Norman Mailer called Truman Capote “the most perfect writer
of my generation.” Perhaps he was. The simplicity of his prose is deceiving.
Like Hemingway, there often seems to be another tale - one of greater importance
– hidden behind the one you’re reading.
Such a skill cannot be learned. It flows from the deepest realms of the
soul and often, it seems, bespeaks trouble.
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| Truman Capote at his peak |
Capote termed his great work, In Cold Blood, a non-fiction
novel. In my many ways, his life followed
the precepts of this genre: fact was hidden as fiction, and fiction was
presented as fact. In the end, no amount of drugs and alcohol could meld the
fact/fiction parallax, and grief became too severe.
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| Party (and host) of the Century |
He said: “No one will ever know what In Cold Blood took out
of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me.
I think, in a way, it did kill me.”
Perhaps his greatest creation really was the Party of the Century.
For the event, such as it was, came forth from Capote’s imagination, passion,
and ambition. Never before had there
been anything like it. It’s as if The Party was a living, danse macabre of his psyche.
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| He was spent forever |
Capote filled the ensuing years with sad, public displays of
debauchery and rare, incomplete offerings of former brilliance, his talent eroded
by pills, sophomoric disputes, mendacity, and disappointments.
The strange story of Truman Capote certainly wasn’t written
by him. There’s an unimaginative coarseness to his declining years; a too-obvious
narrative not found in his words; a hopeless, drunken weave toward darkness
that engenders cliché. No, whoever wrote it has no talent at all.