Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era - Hardcover

Leamer, Laurence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593328086 ISBN 13: 9780593328088

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

DON’T MISS FX’s FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS—THE ORIGINAL SERIES BASED ON THE BESTSELLING BOOK—NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON HULU!

New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote's never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote's ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans."

“There are certain women,” Truman Capote wrote, “who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.” Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible.

Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer’s block. While en­joying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel…one based on the re­markable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends.

For years, Capote attempted to write An­swered Prayers, what he believed would have been his magnum opus. But when he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his closest fe­male confidantes were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer re-creates the lives of these fascinating swans, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

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Laurence Leamer is the New York Times bestselling author of Madness Under the Royal Palms and The Kennedy Women, among many other books. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach, Florida.

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ANSWERED PRAYERS

In 1975, Truman Capote was one of the most famous authors in the world. Even those who had not read a word of Truman's writing knew about the diminutive, flamboyantly gay author. His 1958 novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's, had been widely celebrated, and the movie starring Audrey Hepburn was a sensation when it premiered in 1961. Millions of Americans had devoured his masterful 1966 true crime book, In Cold Blood, and countless more saw the 1967 film adaptation. The "Tiny Terror," as Truman was called, was a fixture on late-night television, mesmerizing audiences with his outrageous tales.

 

For years, Truman had been proudly telling anyone within hearing that he was writing the "greatest novel of the age." The book was about a group of the richest, most elegant women in the world. They were fictional, of course... but everyone knew these characters were based on his closest friends, the coterie of gorgeous, witty, and fabulously rich women he called his "swans."

 

Truman understood what these women had achieved and how they had done it. They did not come from grand money but had married into it, most of them multiple times. Their charms were carefully cultivated, and to the outside eye, they seemed to have everything... but for most of them happiness was an elusive bird, always flying just out of sight. This was something the fifty-year-old Truman knew about. He was calling his novel-in-progress about the swans Answered Prayers, following the saying attributed to Saint Teresa of Ávila: "There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers."

 

Truman's richly evocative style and the astonishing global success of In Cold Blood several years before had created an audience that waited impatiently for his latest work. Answered Prayers would be a daring literary feat, an exposé of upper-class society that blended the fictional flourishes of Breakfast at Tiffany's with the closely observed narrative nonfiction of In Cold Blood. No one had ever gotten that close to these women and their elusive, secretive world. Marcel Proust and Edith Wharton had written classic novels focused on the elite of their ages, of course, but they were children of privilege, raised in that world and of it.

 

Truman, on the other hand, was an interloper. Since coming from a small town in Alabama decades earlier, he'd carved out a unique spot in New York society: a scathingly sharp, always entertaining guest whose charm opened the doors to the most exclusive circles... and whose eyes and ears were always open and observing what he saw there.

 

As much as Truman was drawn to the beauty, taste, and manners in that world of privilege, he was repulsed by its arrogant sense of superiority and ignorance of life as most people lived it. Life had a way of intruding and teaching hard lessons. The tension between those two beliefs would create his immortal book.

 

Crucial to Truman's masterpiece would be evoking the world of the swans. And that world could be summed up in one word: sumptuous. These women knew the power of money (what it could buy, what it could compensate for). But despite what their spiteful detractors might have suggested, their allure wasn't due to money alone. "It may be that the enduring swan glides upon waters of liquefied lucre; but that cannot account for the creature herself," Truman wrote in an essay in Harper's Bazaar in October 1959. His swans were wealthy, yes. But that wasn't all.

 

To Truman each swan was the personification of upscale glamour in the postwar world. She was the confluence of a number of unique factors. Her good looks and elegant demeanor made both men and women turn and look at her. A woman could not simply buy her way into this. "If expenditure were all, a sizable population of sparrows would swiftly be swans," he wrote. He would reach beyond the gold, the silver, and the jewels and see his swans as they truly were. Each woman had an extraordinary story to tell, and Truman was the only one who could tell them.

 

The swans were all famously beautiful as well-was it their looks that defined them?

 

Not so, Truman maintained. The swan was lovely, yes, but it was not just her beauty that created the attention-rather, it was her extraordinary presentation. Many of these women had been celebrated for years, even decades, not just for their looks but for their unique style. A swan had not only the money to buy her clothes from the finest couturiers but the style to wear them at their best. Other women imitated her fashion sense, and men eyed her with appreciative (and often covetous) eyes.

 

But a swan's beauty wasn't just skin-deep-she was clever, cunning, even. Her wit and patter intrigued even such a merciless critic as Truman. She knew that while looks could capture a man's attention, it took intelligence and wiles to keep it. And keep it she would, at all costs. It took discipline and focus, Truman knew, to create such a persona and keep it up decade after decade, long after other women gave up the illusions of youth.

 

There were probably no more than a dozen women who Truman could have deemed true swans. They were all on the International Best-Dressed Lists, they were each celebrated in the fashion press and beyond, and they all knew one another. These women had no idea-and neither did Truman-that they were a vanishing breed, a species that would live and die in one generation.

 

Truman chose his swans as if collecting precious paintings that he wanted to hang in his home for the rest of his life.

 

Barbara "Babe" Paley was first in Truman's mind. She was often called the most beautiful woman in the world, and Truman just liked looking at her, admiring her incredible panache.

 

Nancy "Slim" Keith was a stunning California girl with a far more causal style than Babe. Droll and supercharged, she could match Truman bon mot for bon mot.

 

In the Renaissance, Pamela Hayward would have been renowned as one of the great courtesans of the age. In the modern era, there were other terms for such conduct. Truman was first taken aback by Pamela's shameless behavior to get and keep the attention of the rich men upon whose good graces she depended. But in the end, he was seduced by her talents and charm, as so many had been before.

 

The Mexican-born Gloria Guinness was the only other swan who compared to Babe in her beauty. Married to Loel Guinness, one of the richest men in the world, Gloria lived a life of splendor in homes across the world. Fiercely intelligent and perceptive, there was nothing Truman could not discuss with her.

 

Truman saw Lucy Douglas "C. Z." Guest standing tall and elegant at a bar between acts on opening night of My Fair Lady on Broadway in March 1956, and he knew he had to make her his friend. Born a Boston Brahmin, C.Z. had an inbred self-confidence rare in Americans. An elitist of the first order, she was roundly dismissive of people she thought unworthy. But if she liked you (and she liked Truman), she was a wonderful friend.

 

Of all the swans, none came from such an exalted background as Marella Agnelli, who was born an Italian princess. Married to Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat and Italy's leading businessman, this highly literate, creative woman was in some senses Italy's First Lady.

 

Lee Radziwill had more than a casual familiarity with First Ladies since her older sister, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had actually been one. Truman thought Lee far more beautiful and a far better (and more interesting) person than her famous...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593328086
• ISBN 13: 9780593328088
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland