Overview
Truman Capote was one of the most gifted and flamboyant writers of his generation, renowned for such books as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and his masterpiece, the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. What has received comparatively little attention, however, is Capote's last, unfinished book, Answered Prayers, a merciless skewering of cafe society and the high-class women Capote called his "swans." When excerpts appeared he was immediately blacklisted, ruined socially, labeled a pariah. Capote recoiled--disgraced, depressed, and all but friendless.In Tiny Terror, a new volume in Oxford's Inner Lives series, William Todd Schultz sheds light on the life and works of Capote and answers the perplexing mystery--why did Capote write a book that would destroy him? Drawing on an arsenal of psychological techniques, Schultz illuminates Capote's early years in the South--a time that Capote himself described as a "snake's nest of No's"--no parents to speak of, no friends but books, no hope, no future. Out of this dark childhood emerged Capote's prominent dual life-scripts: neurotic Capote, anxious, vulnerable, hypersensitive, expecting to be hurt; and Capote the disagreeable destroyer, emotionally bulletproof, nasty, and bent on revenge. Schultz shows how Capote would strike out when he felt hurt or taken for granted, engaging in caustic feuds with Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and many other writers. And Schultz reveals how this tendency fed into Answered Prayers, an exceedingly corrosive and thinly disguised roman a clef that trashed his high-society friends.
What emerges by the end of this book is a cogent, immensely insightful portrait of an artist on the edge, brilliantly but self-destructively biting the jet-set hands that fed him. Anyone interested in the inner life of one of America's most fascinating literary personalities will find this book a revelation.
Editorials
Library Journal
In this amalgam of literary criticism and psychological insight on the life and work of Truman Capote, Schultz (psychology, Pacific University; editor, Handbook of Psychobiography) focuses on Capote's last, unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, a searing roman à clef, which, after Capote authorized excerpts to be published in Esquire magazine, left him estranged from his "swans"—the high-society women who were formerly his most loyal friends and supporters. Using the technique of psychobiography, i.e., referring to selected biographical details to look at the why rather than the who and what, Schultz draws convincing evidence from Capote's life and written work to form a plausible theory of why he would create such a vindictive and self-destructive work of art. VERDICT This book will be most useful to those with academic and or historical interests in American literature, psychology, queer studies, or popular culture. There may also be a more general secondary audience among readers of Capote's fiction.—Alison M. Lewis, Coll. of Information Science & Technology, Drexel Univ., PhiladelphiaKirkus Reviews
Schultz (Psychology/Pacific Univ.; editor: Handbook of Psychobiography, 2005) plumbs the machinations behind Truman Capote's literary self-sabotage.
In this slim, potent second installment in the publisher's Inner Lives series, the author eschews the delivery of straightforward biographical facts. Rather, he astutely dissects the inspirations behind Capote's last, unfinished roman à clef,Answered Prayers, a scorching, sensationalistic tell-all about his "filthy rich" friends, whom he dubbed "swans." Schultz considers these scathing chapters (several were published in Esquire magazine in 1975–6) as Capote's final self-defining moments, in which he deliberately "bit down hard on the smooth, socialite hands that fed him." Curiously, the author acknowledges that the whereabouts of the complete manuscript has become the stuff of legend, if Capote did indeed finish it at all. But "why tattle on trillionaires?" Schultz ponders, as he mines the conception and execution of the author's literary accomplishments: the ill-fated Answered Prayers, the "homosexual fantasia" of his debut Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's and his controversial blockbuster masterpiece of American crime, In Cold Blood. He questions why such a hardworking, respected writer would denigrate and systematically betray the privileged circles with which he'd become so ingrained. Was it Capote's "insecurely attached" childhood, the effects of personal deterioration brought on by a dependence on drugs and alcohol, or had these social luminaries truly slighted him? In contemplating Capote's many behavioral motivations, Schultz's lucid academic discourse never shames the author for penning such "pseudonym-free, scorching dismissals" that skewered folks like Jackie and Joe Kennedy, Cole Porter and Ann Woodward, but instead paints the author with compassion as a troubled literary burnout bent on vengeance, lashing out at whomever came closest to him.
A fascinating, erudite deliberation.