondescript reasons. Death isn't nondescript though, as Cather died from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Take THAT, alcohol!
Tombstone Notes:
In a great bait-and-switch, Cather was buried in Jaffrey, NH, in a plot beside her longtime friend. Why Jaffrey? Cather was one of the few people in American history who could handle stepping foot into New Hampshire often, and traveled to Jaffrey later in life to write in silence.
The tombstone includes a passage from her novel My Antonia: "...that is happiness; to be dissolved
into something complete and great."
Dissolve. Kind of ghoulish. But I guess "ashes to ashes, dust to dust"...
*Capote vs. Frost:
Capote, while young, largely unknown, and still working at The New Yorker, went to Vermont for vacation--yet he was violently ill with flu. Frost, while old, largely famous worldwide, and still writing poetry, went to the hotel where Capote was staying to give a reading.
Knowing he was from The New Yorker, the hotel manager convinced Capote to attend Frost's reading, which he did. After a short while, and feeling sickly, Capote stood up and started to leave the room. Frost, indignant, allegedly threw a book of poetry at Capote as he exited.
The next day, Frost contacted the editors at The New Yorker and asked, "Who the hell is this Truman Capote, anyway?"
Capote, later in life, described Frost as "the meanest man who ever drew breath, an old fake dragging around with a shaggy head of hair and followed by pathetic old ladies from the Middle West."
Admittedly, Frost did have one hell of a head of hair.
