From Publishers Weekly
Considering Truman Capote's fabled social life, one would think that his private letters would be dripping with juicy gossip. Indeed, with correspondents and friends that included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Cecil Beaton, Christopher Isherwood, David O. Selznick, Tennessee Williams, Audrey Hepburn and Richard Avedon, these bright, energetic missives do include an occasional tasty tidbit. But as candid as Capote can be, one ultimately gets the sense that the author always knew his letters would be read by a wider audience some day, and rarely does Capote express less than bubbling enthusiasm and childlike devotion to his correspondents. It's up to Clarke, Capote's biographer, to fill in the occasionally sordid blanks, which he does in chapter intros and extensive footnotes. Much more profound than any gossip is the humor, sensitivity and ambition with which Capote seems to have approached every experience in his life. and his incredible discipline and passion for writing, spending hours sequestered in some of the world's most glamorous locations, composing the stories and books. This entertaining collection gives us a firsthand account of Capote's journey as he comes into his own as an artist, charting his gradual but inevitable transformation into a literary and society superstar. Readers who want to know more about the real Capote will pick up the author's books (which include In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's) and continue to revel in his wise and whimsical prose. B&w photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Truman Capote was born 80 years ago this week, not exactly the most momentous of anniversaries but one that his publisher has chosen to go overboard for all the same. To celebrate the occasion -- which occurs, as it happens, 20 years after Capote's death -- the Modern Library imprint of Random House has issued new editions of Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, and of his Collected Stories, and Random House itself now comes forth with Too Brief a Treat, an encyclopedic collection of Capote's letters as edited by his biographer, Gerald Clarke.All of which is not exactly much ado about nothing, but it certainly is much ado about not very much. Capote was a precocious writer (that first novel was published when he was 24 years old) who never really lived up to his promise, though he achieved considerable renown for the literary persona he cultivated as well as some measure of literary respect for his most notable book, the "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood, which was published in 1966 and enjoys respectable sales to this day. His sentimental short story "A Christmas Memory" now occupies a small place in the holiday canon, but apart from that he appears to be a writer whose work is on the way out, and Too Brief a Treat is most unlikely to bring him back in.The reason is clear and rather surprising: Capote, for all his wit and irreverence and taste for gossip, turns out to be a mediocre letter writer. Clarke, in his introduction, claims that his letters convey "a world of fascination, pleasure and fun," that they "have a spontaneity that is often lacking in the correspondence of more cautious and deliberate writers," that they "constitute a kind of autobiography," but the letters themselves do not support these assertions. With a few exceptions they are slapdash and trivial. Readers who are deeply interested in Capote will want to read them because he wrote them, but readers who cherish the epistolary art will find little pleasure in them. They stand in interesting contrast to the letters of Capote's friend and frequent correspondent Cecil Beaton, the designer, photographer and social butterfly. Beaton does not seem to have been a very nice man, but he wrote his letters with care, and they are immense fun to read; often it is wicked, mean fun, but it is fun all the same. Capote, who occupied a territory somewhere between innocence and cynicism, loved to write letters but obviously didn't take them seriously. Though he was a writer his entire adult life, there is astonishingly little in his correspondence about writing per se. There is plenty of the usual moaning about getting on with his work and about the mundane business of publication, but there's little to be learned here about what drove Capote to write or how he went about it. Yes, there is the occasional effusion. To his editor, Robert Linscott, in 1947: "I am working on the book and it is really my love and today I wrote two pages and oh Bob I do want it to be a beautiful book because it seems important to me that people try to write beautifully, now more than ever because the world is so crazy and only art is sane and it has been proven time after time that after the ruins of a civilization are cleared away all that remains are the poems, the paintings, the sculpture, the books." There is an offhand note to an aspiring writer: "But there is really no practical help that one can offer: it is a matter of self-discovery, of one's own conviction, or working with one's own work: your style is what seems natural to you." There is as well the rather plaintive acknowledgement that "in this profession it's a long walk between drinks." That's pretty much it. Clarke tells us that Capote was "a writer of stern and unsmiling discipline," but little of this comes across in the letters. What the reader mostly gets from them is an itinerary of Capote's endless peregrinations, a long succession of dropped names few of which any longer have currency, and an insider's chronicle of life in what Capote called "the Lavender Hill mob" -- the transatlantic gay crowd of writers, artists, musicians, theatrical types and hangers-on in which Capote became a major player when he was very young and remained one for the rest of his life. As the published letters, diaries and other writings of Beaton, Noel Coward and many others make plain, in many ways this was a singularly smart, amusing, high-octane crowd, perhaps especially so because it was out of the mainstream and existed on its own terms. Capote clearly relished this company, but his reports on it don't have much staying power: "You ask about [William] Aalto and [James] Schuyler. Well, that is a story. They have divorced and in the most dramatic of fashions. According to Jimmy, Aalto is insane, has been insane for a very long time, all of which bothered him not one whit until one night about two months [ago] when Aalto tried to kill him. My private suspicion is that there is a great deal to be said on both sides. Jimmy, who is still here, is carrying on an affair with a tiresome little party named Charles Heilleman, Aalto is living in Rome, and sends Jimmy three letters a day, which may be a sign of insanity, but I, the hopeless romantic, think it very sweet, for all the letters say is I love you, come back! come back!" Capote was indeed a "hopeless romantic," as a result of which the reader has to wade through oceans of gush: "Darling, I hope everything goes well. This is just a note to tell you that I am all right, that I love you with all my heart and miss you," and, "I miss you dear heart. I admire you as a man as much as anyone I've ever known. But more importantly, I deeply love you -- ," and, "I miss you both and love you with all my heart." Et cetera. Clarke correctly says that Capote was "almost saintly in his generosity," that "like a child craving affection, he loved his friends without reservation -- he told them so again and again -- and he expected from them an equal affection," which indeed he mostly got, but his effusions quickly pall. Drowning in gush is not the most pleasant of experiences, and Too Brief a Treat serves it up to excess. Knowing as the reader does about Capote's wit and the razor's edge with which he could slice and dice in other arenas ("It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year," "The better the actor the more stupid he is," "The good thing about masturbation is that you don't have to get dressed up for it"), one keeps waiting for a glimpse of this side of him and almost never gets it. One notable exception is worth quoting at length: "I've concocted the most scandalous parlor game. It's SO educational; and you can slander people right and left, all in the interest of le sport. It's called IDC, which stands for International Daisy Chain. You make a chain of names, each one connected by the fact that he or she has had an affair with the person previously mentioned; the point is to go as far and as incongruously as possible. For example, this one is from Peggy Guggenheim to King Farouk. Peggy Guggenheim to Lawrence Vail to Jeanne Connolly to Cyril Connolly to Dorothy Walworth to King Farouk. See how it works? Peggy Guggenheim had an affair with L. Vail who had an affair with J. Connolly etc. Here is another, and much more difficult, not to say raffiné, example: from Henry James to Ida Lupino. As follows: Henry James to Hugh Walpole to Harold Nicolson to the Hon. David Herbert to John C. Wilson to Noel Coward to Louis Hayward to Ida Lupino. Or: from Aaron Copland to Marlene Dietrich. Aaron Copland to Victor Kraft to Cecil Beaton to Greta Garbo to Mercedes DaCosta to Tommy Adams to Marlene Dietrich. Perhaps it all sounds rather dreary on paper; but I can assure you that, with a few drinks inside you and some suitable folks to play with, you'll be amazed." Never mind that many of those names are long forgotten -- if ever they were known at all -- because that's not the point. Here we see Capote at his witchy, bitchy best, leaving us longing for more but not providing it. For that one must turn to Clarke's Capote: A Biography, which a decade and a half after its publication is still very much in print and still a delicious blend of reportage, gossip and literary commentary. Clarke holds Capote's work in higher esteem than I do, but that, too, is not the point. He brings Capote alive in that book, with a fullness and vivacity that are only hinted at in this interminable volume of letters. Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
Was Truman Capote (who died in 1984) a major or a minor writer? The debate continues, but soaring above the fray comes this collection of his letters, which will be of keen interest to readers who simply appreciate his fiction (see our starred review of his Collected Stories on p.58) and his standard-setting "new nonfiction" book, In Cold Blood (1966), and choose to leave the debate of major or minor status to others. What matters here is that Capote was a man of language and passion, and the two appear in tandem in the correspondence he penned from adolescence onward. Capote's untrammeled personality fairly falls off the pages of these letters, and rather than being irritating, his disregard of reticence is especially poignant in this day of sterile e-mailing. Ideal for devotees to dip into here and there instead of reading from start to finish. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From the Inside Flap
Truman Capote was hailed as one the most meticulous writers in American letters–a part of the Capote mystique is that his precise writing seemed to exist apart from his chaotic life. While the measure of Capote as a writer is best taken through his work, Capote the person is best understood in his personal correspondence with friends, colleagues, lovers, and rivals.

In Too Brief a Treat, the acclaimed biographer Gerald Clarke brings together for the first time the private letters of Truman Capote. Encompassing more than four decades, these letters reveal the inner life of one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing personalities. As Clarke notes in his Introduction, Capote was an inveterate letter writer who both loved and craved love without inhibition. He wrote letters as he spoke: emphatically, spontaneously, and without reservation. He also wrote them at a breakneck pace, unconcerned with posterity. Thus, in this volume we have perhaps the closest thing possible to an elusive treasure: a Capote autobiography.

Through his letters to the likes of William Styron, Gloria Vanderbilt, his publishers and editors, his longtime companion and lover Jack Dunphy, and others, we see Capote in all his life’s phases–the uncannily self-possessed na•f who jumped headlong into the dynamic post—World War Two New York literary scene and the more mature, established Capote of the 1950s. Then there is the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. Capote’s correspondence with Kansas detective Alvin Dewey, and with Perry Smith, one of the killers profiled in that work, demonstrates Capote’s intense devotion to his craft, while his letters to friends like Cecil Beaton show Capote giddy with his emergence as a flamboyant mass media celebrity after that book’s publication. Finally, we see Capote later in his life, as things seemed to be unraveling: when he is disillusioned, isolated by his substance abuse and by personal rivalries. (Ever effusive with praise and affection, Capote could nevertheless carry a grudge like few others).
Too Brief a Treat is that uncommon book that gives us a literary titan’s unvarnished thoughts. It is both Gerald Clarke’s labor of love and a surpassing work of literary history.


About the Author
Gerald Clarke is the author of Capote: A Biography and Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. He has also written for many publications, including Architectural Digest, Time, where he was a senior writer, and Esquire. A graduate of Yale, he now lives in Bridgehampton, New York.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1

Truman Capote began life under a cloud. By the time he was born, in New Orleans on September 30, 1924, his parents' marriage was over in all but name. His mother, Lillie Mae, a small-town beauty, went her way, and his father, Arch Persons, a charming but irresponsible schemer, went his. For much of his childhood, Truman was thus raised by the same middle-aged cousins who had raised his orphaned mother: three old maid cousins and their bachelor brother in the little town of Monroeville, Alabama. Though he never lacked for care, that early abandonment by his parents left an emotional wound that remained open until the day he died.

Small-"I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy," was how he later described himself-Truman was spirited and inventive enough to make himself the center of any gathering. "A pocket Merlin" was how Harper Lee, his best friend during those early years, later described him in her semiautobiographical novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1932 his mother, who had dropped her back-country name, Lillie Mae, in favor of the more sophisticated Nina, brought him north to live with her and her new husband, a Cuban named Joe Capote, in New York. An indulgent stepfather with a good job on Wall Street, Joe Capote legally adopted him in 1935, and Truman Persons became Truman Capote.

In 1939 the Capotes left Manhattan for the upscale bedroom community of Greenwich, Connecticut. There they settled into a handsome enclave of Tudor houses and tree-shaded streets. When he was still in Alabama, Capote had announced his ambition to become a writer, and at Greenwich High School, he found what every aspiring writer needs, a sympathetic and encouraging teacher-Catherine Wood was her name. In Greenwich, Truman also found a soul mate in Phoebe Pierce, a pretty, sophisticated girl whose own ambition was to be a poet. Although there is only one letter to her-"Phoebe devil" was how he affectionately addressed her-her name often comes up in his correspondence with others.

Three years after leaving, the Capotes returned to New York, to an apartment at 1060 Park Avenue. After belatedly graduating from high school, a private school on Manhattan's West Side, Capote landed a job at The New Yorker [magazine]-but only as a copyboy. That magazine thought his stories too unconventional for its staid, Scarsdale tastes. In those days the women's fashion magazines published the most innovative fiction in America, and the talent The New Yorker sneered at was quickly embraced by two remarkable fiction editors, Mary Louise Aswell at Harper's Bazaar and George Davis at Mademoiselle. They vied for his stories, and in the months after World War II, Capote, still in his early twenties, became a hot commodity in the literary marketplace.

All was not going well at home, however. Nina Capote had become an alcoholic, and when she was not raging at Joe for his infidelities, she was attacking Truman for his homosexuality. Finding it harder and harder to work on Park Avenue, in 1946 Truman sought temporary refuge at Yaddo, a writers' and artists' colony on a bucolic estate in upstate New York. One writer who was there that summer compared him to Shakespeare's Ariel; but he was also Puck, the one who set the agenda for fun and adventure. Yaddo was famous for its romances, and Capote engaged in two, the first with Howard Doughty, a handsome married historian, the second with Newton Arvin, one of Doughty's best friends and sometime lover. For Truman, Doughty, who remained a friend, was just a fling. But Arvin, a professor of literature at Smith, a women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, was real love.

They were an unlikely couple. At twenty-two, Capote looked several years younger; at forty-six, Arvin looked several years older, in appearance a mousy man, bald and bespectacled. In temperament they were also opposites. Capote could scarcely restrain his high spirits; shy and reserved, Arvin felt uncomfortable whenever he left his Northampton sanctuary. Arvin was brave in his writing, however, and unlike many professors of literature, he was an excellent writer himself, a critic of unassailable judgment and a tower of erudition. In the two years they were a pair-Capote traveled to Northampton on weekends-Arvin provided his young partner with the college education he had never had. Arvin, Capote liked to say, was his Harvard.

During the week Capote enjoyed New York, where the circles of his friends widened with every month. One set centered on Leo Lerman, a good-natured literary gadfly whose Sunday-night parties were a Manhattan institution, attracting just about everybody of note-writers and editors, movie stars and playwrights. Other sets revolved around his magazine editors, Harper's Bazaar's much-loved Mary Louise Aswell and Mademoiselle's slightly sinister George Davis, whose epigrams rivaled Oscar Wilde's. After publication of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote asked Davis his opinion. "Well," said Davis, "I suppose someone had to write the fairy Huckleberry Finn."

Capote discovered the world of a more established society when he walked into the East Side town house of Bennett Cerf, his new publisher at Random House, and Cerf's wife, Phyllis. There, too, he became the center of the room, telling tales and retailing gossip. Others among the dramatis personae of those postwar years-and Capote's frequent correspondents-were Donald Windham and Andrew Lyndon, two aspiring writers from Georgia, and John Malcolm Brinnin, a poet, college teacher, and, later, the head of the Poetry Center at the 92nd Street YMHA in Manhattan.

The publication of Other Voices, Other Rooms in the winter of 1948 brought Capote national fame-Americans of that day took literature more seriously than they do now-and a few months later he traveled to Europe, where, to no one's surprise, he met some of the leading English and French writers. When he returned, he realized that he had outgrown Arvin and his almost hermit-like isolation. For his part, Arvin, who had engaged in a clandestine romance with Andrew Lyndon while Capote was away, was only too willing to release his rambunctious and often tiring lover. Though they remained devoted friends until Arvin's death in 1963, Capote began looking around for a new companion.

In October 1948, he found him. Ten years Capote's senior, Jack Dunphy was athletic-he had been a dancer in the original production of Oklahoma!-and good-looking, in a surly kind of way. He said what he thought, to Capote and everybody else. Dunphy, too, was a writer-and a good one-with one novel to his credit, another on the way, and several plays in his future. This time love lasted, and Dunphy remained Capote's constant star for the rest of his life.

TO ARCH PERSONS [St. John's Military Academy] [Ossining, N.Y.] [Probably Autumn 1936]

As you know my name was changed from Person's [sic] to Capote, and I would appreciate it if in the future you would address me as Truman Capote, as everyone knows me by that name.

[Collection Gerald Clarke]

TO THOMAS FLANAGAN

[Greenwich, Connecticut] [1939-41]

I do hereby solemnly affirm that any statements I may have made about Thomas Flanagan, or said that he had made, were calumnies and lies on my part.

Truman Capote

[Collection Edmond Miller]

TO CATHERINE WOOD [Monroeville, Ala.] [26 July 1941]

Dear Miss Wood, I have been in New Orleans three weeks and I just got back to Monroeville last night. I was very pleasantly surprised to find your sweet note. I was so sorry to hear about your father and I do hope he is improving.

I have been gathering material here and there and some of it is rather good, I have written little but I have taken many notes and tried to give accurate accounts of things that will later stand me in good stead, (that was meant to be a period, but my typewriter slipped.)

Are you going up to visit Miss Pierce, I hope you do because her place in Maine sounded so quiet and restful-charmingly woodsy.

I have been traveling all over the south since I came. I went to Natchez, Miss. last week and I went on a picnic at a very scenic spot over looking [sic] the Mississippi River.

Teddy's mother wrote me a long letter telling me all about his doings, you know Teddy-he would'nt [sic] write anyone if his very life depended upon it. She told me that you had written him and asked me to tell you all the news about the dear raven haired child.

1.He has a job with the Greenich [sic] Cab company and he makes fifteen dollars week.

2.He won $130.00 dollars [sic] at the Maidstone club dinner dance. He is taking flying lessons with it.

3.His mother is desperate!

4.They have moved into their new house-the address is 179 Park Ave. Greenwich.

5.They are pleased and delighted with Teddy and he seems to be improving. BUNK!

P.S. He was 17 last Sat.

I have gone Russian with a vengeance! I finally finished WAR and Peace. Also I have read Huxley's "Point Counter Point." It is very badly written, not so badly written as confusing. But it is educating as to the point of ultra-modern sophistication.

I went all the way through the heart of Pearl River swamp in La. It took three days and it was like being in a jungle only more dangerous. These swamps are inhabited by Cajons (I believe that I spelled that correctly) and it is so wild in there that some of the younger children have never seen white people! It was really quite an experience and I collected all kinds of material and wild flowers-also a baby alligator which I will ship to you C.O.D any time that you will have him. He's a regular little monster.

I am so sorry for my procrastination in answering your letter but it was truly unavoidable. Please write me and tell me all the news as I am at present sorta this side of civilization, where the people think if you don't say "ain't" you just ain't right in the head and the double negative is accepted grammar.

Write me, all my very best Love, Truman

[Collection New York Public Library]

TO CATHERINE WOOD1

Hotel Frances Monroe, La. [August 1942]

Ouichita-Pronounced Wa-che-Ta

I hope all this isn't too much for your + Miss Pierce's stomach.

They have the most wonderful river life here (Ouichita river, it flows into the Miss.). It is the most beautiful river! I went down it on a house boat for 157 miles + back, it took a week and a half. I am going to write a story about the people that live (I mean really live) on houseboats along the banks + eat what they get from the water!

I suppose you know that I will not be at G.H.S. [Greenwich High School] this fall as we have taken an apartment in the city. But of course I will be in Greenwich often to see you. Phoebe [Pierce] will be in the city this winter also. If you have a guest room in your new house you can invite me out for a weekend, (forward, aren't I?)

I do hope you can read my handwriting, because I cannot.

[Collection Unknown]

TO ARCH PERSONS

[Monroeville, Alabama] Dec 2, '43

Dear Daddy Nid,1

Please excuse pad & pencil, but just a hasty note to let you know I got your telegram. Mother sent it to me airmail.

I came here, thinking that, after all, you certainly couldn't be bothered with me at the present time. I'm really terribly sorry about Myrtle, because I liked her very much, as you know.

Then, too, I have no money of my own and I'm afraid you didn't understand that when I talked with you. I used what I did have to finance myself down here, but, needless to say, this is certainly not the place. I was far better off in New York.

Naturally your telegram sounded exciting and nothing could thrill me more than to see you and finish my work in New Orleans. But I assuredly do not feel as though I should impose upon you-and what with the war etc. I'm afraid you're in no position to be imposed upon.

I have a cold and feel rotten, it's so damned uncomfortable here. I think I will be going back to New York soon as Alabama is definitely not a writer's haven. Please write me, c/o V.H. Faulk, Box 346, M, Ala.

Much love to you and a kiss for Myrtle,

Truman

P.S. I hope you can read this "nigger" scrawl.

[Collection Gerald Clarke]

TO ELIZABETH AMES

Truman Capote 1060 Park Ave. New York, N.Y. Jan. 23, '46

Mrs. Elizabeth Ames Director: Yaddo Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Dear Mrs. Ames,

I am interested to know the possibilities of spending some time at YADDO this summer, as I am working on a book, a first novel, which I hope to finish in the Fall; the book is to be published by Random House: Robert N. Linscott is my editor. My stories have appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Story, Prarie [sic] Schooner, and other small reviews. I am twenty-one, from the South, now living in New York. For a short period I worked at The New Yorker, then read manuscripts for a motion-picture office, finally put together a monthly collection of rather tired anecdotes for a digest magazine. Now, at last, with the assistance of a publisher, I am able to go ahead with my writing.

Several friends who have been there tell me I would like YADDO very much. Thank you, Mrs. Ames, for the consideration you may give this letter.

Most sincerely, Truman Capote

[Collection New York Public Library]

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In Too Brief a Treat, the biographer Gerald Clarke brings together for the first time the private letters of Truman Capote. Spanning more than four decades, these letters reveal the inner life of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing personalities. As Clarke notes in his Introduction, Capote was an inveterate correspondent who both loved and craved love without inhibition. He wrote letters as he spoke: emphatically, spontaneously, and passionately. He also wrote them at a breakneck pace, unconcerned with posterity. Thus, in this volume we have perhaps the closest thing possible to an elusive treasure: a Capote autobiography." Through his letters to the likes of William Styron and Gloria Vanderbilt, as well as to his publishers and editors, his longtime companion and lover Jack Dunphy, and others, we see Capote in all his life's phases - the uncannily self-possessed naif who jumped headlong into the dynamic post-World War II New York literary scene, and the more mature, established Capote of the 1950s. Then there is the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. Capote's correspondence with Kansas detective Alvin Dewey, and with Perry Smith, one of the killers profiled in that work, demonstrates the writer's intense devotion to his craft, while his letters to friends like Cecil Beaton show Capote giddy with his emergence as a flamboyant mass-media celebrity following In Cold Blood's publication. Finally, we see Capote later in his life, as things seemed to be unraveling: disillusioned, isolated by his substance abuse and by personal rivalries. (Ever effusive with praise and affection, Capote could nevertheless carry a grudge like few others.).

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Hearing Truman Capote's voice-its pitch, rhythms, mannerisms-is a singular experience; the same could be said for reading his letters. They are newsy, capricious, full of endearments, a bit precious, funny, emphatic, occasionally duplicitous, and always, signature Capote. Written from his various domiciles-in New York, Sicily, the Greek island of Paros, Switzerland, Spain, and California-the letters went to friends and business associates, but rarely to family. His letters to Newton Arvin (his first love affair), a professor of literature at Smith College, and designer and photographer Cecil Beaton (a "darling friend") are full of affection and caring. Other correspondents include Random House editor Robert Linscott and cultural maven Leo Lerman. Capote's letters are often like shared conversation involving frequent tidbit opinions about the famous. Poised, poignant, persuasive, they center on his daily life and the life shared with Jack Dunphy (the man who anchored Capote's entire adult life) and their work-especially the time and effort invested in Capote's most publicized book, In Cold Blood. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The flamboyant author's collected correspondence brings him back to life in multiple roles, from teenage gadabout to ascendant literary star to conniving dipso burnout. The unedited, spontaneous Capote (1924-84) we find here is a different creature from the meticulous craftsman who wrote, among other carefully honed works, In Cold Blood, the 1967 genre-bending masterpiece that fused journalism with a novel's emotional impact and what he called "the precision of poetry." In his letters, edited by biographer Clarke (Capote, 1988, etc.), he proffers heart and soul with raucous wit to a bevy of friends and fellow artists, as well as influential acquaintances; his affections gush among misspellings and jangled syntax. He disdains to veil his homosexuality, and he reveals early on a predilection for gossip laced with aphorism. This kind of literary cheap shot later led to rejection by the New York socialites he had so diligently courted for decades; they dumped him flat after a 1965 excerpt in Esquire of his final novel, Answered Prayers, a piece full of thinly disguised portraits of real people. Capote pens his missives from an endless variety of engaging venues-Portofino, a Sicilian villa, Katherine Graham's yacht-but the years darken his outlook. "I loathe writing for films," he confesses to one of his editors in 1953. "The fact that it is undermining is no mere myth." To an aspiring writer he notes, "It may take 50 to 100 stories before style and subject and technique suddenly come together ... like learning to swim." The toll taken by the massive effort to produce In Cold Blood, from years of interviews with the killers to the wait for an execution to seal the final chapter, comes acrosspoignantly in a letter to photographer Cecil Beaton: "At the moment feel only bereft," he writes. "But grateful. Never again."Fluff, clutter, and flashes of insight into an enfant terrible of American literature.

AUTHOR DESCRIPTION