Truman Capote – Answered Prayers/In Cold Blood: Books That Killed Their Authors
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones”. –Saint Teresa of Avila
On The Dick Cavett Show in May 1971, Truman Capote called his then work-in-progress, “Answered Prayers”, his “posthumous novel”.
“Either I’m going to kill it, or it’s going to kill me”.
And kill him it did.
Truman Capote by Jack Mitchell, 1980. CC BY-SA 4.0
Capote inked a contract for the novel on 5 January 1966, according to Random House senior editor Joseph M. Fox in his editor’s note for “Answered Prayers”. Capote received a $25,000 advance ($243,522.38 in today’s money) in return for a 1 January 1968 deadline.
Capote envisioned nothing less than a “contemporary equivalent of Proust’s masterpiece ‘Remembrance of Things Past’,” Fox wrote in the “Answered Prayers” editor’s note.
Then success hit Truman Capote like a media and money atomic bomb. He went from being a respected author to a pop culture icon.
“In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences” was published 17 January 1966. Capote spent six years writing the story of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in the tiny farming town of Holcomb, Kansas.
“In Cold Blood” was an immediate commercial and critical success. In the process, Capote essentially invented the non-fiction novel and true crime genres.
“1966 was a wonderful year for Truman,” Fox wrote.
“During this year (1966) Truman was everywhere at once… delighting in his fame and fortune,” Fox wrote.
Truman Capote, 1959. Creative Commons, United States Library of Congress
During 1966, “In Cold Blood” sold more than 300,000 copies and was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 27 weeks. By the time “Answered Prayers” was published in 1986, “In Cold Blood” had sold more than 5 million copies in United States alone, according to Fox’s editor’s note.
The year of interviews, talk show appearances and vacations on yachts and at the grand estates of his wealthy acquaintances culminated in the “Black and White Ball.” Hosted by Capote, the Black and White Ball was a masquerade ball that took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on 28 November 1966. The ball was allegedly in honor of Katharine Graham, then publisher of The Washington Post, but was actually a lavish party for Capote’s rich and famous friends.
Needless to say, Capote had a lot of distractions.
Fox says Capote continued to talk about the “Answered Prayers” project during this time. He wrote several short stories and magazine articles during this era, just not “Answered Prayers”. He blew his 1 January 1969 deadline.
Truman Capote, 1968 Creative Commons.
In May 1969 the “Answered Prayers” contract was rewritten as a three-book deal, according to Fox. Capote reportedly received a $750,000 advance and the “Answered Payers” deadline was delayed until January 1973. Due to the delay, Capote had to return money to 20th Century Fox that he was paid for the “Answered Prayers” film rights.
Capote talked about the novel in interviews, but he kept postponing the deadline. In mid-1973 it was delayed until January 1974, six months later to September 1977.
In 1980 the date was changed again to 1 March 1981 with an advance of $1 million only payable upon delivery of the manuscript. This deadline went unmet. The advance remained unpaid.
Between 1966 and 1980 Capote published several books. However, nearly all the content had been written years earlier and previously published in magazines.
“Music For Chameleons”, published in 1980, was his only original work during this time. Critics deemed it not up to Capote’s earlier works.
Back cover of “Other Voices, Other Rooms”, 1948 first novel by Truman Capote, featuring a photo by Harold Halma. Public Domain
By the mid-1970s, Capote’s life was spinning out of control. Outrageous public behavior while under the influence and sexual indiscretions made it appear Capote’s writing days were done. There would be no “Answered Prayers”.
It wasn’t as though Capote wasn’t working on “Answered Prayers”.
For years Capote had essentially been taking notes to transform his jet set social life into a tell-all novel. And that meant telling tales of the tawdry lives of the wealthy socialites he called his “swans”. His swans included Lee Radziwill (sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), Gloria Vanderbilt (Anderson Cooper’s mother), Babe Paley, wife of then head of CBS, Bill Paley, former fashion model Nancy “Slim” Keith, Ann Woodward and Joanne Carson. These women were big names in 1960s and 1970s, but are largely forgotten today.
Capote came to think of his hoard of salacious observations of the lifestyles of the rich and famous as a weapon.
“There’s the handle, the trigger, the barrel and, finally, the bullet,” Capote told People magazine about “Answered Prayers”. “And when that bullet is fired from the gun, it’s going to come out with a speed and power like you’ve never seen – WHAM!”
In 1975 and 1976 Esquire magazine published four chapters of “Answered Prayers”, the novel in progress.
The first to appear was “Mojave”, a short story, in the June 1975 issue. It didn’t attract much attention.
Then in November 1975 came Capote’s bullet — “La Côte Basque 1965”.
Intended as the beginning to “Answered Prayers”, “La Côte Basque 1965” is based in part on the dysfunctional personal lives of Capote’s friends William S. Paley and Babe Paley, who are very thinly fictionalized. Many of Capote’s “swans”, his high-society female friends, are featured in the story. Some appear under pseudonyms, others by their real names. The story aired the “dirty laundry” of New York City’s elite, leaving the swans’ private lives exposed.
“La Côte Basque 1965” has been characterized as Capote’s “social suicide” that set off a “tempest in the gilded teapot” of New York upper crust society.
Two more stories, “Unspoiled Monsters” and “Kate McCloud”, appeared in Esquire in 1976.
After “La Côte Basque 1965” Capote was vigorously shunned by most of his former social circle, although a few friends stuck with him.
There have been several portrayals of Capote’s relationship to his swans. The most recent was “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”, an eight episode miniseries released 31 January 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feud:_Capote_vs._The_Swans
In the late 1970s Capote was in and out of rehab. His relapses were sometimes public. By 1977 he was deep into his drug and alcohol habit. During a 1978 live on-air interview with New York talk show host Stanley Siegel a very high Capote said he had been awake for 48 hours.
“What’s going to happen unless you lick this problem of drugs and alcohol?” Siegel asked.
“The obvious answer is that eventually, I mean, I’ll kill myself…without meaning to,” Capote said.
In the same interview Capote says he’s continuing to write Answered Prayers.
“It’s almost finished,” Capote tells Seigel.
In the forward of “Music For Chameleons” Capote wrote:
“I did stop working on “Answered Payers” in September 1977, a fact that had nothing to do with the any public reaction to those parts of the book already published.” He claimed to be having a “creative crisis” and a personal one.
In 1980 Capote was hospitalized due to what has been described as a hallucination-based seizure. The hallucinations continued and medical tests showed his brain had shrunk, possibly due to his alcohol intake. Capote was losing confidence in his own talent and admitted that he wasn’t writing as well as could. He seemed to realize he wasn’t going be the American Proust. There was no mention of role of drinking and drugs in his forward to “Music For Chameleons”.
Capote died in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, on 25 August 1984 at the home of his friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. The cause of death was “liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication,” the coroner’s report revealed.
He was 59.
There’s a case to be made that “In Cold Blood” was the book that killed Truman Capote.
After “In Cold Blood” Capote never completed another novel. Capote was genuinely traumatized by the research and writing of the book. The money and fame that came in the wake of its success gave him access to a rarefied jet set world where he drowned in drugs and alcohol.
“Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel” was published in 1986 in the UK and in 1987 in the US. It included “Unspoiled Monsters”, “Kate McCloud”, and “La Cote Basque 1965”. “Mojave” was published in 1980 in “Music for Chameleons”.