Since his death, and with the invaluable support of my wife, Louise, I have tried to do what he would have wanted, and now there are Capote scholarships in universities such as Stanford, Iowa, Xavier, and Appalachian State, all dedicated to the hopeful emergence of bright new Capotes, all with their own unique voice and energy.
Since Truman’s death, as trustee of The Truman Capote Literary Trust, I have made many decisions regarding the publication and other exploitation of his works in various media throughout the world. Until the resurrection of Summer Crossing in late 2004, my most difficult decision had been whether or not to publish in book form the three chapters of what was to be Truman’s next major novel, Answered Prayers. Among his other great talents, Truman was a great dissembler and it was often very difficult to tell whether he was reciting fact or fiction. As his health and abilities deteriorated he dissembled more and more, particularly when it came to his writing output.
As a result of the huge success of In Cold Blood I was able to make very advantageous contracts with his publisher, Random House, for the publication of his next books. The star in this firmament was to be a novel entitled Answered Prayers, a work that he loved to describe in detail to his editor Joe Fox and me over drinks and dinner whenever possible. This was to be an intricate, exuberant, witty, and mischievous novel, all told through the eyes of a never-to-be-forgotten character who in many ways reminded Truman of Truman himself.
To use Truman’s description, this was to be a kite with a long tail consisting of many chapters, some titles of which he whispered most confidentially into our easily seduced ears. Yes, he was writing away—yes, the fact is he had written at least half of the book—yes, it would soon be finished.… And the years rolled by and I renegotiated and revised the contracts. At times, there was hope. Three chapters were published in magazines. But then he gave us no more. At various times he assured us that it was all packed away and he was already in the editing stage, or it was almost all packed away, or some of it was packed away. And then he died.
I shall never forget the hours and hours and hours spent by me, Joe Fox, and Truman’s biographer Gerald Clarke trying to find the rest of this momentous manuscript. We searched Truman’s apartment, his house in Bridgehampton. We asked the people he had lived with. We tracked down the theories of well-meaning friends, all to no avail. And then we understood. There was no more. The great dissembler had simply fooled his closest friends and allies. There was no more because he simply could not write any more.
Although Joe is no longer here to testify, I am sure he would agree that we both felt cheated and somehow bruised but, who knows, perhaps in his delirium Truman really thought he had written the rest of this novel and locked it away and that his two godfathers, as he called us, would find it and bring it forward in all its glory.
Eventually Joe Fox suggested that the three chapters of Answered Prayers should be published in book form. He reasoned that all three had been published previously in magazines, that they were all well written, and that in some strange way they did manage to huddle together into a structure, if not cohesive then at least structurally sound. At the time I thought long and hard about this suggestion; after all, Truman had certainly not instructed Joe or me or anyone else to publish merely a first part of what was supposed to be a long novel.
However, these pieces were Truman’s last published writings, and in fact one of them, “La Côte Basque,” a barely fictionalized description of some of Truman’s closest celebrity friends, stood historically as a marker in Truman’s subsequent downfall. It had proven too bloody for most of his friends to bear. Not only had they turned against him but by that time he had deteriorated to the point where he actually had turned against himself. We agreed that the book should be published, and it came out in 1987.
That decision turned out to be the easy one. A much more difficult decision arose late in 2004 and carried over to early 2005. In the fall of 2004 I received a letter from Sotheby’s in New York stating that a trove of Capote memorabilia, including manuscripts of some published works, many letters, photographs, and what looked like an unpublished novel, had been delivered to Sotheby’s for auction. None of us had any idea that these documents were in existence.
Sotheby’s indicated that an unknown person claimed that his uncle had been a house sitter at a basement apartment in Brooklyn Heights that Truman had inhabited around 1950. He claimed that Truman was away at one point but had decided not to come back to the apartment and had instructed the superintendent of the building to put all of his remaining possessions on the street for garbage pickup. According to this account, when the house sitter saw what had been done, he felt that he could not let this material be discarded, so he decided to keep it. Now, fifty years later, this gentleman had died and a relative of his had come into possession of the material and wanted to sell it.
I realized immediately that Sotheby’s was trying to get me, as trustee of The Truman Capote Literary Trust, not only to authenticate the material but also to acquiesce in its sale. The catalogue Sotheby’s sent listed the materials and had photographs of some of them. Included was a photograph of a page or two of an unpublished manuscript from a composition book Truman used for his writing.
My most reliable source for information about Truman before I met him was his biographer Gerald Clarke. Not only had Gerald written a luminous biography of Truman but he also kept meticulous records about events in Truman’s life. In fact, Random House had just published a collection of Truman’s letters that were edited by Clarke and to which he referred me. In those letters Truman writes of struggling with this manuscript, a novel called Summer Crossing, for some time before finally putting it aside.
Here the story varies. There is some evidence that he wished it never to be published, and yet in later letters to a friend there are also indications that he was still thinking about it. Truman never mentioned Summer Crossing to me nor did Gerald Clarke have a clear idea of what Truman’s final wishes were for this manuscript. And Joe Fox had passed on in 1995.
Gerald Clarke went to see the material at Sotheby’s and had a glimpse of the various items in the collection. There were in fact letters from Truman’s mother and his stepfather (a rarity, and an insight into what we thought had been completely cutoff relationships). There were many, many letters to his beloved friend Newton Arvin, photographs of Truman as a young man, annotated manuscripts of some of Truman’s early works, and, of course, what looked like a full manuscript of a novel entitled Summer Crossing.
The next step was to get a chance to read it. I asked David Ebershoff, who had taken over the editing chores of Truman’s works at Random House, to arrange with Sotheby’s to make a copy of the novel. While this was happening I had to be absolutely sure that if Sotheby’s auctioned these documents they were to make very clear to all prospective purchasers that the publication rights belonged to The Truman Capote Literary Trust and were not for sale as part of the documents.
I also wanted to make sure, if at all possible, that all of these documents and memorabilia ended up in the place where Truman’s other papers, manuscripts, and documents had been placed, namely the New York Public Library. I started a dialogue with the library and asked them to examine the material and hopefully arrange to buy it. Gerald Clarke also urged them to this end.
In order to make sure that Sotheby’s was going to clearly indicate that the publication rights belonged to The Truman Capote Literary Trust, I asked them to put flyers on every seat at the auction and also to make an announcement before the auction began that the only things being auctioned were the physical papers and that the publication rights belonged to the Trust.
Just to make sure, I asked my son John Burnham Schwartz, a novelist in his own right and someone who knew Truman since he was a little boy, to check at Sotheby’s to see that all was in order. The amazing conclusion to all of this was that apparently no one bid at the auction. This could have been for a couple of reasons. First, the price estimates were too high, and second, they were put off by the publication warnings we had arranged with Sotheby’s.
Gerald Clarke, David Ebershoff, and I began
