Truman Capote House shortly afterwards. For Capote, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was a turning point, as he explained to Roy Newquist ("Counterpoint", 1964): The "new book", "In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences" (1965), was inspired by a 300 word article that ran in the November 16, 1959 "The New York Times". The story described the unexplained murder of the Clutter family in rural Holcomb, Kansas, and quoted the local sheriff as saying, "This is apparently the case of a psychopathic killer." Fascinated by this brief news item, Capote traveled with Harper Lee to Holcomb and visited
Truman Capote tape recorder in favor of semi-fictionalized "conversational portraits". These pieces formed the basis for the bestselling "Music for Chameleons" (1980). Capote underwent a facelift, lost weight and experimented with hair transplants. Despite this, Capote was unable to overcome his reliance upon drugs and liquor and had grown bored with New York by the beginning of the 1980s. After the revocation of his driver's license (the result of speeding near his Long Island residence) and a hallucinatory seizure in 1980 that required hospitalization, Capote became fairly reclusive. These hallucinations continued unabated and medical scans eventually revealed that his brain mass had