Product Description

He was the most social of writers, and at the height of his career, he was the very nexus of the glamorous worlds of the arts, politics and society, a position best exemplified by his still legendary Black and White Ball. Truman truly knew everyone, and now the people who knew him best tell his remarkable story to bestselling author and literary lion, George Plimpton.

Using the oral-biography style that made his Edie (edited with Jean Stein) a bestseller, George Plimpton has blended the voices of Capote's friends, lovers, and colleagues into a captivating and narrative. Here we see the entire span of Capote's life, from his Southern childhood, to his early days in New York; his first literary success with the publication of Other Voices, Other Rooms; his highly active love life; the groundbreaking excitement of In Cold Blood, the first "nonfiction novel"; his years as a jet-setter; and his final days of flagging inspiration, alcoholism, and isolation. All his famous friends and enemies are here: C.Z. Guest, Katharine Graham, Lauren Bacall, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, John Huston, William F. Buckley, Jr., and dozens of others.

Full of wonderful stories, startlingly intimate and altogether fascinating, this is the most entertaining account of Truman Capote's life yet, as only the incomparable George Plimpton could have done it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234910 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-10
• Released on: 1998-11-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385491730
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Nobody can match George Plimpton as an adroit weaver of interviews into a tight narrative fabric. Plimpton can make even a negligible life into a magic-carpet ride, as in his editing of Jean Stein's perennial bestseller, Edie, about Andy Warhol's victim-starlet Edie Sedgwick.

In Truman Capote, Plimpton has an infinitely more important subject, who worked his way down from the top into the shallow pit of druggy celebrity. His book doesn't knock the definitive biography Capote off the shelf, but it's much more fun to read. Plimpton interviewed more than a hundred people--from Capote's childhood to his peak period, 1966, when his Black and White Ball defined high society and In Cold Blood launched the true crime genre, all the way down to his last, sad days as a bitchy caricature of himself. Joanna Carson complains that Plimpton's book is "gossip," which it gloriously is. But it's also brimming with important literary history, and it helps in the Herculean task of sorting out the truth from Capote's multitudinous, entertaining lies; for instance, In Cold Blood turns out to be not strictly factual. James Dickey, whose similar self-destruction is chronicled in Summer of Deliverance, delivers here a good definition of Capote's true gift to literature: "The scene stirring with rightness and strangeness, the compressed phrase, the exact yet imaginative word, the devastating metaphorical aptness, a feeling of concentrated excess which at the same time gives the effect of being crystalline." --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal
An oral biography that blends the voices of Capote's friends and enemies.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Less a literary convocation than an A-list gab-fest, this volume is filled over the brim with three things Capote cared deeply about: gossip, name-dropping, and himself. An oral biography (on the lines of Plimpton's Edie) may seem superfluous for someone as relentlessly self-publicizing as Capote. Over the course of this conversational parade of witnesses to his sensational career, however, the familiar figures of the elfin young author of Other Voices, Other Rooms and the aged, substance-abusing author of the socialite-scourging Answered Prayers are shattered, or at least chipped away at, by the sheer variety of impressions, anecdotes, and reminisences about an inarguably remarkable, mercurial individual. Despite the recycled high points--arm-wrestling Bogie during Beat the Devil, going head-to-head with Norman Mailer on television, etc.--a multifarious, almost Proustian characterization emerges. Naturally there are the characteristic detractions of Gore Vidal and Mailer (``A ballsy little guy. But . . . those balls got swollen''), the slightly apologetic approbations of Carol Marcus and Joanne Carson, and innumerable opinions in between, from the likes of John Knowles, William F. Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut, the detectives from In Cold Blood, his betrayed jet set, and Plimpton himself. Plimpton has adroitly edited this mass of eyewitness accounts, conflicting testimony, and hearsay into a fairly complete narrative with a seductive aura. Only occasionally does he gloss over extended unpleasantness, such as the depths of Capote's destructive affair with John O'Shea, a married suburban banker; but he also gives space to smaller voices, including the strangely fond account by O'Shea's daughter Kerry (rechristened Kate Harrington by Capote for her teenage modeling career) of the avuncular Pygmalion figure in her life. Capote's flamboyant, fascinating life as related by other voices, other views. (60 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

a life told in gossip
If there was ever a person who deserved to have his whole story told in the form of gossip by people who knew him, it was TC, and that's what George Plimpton has done for him. Whether you liked the guy or not, this is a fascinating read about one of the most interesting American personalities of the 20th century. It gives many interesting insights into why TC wrote as he did, why he was so good at it, and why he went downhill so fast. Plimpton is nearly faultless in the presentation of the material in logical order; there are a few entries that could have been cut without sacrificing any quality, mostly entries where contributors go on about themselves rather than TC. But these are telling in their own way, and you can always just skip them if you don't like them. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the subject, as well as (1) 20th century American writing generally; (2) pre-Stonewall gay life in the US; (3) New York society in the 1960s; and (4) Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird; she figures significantly both in TC's early and adult life.

A book even Capote would love
Being a man as into self advertisement as Truman Capote was, this is a book that he would truely love. Even though not everything said about him is positive, the very fact that so many prominant people had opinions about and feelings for this strange Southern refugee would probably warm his heart. I have tried without success to appreciate Capote as a writer. With the exception of In Cold Blood, which is less personal and more accessable than his other fiction, I just don't get it. But Capote the personality, now that is different. Those of us who watched his decline over the years on one TV show after another, to the point where his interviews were incoherent babble, have a guilty fascination with this man. And of course the 'mystery' of the missing final project - the greatest fiction of his life - just adds to the sadness of the story.

If you are interested in Capote at all - as writer or as personality - this book is a great source of insight, anecdote and interesting detail.

Capote the Writer was Lost in Ten Years - Sad Tale
The most moving aspect of this collection of oral recollections is how it highlights that Capote as a promising fiction writer existed only for ten years: 1948 to 1958. Between that time came his best (and pretty much ALL) of his fiction: his wonderful, lyrical novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms; his first short story collection; and, in 1958, Breakfast at Tiffany's. After 1958 the slide began. The oral stories in this book movingly underline the point that despite the huge success of In Cold Blood, that book was mere journalism (friends who cared about him as a writer noticed), and that Capote never got back to the promising fiction of his first decade.

After In Cold Blood which there was nothing but the parties - the now faded and tawdry-looking ball ball Capote threw at the Plaza Hotel (check out the telling photos Plimpton includes); a friend who attended cried in disbelief "This is supposed to be a great writer we're talking about." The period of playing mascot to wealthy cafe society is also included in all its irrelevant detail, as are the final, dismal years when Truman found it easier to go on Johnny Carson to "do" his "Truman Capote" routine rather than write. The decline in his personality is painful to read about and his constant lying and slandering of friends and other writers (a bizarre attack and libel on Gore Vidal, for example), makes him look an unpleasant irrelevance. His final brain-addled message to his lawyer ("I WANT to die!") and his tawdry death in the house of an ex-wife of Johnny Carson, add an odd, ironical pathos. Capote was a figure of fun in later life but this book, for all its cheapness and relying on (mostly) shallow "friends" for insight is a sad and moving testimony to a potentially great literary writer who never fulfilled the promise of his amazing first decade. I found it unexpectedly moving.