Truman Capote: A scoundrel who should not have revealed the secrets of his ‘swans’?

Did Truman Capote’s swans — that group of sophisticated ladies from the American jet set of the 1960s — deserve to be betrayed by the writer? Was it fair that Capote published La Côte Basque, 1965 first in Esquire magazine and then in his famous novel Answered Prayers and revealed all the confidences and intimacies that those high society women had told him, after opening their hearts to him? Or did he behave like a real scoundrel? Was it worth it, for all of humanity, for the story left behind? Was it worth it for the writer himself, for the betrayal that caused his “friends” to abandon him? Were they unfair or too strict in never forgiving him, condemning him forever to the hell of loneliness, to ostracism, to removing him from the only world that mattered to him, to which he had devoted so many hours, so much effort, so many sleepless nights?

If you are interested in these questions and the universe they contain (real and recognizable characters, betrayals, anguish, the ravages of literary creation, extravagances, descents into hell, glamour, sarcasm and a paradigmatic cast), Feud: Capote vs. the Swans is the show for you. The series consists of eight episodes, which you can watch on FX or Hulu. After doing so, you will never read that posthumous novel in the same way again, and you will possibly view Truman Capote, who is played by British actor Tom Hollander, less sympathetically.

But the most relevant question, at this moment, 100 years since Capote’s birth and 40 years since his death in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984, as he is being studied again, from a new perspective: was Capote really a full-blown misogynist, one of those gays who also, deep down, really hate women? On February 24, NBC’s Saturday Night Live aired a very poignant parody of the writer, performed by actor Bowen Yang. Colin Jost, the “Weekend Update” anchor, thanked him for coming on the show for Women’s History Month.

— I’m surprised that you’re here to talk about Women’s History Month,” Jost says.

— Why, I love women,” says Capote’s character, exaggerating his already irritating tone.

— Well, I’m watching the new season of Feud, about how you betrayed all your female friends by writing mean things about them,” he replies.

— Oh, I didn’t betray them, I simply published what they told me in confidence....

As the sarcastic conversation continues, the script insists that he ridicule and vilify different women, such as Betsy Ross, who is credited with designing the U.S. flag (with thirteen stars, representing the thirteen original colonies). Of her, Yang’s Capote says:

— There are only thirteen stars on the flag because that’s as high as she could count. The interview goes on with more “compliments” to other women, so the anchor replies:

— But Truman, you said you like women.

— Of course, there’s nothing more beautiful than a woman, except the ass of a man,” replies the actor.

But the best part comes at the end when the fake Capote blurts out what could come to be a good definition of the gay misogynist: “No one loves women as much as a gay man who hates women.”

There are more places to find answers to these questions in general and to the main question in particular. For instance, in the novelized biography Swan Song, American writer Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott tries to explain what led Capote to that major betrayal, which sank him forever and sent him to social hell. She gives voice to the swans (so called because of the very long neck that one of them, Marella Agnelli, had), and they talk about jealousy, the desire for revenge, uncontrolled vanity... According to the author, who spent years researching the writer to compose this biography, after the success of In Cold Blood the relationship between the swans and Capote changed: “they were already at the same level, and he began to look at them as equals. Among other things, he discovered that they used to call him because they were bored.” This account — which, although it is very meticulous and exhaustive, is still fiction — and what we can glean from Capote’s public statements on television and in the press during his final year, along with the private conversations of a verbally incontinent writer, are all we have to find answers.

And now, as I mentioned, there is also the FX show, which masterfully and sharply tells of the relationship between the swans and the author. It goes into detail, breaks it down and puts those of us who like his literature in a dilemma: we have either an understanding that the narrative material from his long, luxurious days with them could not remain unused, or the belief that what Capote did to the swans by recounting their miseries and betraying their total trust was a despicable act.

The thing is that when Capote decided to publish the story in which he told everything about the swans without using their real names, he didn’t think they would recognize themselves; indeed, he didn’t even think they would read it. But they did, and they saw themselves clearly in that satire (as did all of the members of New York society who mattered to them); they were incensed. The swans’ anger and stupefaction and the exemplary permanent punishment that they meted out has been recounted often. No more invitations, no more lunches at their privileged tables, no more affection. When he was reproached for his writing, he defended himself: “What did they expect? I am a writer.” At that time, that select Manhattan social circle was powerful and Capote was their servant, whom they immediately turned into an enemy. However, it was the author who went down in history. He defined himself as follows “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.”

The swans’ voices

Let’s discuss the swans and their relationship with the writer. Were they good girls? No, they were vicious, superficial, racist, and classist; they were liars and cruel when necessary, with much of their social circle and of course with each other. Were they with Capote? Well, Capote was their entertainment, their amusement, their greatest extravagance, the intellectual and refined buffoon who gave them the right amount of madness in their supposedly perfect lives. He was not one of them, but he was not above or beneath them, so he was not someone to be put down either. He was something different, more complex, more grandiloquent, more outlandish and even more mundane. For some of them, like Babe Paley, he was a faithful and unconditional friend; Babe came to love Capote fiercely.

Played on the show by Naomi Watts, Babe Paley was a style icon, a “perfect” woman, as Capote described her, the editor of fashion magazines and the wife of a chronically unfaithful husband. She cried to Capote, told him her secrets and heartaches; the writer returned all that to her in a fable in the piece he wrote. That is why, for her in particular, La Côte Basque, 1965, first published in Esquire magazine, and later in Answered Prayers, was heartbreaking, a betrayal. Beyond the shame it made her feel, seeing her intimate and sordid details in print, even if Capote did not use her real name, was painful.

Capote, that child in need of affection, saw in the swans the ladies who rebuffed his mother, who ended up taking her own life (her ghost is played in the show by Jessica Lange, a frequent collaborator of Ryan Murphy, the show’s executive producer). She always aspired to be part of that female social elite. She never was, so Capote made an effort, almost unconsciously, to avenge that rejection in some way. For years, he was a confidant, advisor, entertainer, shoulder to cry on, sexless lover, playmate, and fellow gossip. When asked by the journalist with whom he was shooting a documentary with the swans how he got them to eat out of the palm of his hand, he replied that he made them feel safe and seen.

In the show’s fifth episode, once he is estranged from the swans forever, Capote cruelly summarizes what he really thinks about them, like a stiletto: “They don’t want to corrupt the pool. Whites only. WASPs only. They’re not even aware they’re doing it, it’s just that this kind of bigotry is so intrinsic to their world and who they are that they can’t see it even when it’s right in front of them… The pecking order speaks volumes. Blacks for labor, gays for entertainment, women for the men to look at, and all of us there to serve them…. There’s not one ounce of humility or empathy or compassion. They don’t care about any of that. They only care that they appear to care about it.” And to top it all off, he added, “The swans, they despise growing older. Once the bloom of youth began to fade, every one of them either underwent a brutal regime of fetal sheep cell injections or went under the knife.”

And there’s Diane Lane as Nancy ‘Slim’ Keith, another socialite, a close friend of Babe’s, who nevertheless has no qualms about sleeping with her husband. And the distinguished C.Z. Guest, who was also a designer and is played by actress Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry, American Horror Story). There is a very special swan, Joanne Carson (the wife of legendary TV host Johnny Carson), who is portrayed by Molly Ringwald (Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), in her return to fiction. In this show, she plays Capote’s friend, confidante and of course another member of the group of ladies who gather at that private table at La Côte Basque, at the entrance, to watch and be watched, who only want the world to adore them. According to legend, a day before his death the writer gave Joanne Carson — in whose house Capote settled when he became ill — a key. They say it was the key to a safe deposit box in California in which the manuscript of the complete novel, Answered Prayers, was stored. He did not specify further; he did not share the bank or any other details. “It will be found when it wants to be found,” he told her.

Of course, Capote drank with them, he gossiped with them, of course he was scathing, of course he was brilliant. All the while he swung between love for them and the certainty that those hours on yachts, at houses, parties and restaurants, had only one ultimate purpose: to tell a story that had never been told before.

The fourth swan, played by Calista Flockhart (of the beloved Ally McBeal), is none other than Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy’s famous younger sister. She was what today we would call a socialite, and she had the least damaged relationship with Capote in the end, when all the others denied him everything.

In addition to those four actresses, Demi Moore plays Anne Woodward, who had worked in radio and came from a lower social class. Capote ruined her socially and led her to take her own life by spreading the word that perhaps her husband’s death had not been an accident and that she was the one who killed him (although Woodward was tried and found not guilty). That episode caused her to be rejected by everyone, which Capote’s stubborn habit of always putting her in the line of fire exacerbated.

By the way, another element of this show that is worth celebrating is the fact that all these actresses are pushing 60 (except Sevigny, who turns 50 this year), and that has not prevented them from being chosen for this glorious cast.

In the fifth episode, Capote goes on a date, which never actually took place, with writer James Baldwin (whose book The Fire Next Time I highly recommend), proposed by the latter. By then, Capote had already given up on literature and on himself; he was a self-proclaimed alcoholic, lonely and ruinous. The call from Baldwin, whose texts Capote himself had eagerly criticized, literally pulled him out of a monumental hangover, lying in bed one morning, worn out and undressed. They meet for lunch at the famous restaurant, they talk about the swans, Capote portrays swans with his fangs out and with all the acidity of his pen can muster, but he is pained at their punishment of him. Baldwin’s goal with this quotation is to bring the writer out of his self-absorption and make him see his worth, his strength, his brilliance. That is why this formidable conversation takes place in the show (it did not take place in real life, but I wish it had):

— People think I wanted to hurt them, Capote tells him.

— Admit it and keep going, Baldwin replies.

— I’ve been wounded my... entire life, over and over. I’m in pain… Life with them, life without them. Both are unbearable, Capote laments.

And then, back home already, after kissing him lovingly and denying him alcohol, the great Baldwin tells him: “You are the toughest little faggot in this town, baby. The lunches and the trips and the soufflés and the yachts, and the nausea of demented privilege with these pathetic creatures are over. Their world, you captured it forever and everybody knows what you wrote, it’s a dictionary of disgust, a thesaurus of American nausea, and I promise you: one day it will be seen… Truman, don’t you get it? Your book, it is your firing squad that killed the Romanoffs, it’s your guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette. This is your slave revolt, it’s your Rite of Spring ushering in a new world, your Oppenheimer bomb, your Shiva ‘I am the destroyer of worlds.’”

The next day Capote wakes up without a hangover for the first time in months and gets to work writing. Several scenes later we find him dining on a filleted swan from the lake in Central Park, which Capote has asked a young chef to capture and cook in exchange for a handsome sum of money.

It would be a few more years before Capote’s death (the causes of which have always been unclear), and during all that time, his former swans were on one side, without forgiving or forgetting, and the author was on the other. Was the punishment that New York high society imposed on the frivolous and ruthless writer for revealing their miseries excessive? The show serves to raise that and many other questions and to reach some conclusions: they did not fully gauge the writer’s ability to be evil, they felt superior to him at all times and, accustomed as they were to being the life of all parties, they could not even imagine that a betrayal could take place. And perhaps he never showed sincere affection — free of artifice and imposture — for them, and instead sold them at the drop of a hat for a piece of glory, when he realized that, after writing In Cold Blood, no story could overshadow him. We will never know to what extent he regretted La Côte Basque.

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