Capote's Women
A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era
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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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Biographer Leamer (The Kennedy Women) showcases his knack for telling a rattling good tale in this vivid look at Truman Capote's failed attempt to write "the greatest novel of the age." The characters of his unrealized novel, Answered Prayers, were inspired by a circle of fabulously wealthy New York women into which Capote had ingratiated himself, each of whom is brought to life in Leamer's vibrant prose. Among Capote's coterie of amusing "swans" was his "guru," Barbara Paley, who taught him how "to get easy entrance into the homes of the anointed"; Slim Hayward, the timid wife of one of Hollywood's leading producers; Gloria Guinness, whose singular goal was to "sit atop the swirling social world"; and Lee Radziwill, the aggrieved younger sister of Jackie Kennedy. Leamer's breathless storytelling vividly details how Capote cultivated the trust of these women to "give Answered Prayers a veracity and insider perspective unlike any other modern novel about the rich." While he failed to actually write the novel, in 1975 Esquire published an excerpt of it that shared his flock's secrets without their permission. The women, enraged that Capote had "betrayed them in a display of appallingly bad manners," cut off all ties to him, a move that signaled the beginning of the end of his career. This juicy story delivers.
