Truman Capote couldn't have fully appreciated his good fortune while writing the true-crime masterpiece "In Cold Blood." By the time his so-called nonfiction novel was published with its many creative licenses-the two killers whose lives he'd dramatized had been executed; they couldn't talk back. He wasn't so lucky with his next major project, "Answered Prayers," which he claimed would be his magnum opus. In one of its chapters, published in Esquire under the title "La Côte Basque, 1965," he exposed close-held secrets of the friends and muses he called his swans: a set of graying socialites who'd achieved fashion-plate fame. They quickly closed ranks-and, in the decade between the excerpt's release and his death, in 1984, Capote failed to complete "Answered Prayers," or any other book-length manuscript.
His exile from Manhattan high society, and his accompanying artistic decline, is the subject of the new season of the Ryan Murphy anthology drama "Feud,"subtitled "Capote vs. the Swans." Capote's 1948 début novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms," with its queer characters and famously naughty author photo, introduced him as a convention-flouting wunderkind. Those days of youthful defiance are long gone by the time "Capote vs. the Swans" opens, in the late sixties, with Capote (Tom Hollander) suggesting to his closest confidante, Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), that there's no higher happiness than material comfort. After discovering that her husband, Bill, is engaged in his umpteenth affair, Babe is contemplating divorce, but Capote discourages it, citing her age and Bill's stature as the chairman of CBS. "You have a great life," he reminds her. "You have a house in Bermuda, a mansion in Coral Gables, the thing in London.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 12 -19, 2024 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 12 -19, 2024 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Age of Anxiety
The love songs of Billie Eilish.
A Reporter at Large – You Make Me Sick
How corporate scientists discovered—and then helped to conceal—the dangers of forever chemicals.
OLD ENGLISH
“Player Kings,”\"The Cherry Orchard,” and \"London Tide.”
THOROUGHLY MODERN
Yuja Wang uses her star power to lead audiences out of their comfort zones.
THE PERFECTIONIST
Why we're still catching up to Brancusi.
DESERT ISLAND
Tastes of Hawati abound in Las Vegas.
HIGHER AND HIGHER
To preserve humanity—and the planet—should we give up growth?
MAXED OUT
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”
WOMAN, FROG, AND DEVIL
January Wojnicz, a retired civil servant and a landowner, was a splendid man, as they said in Lwów, handsome and dignified.
THE STASI FILES
Piecing together the secrets of East Germany’s past.