‘It’s been printed about nine times,’ says Capote, his eyes bulging indignantly.
The spat spread to include Jackie’s little sister, Princess Lee Radziwill. Lee was Truman’s source for the anecdote; she then ‘betrayed’ him by signing an affidavit for Vidal and telling a New York gossip columnist: ‘They are two fags. It is just the most disgusting thing.’ An infuriated Capote went on a local TV chat show to poormouth the Princess. ‘I know that Lee wouldn’t want me tellin’ none of this,’ he simpered, ‘but you know us Southern fags. We just can’t keep our mouths shut.’ The litigation with Vidal continues. So does the book. ‘Just wait till they see the rest of it,’ broods Capote.
Music for Chameleons was published in New York during the week of my visit. Capote had already made $4 million from this stop-gap collection of stories, journalism and non-fiction fiction, and, as I talked to him that afternoon, he lay swaddled in reams of laudatory press clippings. Not bad going, you think. For all his fragility, Capote is an operator, and a shrewd and confident one. Evidently he spends months planning the promotion of each book. Up there in the UN Plaza, I was simply a minor puppet in Capote’s vast dream. ‘The thing about people like me’, he says firmly, ‘is that we have always known what we were going to do. Some people never really find out.’
At this point I nerved myself to ask Capote about his love life — an exiguous topic these days, it would seem. It has been Truman’s complex affliction always to be attracted to upright heterosexuals, rather as E.M. Forster was (Forster is, coincidentally, the English writer whom Capote most admires). Such men seem to relish all the difficult ramifications — consternated wives to placate, and so on. Again like Forster, Capote has also been known to hanker for representatives of the less privileged orders. He once squired an ex-prison guard to a dinner-party thrown by Princess Grace at her palace in Monaco. ‘At dinner a man sitting next to him said, “Is this your first time in Europe?” And he said, “Yes it is, except for that time in Vietnam.”‘
‘I don’t have a love life any more,’ says a stoical Capote. ‘You see, I’m attracted to practically «obody. It’s just — sad. I just don’t find many people – I really have to like them, you know? No, I don’t have a love life. It’s too exhausting,’ he said with a yawn.
Capote had seemed to be on the point of fitful sleep at several stages in the course of the interview; so I now thought it prudent to take my leave.
‘Would you be kind enough,’ I asked reflexively, ‘to sign my copy of your book?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ he said warmly. Rousing himself, Capote sat up in bed and began to fuss with his pen. He opened Music for Chameleons, and stared for several seconds at its blank first page. To my alarm, I realised that he had forgotten my name — if indeed he had ever known it. He sniffed, and looked up cautiously.
‘The name’s Tony, isn’t it?’ he croaked.
‘No. Martin,’ I said, trying to make Martin sound quite like Tony.
‘Oh, Martin. Yes, of course.’ He wrote on the blank page for a very long time.
Ten minutes later I stood smoking a cigarette on fiery First Avenue. I got the book out of my bag and turned to the first page, where it said, in an exemplarily rickety hand:
for Martin
I tried!
and you were so patient Truman Capote
198
That ‘198’ wasn’t his apartment number: it was a shot at the date. I walked on, hoping that little Truman would get well soon.
* * *
Postscript Truman never did. He died six years later, to the month. I liked him, and with hindsight I now find my bedside manner somewhat callous — but there it is. Appropriately doctored, the piece was used elsewhere as an obituary. However, I should like to add, in belated tribute, a brief review of the posthumous Conversations with Capote ‘by’ Lawrence Grobel, which follows.
Two unrelated points. Why do American writers tend to hate each other — hatreds which often extend to litigation (Vidal v. Capote; Lillian Hellman v. Mary McCarthy, an especially vicious attempt at financial persecution)? Perhaps one of the answers relates, as so much relates, to the size of America. In England writers mix pretty well: they have a generally middle-class, generally liberal unanimity. In America writers are naturally far flung (Alabama, Washington, Chicago, New England); to come together, they have to traverse great distances; it isn’t surprising, when they meet, that they seem so strange to one another.