1966–1984
Prayers: Answered and Unanswered
“YOU MIGHT SAY TRUMAN CAPOTE has become omnipotent,” proclaimed one paper at the end of the sixties. International society, with which he had been flirting since the early fifties, competed for his presence on their yachts and in their grand houses and palazzos. In New York, no party seemed complete without his sly wit and infectious laugh. With the money that was coming his way, he and Dunphy moved from a small apartment in Brooklyn Heights to a fancier one in Manhattan, overlooking the East River and the neighboring United Nations Building. In the heat of the summer they also had a cool retreat in eastern Long Island, and in the winter they had their condominium in the Swiss Alps. Just forty-two when he emerged from the triumphs of 1966, Capote seemed to have everything a writer, or anyone else, could want.
He often said that the harrowing years he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood had changed him inalterably. “No one will ever know what In Cold Blood took out of me,” he said. “It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones.” And he seemed to be right. Despite his often playful demeanor, Capote had, in fact, been a writer of stern and unsmiling discipline. Novels, short stories, travel articles, profiles, plays and screenplays—he was adept at all of them. Even those that were unsuccessful, like his two plays, showed the talent and craftsmanship of the true writer.
As the sixties merged into the seventies, however, it became clear, even to him, that he had lost his way. He worked on television shows that were never produced, he wrote a movie script that was rejected, and he spent weary months trying, against all logic, to turn Jacqueline Kennedy’s pretty but untalented sister, Lee Radziwill, into a television and movie star. All the while he was drinking too much and experimenting with the fashionable drugs of the era. Soon, by his own description, he was an alcoholic, making frequent trips to rehabilitation clinics that failed to rehabilitate him.
Though Jack Dunphy remained his one true companion—the only person in the world he trusted completely, Capote said—they spent less and less time together. Too restless to stay very long in one place, Capote often seemed to be in transit. Dunphy, by contrast, maintained an invariable routine: summer on Long Island, fall in Manhattan and winter in Verbier. To Capote, who had written most of In Cold Blood there, that Alpine retreat now seemed like a prison. Capote persuaded Dunphy to try his new house in Palm Springs, but Dunphy recoiled. “Thirst’s End” he labeled that desert oasis, and he quickly retreated to Verbier.
Ever lonelier, despite a list of friends that could fill a telephone book, Capote engaged in a series of affairs with married or divorced men, the last and most prominent of whom was John O’Shea, a father of four from the middle-class suburb of Wantagh, New York. The breakups that inevitably followed such affairs left Capote hurt and shaken, vowing and sometimes obtaining revenge.
Despite so many problems, Capote continued to write, and write well. Drunk or sober, he always knew the difference between bad writing, good writing and superb writing, and he never let anyone see a sentence that fell short of his own skyscraper-high standards. For years he had spoken of the book that would be his masterpiece, Answered Prayers, which he compared to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.
Finally, in the fall of 1975, he let Esquire publish a chapter, “La Côte Basque, 1965”—La Côte Basque was a famous Manhattan restaurant in which much of the action took place. Capote had modeled some of his unsavory characters on his rich friends, and their reaction was instantaneous. They had entrusted him with their secrets, and when he revealed them, they turned on him as if he were nothing but a gate-crasher. He was omnipotent no more.
More chapters from Answered Prayers were published, and Capote managed to produce another book of collected stories and articles, Music for Chameleons. His correspondence dwindled to postcards and telegrams—when he wanted to say something, he picked up the telephone—that lack the brio and zest of earlier correspondence. “Better Death in Venice than life in Hollywood,” he had written on his first trip to California in 1947. But, in an irony he might have appreciated, it was there that Truman Capote died, probably of a drug overdose, on August 25, 1984.
TO ALVIN AND MARIE DEWEY
[Postcard] [Verbier, Switzerland]
[31 January 1967]
Dearhearts—
Back today from Morocco1 and found your sweet letter. Will write end of week. Or maybe will telephone. All hugs and Love—
T.
[Collection New York Public Library]
TO ALVIN AND MARIE DEWEY
[Postcard] [Capri, Italy]
[Early February 1967]
Am here with the Paleys, who send all regards. Lovely house. Rcvd. Alvin’s letter with storm-clippings. My god! Certainly not a safe place to live—from any point of view. Miss you mucho. Home end of month. Hugs and Love—
T.
[Collection New York Public Library]
TO DONALD WINDHAM AND SANDY CAMPBELL
[Postcard] [Verbier, Switzerland]
[23 February 1967]
Dearhearts—
Have missed you very much. Had a fascinating trip in the Sahara, but otherwise have been flu-ridden here. Home early March. Much love to both—
T.
[Collection Beinecke Library, Yale University]
TO KATHARINE GRAHAM
La Cerrada
[Palm Springs, Ca.]
[Early January 1968]
Darling Kay—
That caviar!—I ate the whole pound Christmas day, which I spent alone in the country. Ate it with 3 baked potatoes. It almost made up for my robbery.1 Bless you and thank you.
I love my house here. Very pretty. This is where you ought to spend your winter holiday. What a climate!
I miss you. Much love
Truman
P.S. I drove all the way across the country by myself.2 Hard—but sort of fun. Took 6 days.
[Collection Katharine Graham Estate]
TO JACK DUNPHY
[Telegram] [Palm Springs, Ca.]
[17 January 1968]
JACK DUNPHY VERBIER
HAPPY PUBLICATIONS DAY DEAREST JACK AND ALL LOVE FROM—TRUMAN AND CHARLIE AND HAPPY1
[Collection Gerald Clarke]
TO CECIL BEATON
TRUMAN CAPOTE
[New York]
[Spring 1968]
Dearest Cecil—
I saw the photographic proofs of the book today—and it is The Best of Beaton. A marvellous selection—truly impressive and original. Everything about it, selection and design, is first-rate. As I cabled you, anything you want to do about magazine publication is fine by me.
I have been working hard, doing nothing else, but it all has been so fragmented—writing my book, and doing (all by myself) a very complicated documentary film. That, and all the Tragedy in our American lives, has kept one feeling like an insolvable jigsaw puzzle.2 Jack is fine; Diotima is sitting in the chair beside me; poor Charlie holds up! I miss you; I love you—
T.
[Collection St. John’s College, Cambridge University]
TO CECIL BEATON
[Bridgehampton, N.Y.]
[Autumn 1968]
Cecil my love—
Yesterday (in a flower shop) I caught a whiff of tuberose—and dreamed of you that night. I think of you so often with such love and affection—two very different things, the second requiring respect. Am always thinking: I must write Cecil. But have been so wearied of writing anything because of the labours on my book.6 Anyway, nothing very interesting in my life. I bought that house in Palm Springs—gutted it, and changed it completely. I know you don’t like the place, but the house is quite attractive now.
Charlie is still alive, and very lively, and so is Diotima—more elegant than ever. Jack, too. We are all here at the Beach on Long Island. Jack refuses to go to California under any circumstances—same old Jack!
I’m going to see your exhibit next week. It has had great ‘coverage’ here and much acclaim.
As of now, I have no plans to come to London and/or Europe this year, as am really concentrated on my book.
Forgive this idiot note; I just wanted to say I miss you and love you. Big hug! Et mille Tendresse [sic]
T.
[Collection St. John’s College, Cambridge University]
TO JACK DUNPHY
[Palm Springs, Ca.]
12 Jan. 1969
Precious Beloved Jack—
Your letters, sent to New York and now returned, finally arrived; and I’ve read them and read them—because I miss you so much. I think about you all through the day.
It is so quiet here, and I do love the garden and the pool and the sun; and I am working pretty good. I go to bed by nine-thirty and get up about seven-thirty. Charlie sleeps in the big bed with me. He hasn’t been throwing up too much.
No, I’m not eating any of Myrtle’s ‘night-club’ (very funny) lunches.7 She comes every other day and makes me a meat-loaf I can have for supper. Annie comes only once a week to clean.
I’m so glad you got a good phonograph. I brought out here the Columbia phono that was stolen from you—it works perfectly.
Please have a phone installed. Please.8 I have a new number here—714 (area code) 325 6682. Call me—Charlie would love it, and so would I. All my love, darling
T.
[Collection Gerald Clarke]
TO JOHN MALCOLM BRINNIN
[New York]
[November 1969]
Dearest M.
Yes indeed I came very close to being killed and am just now out of the hospital; now just waiting to have the stitches removed.9 Did you ever get the letter I wrote you to Yucatan?—or wherever it was. I have a house in Palm Springs (of all places!) and wanted you to stop there. It’s a lovely house—if you like the desert. I will be here until 1st December and would like to see you. Love to Bill [Read]. You, too.
T.
[Collection University of Delaware Library]
TO JACK DUNPHY
[New York]
[Early 1970]
Precious Beloved Baby,
I’d just sat down to write you when the mail came with your little note.… about how bad the weather has been, and that you are feeling bored and nervous; you always stick to things too steadily, why don’t you break it up, go to the
