Some 170 "friends, enemies, acquaintances and detractors" have had the recollections, oral and written, culled for this wonderfully constructed memoir. As George Plimpton proposes, the form taken is that of a cocktail party during which the deceased is discussed with the kind of frankness he often brought to his own conversation.
Truman Capote was never a timid talker; although he could scarcely be described as a wit (almost everyone in the gathering has trouble recalling specific instances of his verbal brilliance), a distinctive high pitched voice, fevered love of exaggeration and clever delivery ensured he could always secure his audience.Was this talent necessarily a blessing? New York jeweller Kenneth Jay Lane - himself a rather grim example of the intrepid social climber - considers Capote to have been "probably the most lionised writer since voltaire, socially. To have Truman around was a social plum, a decoration". Both as a dinner guest and writer, he was an instant hit, acquiring notoriety with his first book Other Voices, Other Rooms, on which the author's photograph showed a languorous man child batting enormous come hither eyes.In fact, at least in the early years before self indulgence slowed down the pace, Capote was anything but languorous. He planned his careers, literary and social, with disciplined ruthlessness. In his anxiety to meet what were considered the right people, he resembled his mother, a diminutive social beauty called Lillie Mae - very Tennesse Williams, that - who abandoned her infant son to move to New York. There she married a Cuban businessman and summoned Truman to join her. Eventually, desperate to support the extravagant life she demanded, her husband began to embezzle money from his company; when exposure was imminent, she committed suicide. Capote evidently learned nothing from his mother's history, as he pursued the upper echelons of New York society with equal zeal and even greater success. In addition to his "high, expiring voice", he had other features which might in anyone else have been considered disadvantageous. Not the least of these was his extreme lack of stature; a tiny figure, in the pre-alcohol and drug bloated years, he possess the torso of a Renaissance bronze and the legs of a trucker. He was also unashamedly homosexual during a period considerably less tolerant than the present. But he was more than simply self confident: Capote was without fear. There are stories told here of him bull fighting alongside one of Spain's best known matadors and, while still a schoolboy, head butting a bully in the groin.He brought this same rash bravery to the dinner table and usually won over whoever he was attempting to charm at the time.
However, as anyone who steps out more than one or two evenings a week can confirm, being a good guest tends to consume an inordinate amount of time and energy. A vigorous social life can also be damaging to reputations, giving rise to rumours of frivolity and lack of gravitas. Capote cared less than less about such charges, especially after In Cold Blood was published in the mid-1960s. Here was a book which managed to gain him critical approval and a $2 million bank balance.His apogee came in 1966 when he held a black and white ball in New York's Plaza Hotel. Ostensibly given in honour of Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, the event was really a celebration of Capote's own triumphant ascent. Despite many drawbacks, he had managed to make himself on the of the most famous and respected authors in the United States. Several chapters here are devoted to the ball - described, incidentally, in great detail in Don DeLillo's recent novel Underworld - because it was unquestionably the best known social occasion of the decade even before the night itself.Naturally, in the wake of so much satisfied ambition, Nemesis was bound to be hovering in the wings. Capote's spectacular fall from grace came with the publication of a chapter from a projected, but never completed, novel called, ironically enough, Answered Prayers. La Cote Basque appeared in Esquire magazine and was a thinly disguised and distinctly unflattering portrait of the author's circle of wealthy friends. They never forgave him, he was summarily dropped a great many guest lists, and a pitiable decline gathered pace.Capote always failed to understand the nature of his transgression and therefore his punishment. He believed himself to be the equal of those whose hospitality he had first enjoyed and then ridiculed. But he was, in essence, no more than a court jester. A token homosexual in the company of the very wealthy is customarily the confidante of wives, benignly tolerated as such by their spouses. "He didn't understand that he was being treated like a toy," summarises one badly stung former friend. The rich, like German princelings in the 18th century, like to be surrounded by artists, whose company is believed to add colour to any occasion. But even the most commercially successful painter, musician or writer will never be considered the equal of an industrialist in such circles.Despite his cunning and finely honed social skills, Capote was extraordinarily na∩ve. He believed that with Answered Prayers he was going to become America's Marcel Proust. Yet, as Gore Vidal points out, it is highly unlikely he had even read A la Recherche and certainly he had no understanding of its context nor anything like its author's erudition. Capote was much more an amalgam of Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhold, with both of whom he shared a fascination with social niceties and an uneasy friendship. Preoccupied with the lives of the rich, he never noticed his own tale was much more interesting than theirs could ever be.