This Much is Tru

Things fall apart.  That may be a title devised by Chinua Achebe, but it's as good a description of the life of Truman Capote as I know.

The Cannons are Silent

Thirty years ago tonight, Truman Capote appeared on Letterman.  I'm not sure that a mock turtle is any middle-aged man's most advised choice in necklines.

I probably do over-rely on it for fodder, but I really do love the odd things that pop up when you check out the Life archive to see what might have happened on a given day. Somehow it seems so improbable that it's just 30 years sinceTC might have been a TV guest, and yet at the same time it feels equally like ancient history.  Two years later and Truman was dead; Gore Vidal was being perhaps unkind, but not inaccurate, when he described the death as "a good career move." By those last few years, there really wasn't much left.

Earlier on, though, I'm not sure there was anybody better.  My favorite Capote isn't necessarily his most major or most popular works (and I really, really don't like In Cold Blood.  It may be a work of genius, but it's just too mean, at once too polished and too raw; too voyeuristic).  No, I'm oddly fond of The Muses are Heard, his quirky account of an opera company's foray into the old Soviet Union, playing Porgy and Bess and trailing Mrs. Ira Gershwin in their wake.  It's full of funny, telling little details, casually bitchy asides, and genuinely illuminating moments of East-West perplexity.  If you've never read it, you have a treat waiting.  Enjoy.

Little T

Capote by H. Cartier-Bresson, 1947

"...there, in a shadowy room, I found a strange, smallish-creature - a sort of changeling, I thought, like the one Titania and Oberon fought over - fragile, but tough. He regaled us with gossip, jokes, little dances. Later, when I went away, down a dim stair, someone suddenly landed on my back and with a high, treble cry demanded: 'Give me a piggyback ride!' I did."

- Leo Lerman (but of course), on meeting Truman Capote

Trailer Trash: No Pinkies?!

Three decades before Mel Brooks took on Broadway (and triumphed, at least the first time out of the gate), Rialto favorite Neil Simon decided to tread the Brooksian route with a spoof of classic Hollywood whodunits.

The result, Murder by Death, may not be a great film, but it has a peerless cast, amusing situations, some funny lines (Maggie Smith really gives her all to "Where's my Dickie?"), and the peculiar spectacle of Truman Capote trying to be a movie star. Throw in unbridled hammery from the likes of Nancy Walker, Alex Guinness, and Estelle ("Murderpoo?") Winwood, and you've got a perfectly satisfactory night out. It's not Young Frankenstein, but then again neither is it (thank God) Won Ton Ton...

Beautiful Boy

Truman Capote, or Portrait of the Artist as a Faun. It's like Dennis the Menace meets Les fleurs du mal.