Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career

An extensive review of Truman Capote’s friends, enemies, and hangers on. TC’ s sensitive and malicious observations of people around him left him with few truly good friends. The “society” he sought spurned him when he revealed who they really were. There’s nothing like the truth to get you kicked out of the club. Truman is a sad man throughout and sadder still as time went on. Feelings of compassion fill the reader as he gets to know this remarkable man.

Plimpton certainly knew the 60s and 70s New York literary milieu and its high society. Interesting bits on Beat the Devil and that cast of characters too. All in all, a very entertaining exposition of an exceptional person and period.

Anyone who has read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote knows that it was his best writing. He created a new genre of reporting and fiction combined by immersing himself in the subject of his book. He spent months living in Kansas where the Clutter family was murdered and many hours with the two young men who did the killing. After the blockbuster book came out, Capote was catapaulted into celebrity and high society. This book is so interesting because it follows Capote's life from childhood through his rise and fall from grace. His friends and acquaintances tell the story as if you were sitting there listening to them discuss Capote, the good and the bad. Truman was an elfin sprite, full of stories, not all true but extremely entertaining. But at the end of his life he was using drugs and alcohol to deaden the frustration of being unable to top his masterpiece book and finding nothing better to write about, turned on his high society friends, writing a tell all book about them using thinly disguised characters. Because of this, the people who made him, dropped him out of their lives completely, leaving him bewildered. He had wrongly assumed that they would understand and forgive him. After that he simply drifted and declined physically, drinking until his body gave out. He died in the arms of his best friend Joanne Carson, exwife of Johnny Carson. He knew he was going and begged her not to call for help, as he was worn out and finished. I think I would like to read In Cold Blood again, this time with a different understanding of Truman Capote.

If you're interested in Truman Capote, this is a fascinating book, called an "oral biography" in which various friends and enemies write about their knowledge of him, or experiences with him. The book is linear, beginning with his childhood and leading to his tragic demise. Nothing important is left out, as far as I know. The section on "In Cold Blood" is especially excellent. Plimpton did a great job of obtaining and organizing the material. Highly recommended

Book condition was better than described and the book is one of Plimpton’s best.

GREAT

Plimpton's book has the virtues of an oral history by bringing the reader one step removed from Truman Capote (and his bizarre world) himself: he becomes the sum of the parts of what others said of him. The other voices (other rooms?) in themselves perforce incorporate yet another layer of oral history with Capote as a function of an albeit narrow segment of American culture.

Very good condition and arrived quickly

Interesting book by Georg Plimpton. Various people comment on different aspects of incidents that occurred in the life of Truman Capote. Really fascinating. And never before have I ever watched someone so completely self-destruct their entire social life by publishing a short story in Esquire called Answered Prayers. This is a very enticing read.

Very good condition. Impressed