The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career by George Plimpton
Irving Malin

George Plimpton. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies,
Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Doubleday, 1997. 499 pp. $35.00.

In a note to the reader Plimpton refers to this book as an “oral biography.” He claims that the “form is particularly appealing for a number of reasons not the least of which is that the reader is treated to information delivered firsthand, as if one had happened in on a large gathering, perhaps a cocktail party of Truman Capote’s acquaintances.” The book does contain valuable information about Capote’s early years, his “decay,” and his funeral. But moreover, it offers a striking example of what many “minor” writers have become in our society. Capote remains a celebrity; he is remembered as a relentless pursuer of fame and an acquaintance of such disparate figures as Joanne Carson (Johnny’s ex-wife), society “swans”—to use Capote’s own word—such as Babe Paley and Lee Radziwell, “hip” people like Steve Rubell of Studio 54. The fact that Capote wanted to be the best-known writer in America, to be instantly recognizable to television viewers, continues to disturb me. He was so obsessed with glamour and money that he sold his soul.
I believe that this biography is valuable because it offers interesting evaluations of Capote’s art by Styron, Mailer, Vonnegut, and the ubiquitous Vidal. They remind us that Capote was a writer (at least until his last twenty years). He once had integrity; he once cared more for art than fame. Although Capote is a minor writer, he surely deserves reevaluation. I still admire Other Voices, Other Rooms; the stories in A Tree of Night (“Miriam,” “The Headless Hawk”), and In Cold Blood. He remains, as James Dickey notes in his eulogy, “a lyrical, poetic writer who gives us scenes stunning with lightness 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.” Dickey’s eulogy, the coda of this “oral biography,” reminds me that Capote deserves recognition—for his style, not for his careerism. [Irving Malin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career by George Plimpton Irving Malin George Plimpton. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Doubleday, 1997. 499 pp. $35.00. In a note to the reader Plimpton refers to this book as an “oral biography.” He claims that the “form is particularly appealing for a number of reasons not the least of which is that the reader is treated to information delivered firsthand, as if one had happened in on a large gathering, perhaps a cocktail party of Truman Capote’s acquaintances.” The book does contain valuable information about Capote’s early years, his “decay,” and his funeral. But moreover, it offers a striking example of what many “minor” writers have become in our society. Capote remains a celebrity; he is remembered as a relentless pursuer of fame and an acquaintance of such disparate figures as Joanne Carson (Johnny’s ex-wife), society “swans”—to use Capote’s own word—such as Babe Paley and Lee Radziwell, “hip” people like Steve Rubell of Studio 54. The fact that Capote wanted to be the best-known writer in America, to be instantly recognizable to television viewers, continues to disturb me. He was so obsessed with glamour and money that he sold his soul. I believe that this biography is valuable because it offers interesting evaluations of Capote’s art by Styron, Mailer, Vonnegut, and the ubiquitous Vidal. They remind us that Capote was a writer (at least until his last twenty years). He once had integrity; he once cared more for art than fame. Although Capote is a minor writer, he surely deserves reevaluation. I still admire Other Voices, Other Rooms; the stories in A Tree of Night (“Miriam,” “The Headless Hawk”), and In Cold Blood. He remains, as James Dickey notes in his eulogy, “a lyrical, poetic writer who gives us scenes stunning with lightness 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.” Dickey’s eulogy, the coda of this “oral biography,” reminds me that Capote deserves recognition—for his style, not for his careerism. [Irving Malin]

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