The Story of Truman Capote’s ANSWERED PRAYERS

“I am about as tall as a shotgun, and just as nasty,” as soon as proclaimed literary legend Truman Capote, an announcement that will sadly work in opposition to him within the second half of his profession. Best remembered within the popular culture of in the present day for penning the supply supplies for the largely profitable Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, the famed writer’s final downfall is a story of high-society outrage and literary scandal, one which raises extra questions than solutions. Or fewer answered prayers than unanswered ones, if you’ll.

“Society’s sacred monsters at the top have been in a state of shock,” learn the phrases of an article titled “Truman Capote in Hot Water,” written by journalist Liz Smith, that appeared within the February 1976 version of New York journal. “Never have you heard such gnashing of teeth, such cries of revenge, such shouts of betrayal and screams of outrage.” She was, of course, referring to the publication of a sure quick story by Capote in Esquire the earlier November generally known as “La Côte Basque 1965,” stated to be a chapter from the writer’s forthcoming magnum opus, a novel referred to as Answered Prayers. “Let them go ahead and make me a monster,” Capote advised Smith. “There are no secrets.”

The controversy erupted after the story’s publication in Esquire as a result of its material was one which Capote had virtually identified finest: his “swans.” These have been high-society ladies whom the writer befriended, since he believed them to be human works of artwork that went unappreciated by the boys of their lives who noticed them as trophies. This group of Manhattan socialites, composed primarily of Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, C.Z. Guest, and Lee Radziwill, beloved Capote nearly as a lot as he beloved them. But that every one modified, shortly and starkly, when he took the intimate particulars of each their private lives and people of their pals that they’d shared with him at elite uptown lunches and printed it for the world to see. Almost all of them shunned him instantly thereafter and by no means spoke to him once more.

But the publication of “La Côte Basque” shouldn’t have been the shock and awe that it was: for years, Capote had advised anybody who would hear that he was writing the best novel of his time. It was to be referred to as Answered Prayers, “and, if all goes well, I think it will answer mine,” he advised Random House. The title was attributed to cite from Saint Teresa of Avila that was by no means confirmed to have really been stated: “There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones.” Through a contemporary lens, it’s fairly easy to infer that what he was already hailing his newest literary masterpiece would draw inspiration from the ladies with which he so often surrounded himself.

“Answered Prayers would be his masterpiece, he knew — the book that would give him a place in the literary pantheon alongside the greatest writers of all-time,” wrote Laurence Leamer, writer of Capote’s Women. But it will by no means come to be, because the completed novel by no means noticed the sunshine of day. Aside from a handful of chapters that appeared in magazines all through the Nineteen Seventies, Answered Prayers by no means materialized. Was it his crumbling social popularity in consequence of his ostracization from the swans’ internal circle? Was it his growing dependence on medicine and alcohol? Did Capote’s much-hyped magnum opus ever even exist to start with?

“Truman Capote was fascinated by people like Ann Woodward, people who schemed their way into society, much as his mother had done, the strivers who devoted their lives to associating with and winning acceptance from the right people,” wrote Roseanne Montillo, writer of Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire’s Wife, and the Murder of the Century. “Truman had done the same thing himself. No one appeared to point out the incongruity to him, that he was the son of a woman similar to Ann Woodward and was, as a gay literary man from the South, a version of her. Truthfully, many of his friends, mostly society figures, had followed a similar path.”

Indeed, if Capote had ever heard of the time period imposter syndrome on the time, his image would have certainly accompanied its dictionary definition. While he rose to literary fame fairly younger with the publication and acclaim of his debut novel Other Voices, Other Rooms within the late Nineteen Forties, it was his affiliation with the “right people,” and particularly his swans, that saved him within the highlight lengthy sufficient for those self same folks to start out believing he was born there and by no means for a second didn’t belong. But extra instances than not, the alternative was true. He was internally terrified to be uncovered for the fraud he secretly was, regardless of his literary triumphs.

His inspiration for what would turn into Answered Prayers additionally took root for his craving to jot down an American novel that will rival Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. He believed Proust to have been “kind of a secret friend,” and he felt in competitors together with his work lengthy after Proust’s demise. “His subjects would be rich Americans, particularly rich American women, and he would do for American aristocracy what Proust had done for the French,” stated Montillo of Capote’s define for Answered Prayers. But simply as his mom and their tortured relationship had almost definitely been the largest inspiration for his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this new novel would go even deeper and probe on the myriad internal demons Capote had lurking simply beneath the floor.

Lucky for him, Capote quickly discovered one other undertaking that instantly diverted his consideration away from his burgeoning Proustian traditional. In November 1959, a farmer and his household have been murdered within the quiet farming neighborhood of Holcomb, Kansas. Enthralled by the case, the writer headed to Kansas and began conducting interviews for what would turn into the highest-selling and finest acquired work of his profession, In Cold Blood. Now the insecure gay from Alabama who needed to conceal behind his pals’ wealth really had some of his personal to talk of. And that’s the place the fairytale begins to bitter.

Which is why Answered Prayers appeared just like the guide Capote was born to jot down. “Oh, how easy it’ll be by comparison!” he replied to a reporter inquiring as to how his upcoming masterpiece could be totally different from the nonfiction on which he was now making a reputation. “It’s all in my head.” In a later interview with Playboy, he stated, “Part of me is always standing in a darkened hallway, mocking tragedy and death. That’s why I love champagne and stay at the Ritz.” On January 5, 1966, Capote signed a contract to jot down Answered Prayers for Random House, working with editor Joseph Fox, whom he had collaborated with on In Cold Blood. The advance was $25,000 (equal to over $230,000 in 2023) to be delivered on January 1, 1968. Still having fun with the widespread reward that In Cold Blood continued to generate, he had solely written a handful of chapters for his new novel, and the primary deadline got here and went.

In 1969, Random House cancelled the preliminary contract and provided Capote a brand new one, one thing extra advantageous for the writer which may compel him to really ship one thing this time: a three-book cope with a better advance of $750,000 ($6.1 million in 2023) with Answered Prayers due in January 1973. He advised Gerald Clarke, his pal and later biographer, that the novel could be his “principal work…almost everything in it is true. I have a cast of thousands.” The deadline was, unsurprisingly, pushed once more to January 1974 after which September, with nonetheless nothing materializing.

Capote did, nonetheless, proceed to work on different tasks that he thought could be breadcrumbs for his followers and editors, resembling a brand new assortment of nonfiction printed as The Dogs Bark in 1973 to a dissatisfying reception. Elsewhere, a screenplay he had written for an adaptation of The Great Gatsby was rejected, and writing commissioned from him by Rolling Stone by no means appeared. By 1975, restlessness over Answered Prayers had quadrupled, and Capote remedied the scenario by publishing an excerpt that June in Esquire referred to as “Mojave,” meant on the time to be the novel’s first chapter. (He would later change his thoughts about together with it, and it’s not thought of half of Answered Prayers.)

The preliminary Esquire publication urged him to proceed displaying glimpses to the general public of what Capote was nonetheless contemplating the very best work of his profession. But in November 1975, all the pieces would change. That month, Esquire printed “La Côte Basque 1965,” which follows protagonist P.B. Jones (Capote insisted that he was not P.B., however that he simply is aware of him nicely) as he dines with Lady Ina Coolbirth at La Côte Basque, an upscale French restaurant in Manhattan. Capote had dined there numerous instances together with his swans through the years, so it was inarguable that the story drew inspiration from the catty conversations he’d had together with his pals in regards to the sordid lives of town’s higher class.

But upon a rudimentary studying of the story in the present day, probably the most ruthless and underhanded inclusion is the real-life narrative of Ann Woodward, fictionalized as Ann Hopkins. By the time “La Côte Basque” was first printed in 1975, it had been 20 years because the homicide scandal that had brutally exiled Woodward from excessive society. Although it was certainly not forgotten in folks’s reminiscences, it was not the very first thing on their minds.

For Capote to drudge it up for everybody to gasp and speculate about as soon as extra proved to be significantly painful, particularly for Woodward. Perhaps it was his final revenge for the instances she had referred to him as a “fag” and a “little toad” in public. “Her story didn’t belong to her anymore; it belonged to anyone who would write about it,” noticed Montillo. “She had lost agency over her own character.” After receiving an advance copy of the story, Woodward died by suicide on October 10, 1975. Woodward’s mother-in-law Elsie famously remarked, “Well, that’s that. She shot my son, and Truman murdered her.”

The reactions among the many swans have been swift and to the purpose: most of them minimize off Capote chilly turkey, by no means chatting with him once more. Babe Paley, one of Capote’s dearest and most treasured pals, his favourite of all of the swans, was affected by terminal lung most cancers when “La Côte Basque” hit newsstands. She stopped taking his calls, they usually by no means made up earlier than her demise in 1978. When the writer died in 1984, Slim Keith acknowledged that she felt nothing: “For me, he had died nine years before.”

Lee Radziwill was one of the one swans to not ostracize Capote after the story was printed, which many attributed to the truth that she was not overtly disparaged inside its prose, however they misplaced contact in consequence of his rising dependence on medicine and alcohol. The different was a swan who doesn’t seem in “La Côte Basque,” C.Z. Guest. “Everybody knew the man’s a professional, and they told him those things anyway,” she as soon as advised a reporter. “He’s a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn’t discuss very private matters with him. I don’t even know who those factual people are.” She continued supporting him within the remaining years of his life, together with by financing an unsuccessful stint in rehab.

But Capote’s sense of insecurity and vulnerability was ever-present, all the time just under the floor. The fact was he was broken to the core by his exile, and it undoubtedly contributed to the downward spiral that plagued the rest of his life. He continued working all through the late Nineteen Seventies: two further chapters from his masterpiece appeared in Esquire in 1976, “Unspoiled Monsters” and “Kate McCloud.” He turned a frequent visitor at a brand new membership referred to as Studio 54, populated by a world of individuals who had no concept who Babe Paley was.

He admitted to having stopped engaged on Answered Prayers round 1977 within the preface to his story assortment Music for Chameleons (1980), lamenting that he had been within the midst of each a inventive and private disaster. A 1978 school tour was largely disastrous, and he had no recollection of an inebriated look on The Stanley Siegel Show. Jack Dunphy, Capote’s longtime companion, stated throughout this era that he regarded “tired, very, very tired. It’s as if he’s at a long party and wants to say goodbye — but he can’t.”

Multiple folks claimed to have seen a full manuscript that was stated to be Answered Prayers. Capote’s pal Joanne Carson maintained that it positively existed. “He had many, many pages of a manuscript, and he started to read them,” she stated. “They were very, very good. He read one chapter, but then someone called, and when I went back, he just put them aside and said, ‘I’ll read them after dinner.’ But he never did — you know how that happens.” When he died in her house in 1984, Carson admitted that Capote had given her a key to a security deposit field the place he alleged the remaining chapters have been hidden, however by no means indicated the place the field was situated.

Other pals of Capote’s, Myron Clement and Joe Petrocik, additionally claimed to have been witness to a manuscript and heard tales from the best novel that by no means was. “I remember I was at the other end of his couch, and he’s reading all this from a manuscript,” Petrocik advised Vanity Fair in 2012. “Then he’d take a break, get up, and pour himself a Stoli. But the thing is, at that time, I never saw the actual manuscript. And then it occurred to me, later, just before I nodded off to sleep, maybe he had made the whole thing up. He was such a wonderful, wonderful actor.” On a special event, nonetheless, Petrocik recalled Capote giving him a manuscript to learn as they traveled collectively. “I actually had it in my hands.” But for all he knew, it might’ve been a pile of clean paper.

Two central theories stay in regards to the final destiny of Capote’s Answered Prayers. One is that it by no means existed to start with; he wrote the chapters everybody had seen and nothing else, because of author’s block and the devastating response from his swans. The different is that he had in truth written pages and pages of a manuscript for a novel that did exist at one time, however that he burned its unpublished relics in a match of self-doubt and despondency. Most literary critics of in the present day subscribe to the latter.

“My theory is he did write it and it didn’t meet his standards, so he destroyed it,” stated Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, writer of the historic fiction novel Swan Song.“When you’ve worked 20 years on a book, you’ve lost your entire social circle, who are essentially your family, over it? Those aren’t standards that are easily met. It would have to have been The Holy Grail of novels to have been worth what he lost.” She additionally maintained that there was a cause it took him so lengthy to perform what he wished to be his best work, why he missed deadlines on it for many years. Biographer Gerald Clarke held an identical principle, that Answered Prayers wasn’t the one trigger of his final demise, however witnessing the execution of the killer within the In Cold Blood case completely broken Capote’s psyche.

Reading the three identified chapters from Answered Prayers in the present day, which have been first printed in novel kind posthumously in 1986, it’s simple to see how and why Capote had predicted this to be his magnum opus. He writes overtly and albeit in ways in which his different work desperately wished to, however simply couldn’t. It’s positively extra overtly queer than any of his different work, despite the fact that Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, amongst others, function queer characters.

Though he remained paralyzingly insecure over his backstory and upbringing all through his grownup life — his poor childhood within the South, how his mom by no means beloved him and she or he drank herself to demise — Capote was a gifted author, which is why the tradition and definitely his wealthy pals took discover of him. But to be able to keep his born-again standing in excessive society, he needed to work for it: he was a identified storyteller, an actor susceptible to embellishing, doubtless even a pathological liar.

When he dreamed up the premise for Answered Prayers, he believed it will reply all of his personal as a result of he wished it to be the novel the place he lastly let his guard down, the place he may very well be his genuine, catty, unabashedly queer self and never fear in regards to the repercussions as a result of he had labored lengthy and exhausting sufficient to earn his place in literary tradition. Sadly for Capote, others didn’t see it that means. He beloved his swans, however he dared to be seen extra as merely their stereotypical GBF (homosexual finest pal).

What exists of Answered Prayers in the present day is certainly amongst his finest work, even “La Côte Basque.” Sure, it’s vicious and underhanded while you carry within the context of the writer regurgitating non-public particulars that have been allegedly shared with him in confidence by his wealthy girl pals, and the ache it prompted Ann Woodward feels extreme. But by itself, it’s amongst some of his most compelling prose. Many authors together with Melanie Benjamin, writer of The Swans of Fifth Avenue, really feel in another way, chalking Answered Prayers as much as an unlucky mistake as a result of it was supposedly out of contact together with his different work. But his unfinished masterpiece was the Truman Capote he dreamed of being, if his personal internal demons hadn’t wore him down. That and a superb old style literary scandal. Somehow apropos, although, isn’t it, contemplating how a lot he beloved to gossip?

Sources consulted:

• “Capote’s Swan Dive,” Vanity Fair
• “Answered Prayers: the mysterious manuscript that devastated Truman Capote,” Penguin Random House
• “Why, Exactly, Did Truman Capote Expose His High-Society Confidantes’ Darkest Secrets?,” British Vogue