A Capote Reader

"I bought that book when I was a student at Oxford, and I still have it here with me in Cairo. I like the range of the collection, and I find it a useful thing to keep with me and refer to. One big hedge with Capote’s nonfiction is that he sometimes made things up. That was more accepted in his day, whereas today it isn’t. When you read Capote, you need to be aware of that. In Cold Blood ends with a vivid scene of a young girl who was a friend of the Clutter’s daughter, visiting the cemetery where her friend is buried. That’s totally made up – it didn’t happen. But I still find his language beautiful. There’s a profile of Marlon Brando in this collection which is a classic. Brando later said, I wish I hadn’t talked to that guy, but everything he wrote is true. His essay about Marilyn Monroe is very short and touching. And there’s a beautiful piece called “The Muses Are Heard” where he follows an opera troupe travelling in the Soviet Union on an early cultural exchange. So I still love to read him for his poetic sense. That stuff has never appealed to me. It’s a distraction, and I think it weakened Capote’s writing. It certainly drove him to drugs and alcohol, and shortened his life. I don’t think any of that is part of the essence of the writer on the page. You don’t need to be a public figure or attract attention to yourself. It’s probably healthier if you don’t. I’m not a big fan of Twitter or social media either. I feel you become too aware of being a Writer with a capital W. It’s better just to do the work. That was groundbreaking in Capote’s mind, but people had done it before. Hiroshima by John Hersey reads as a novel, too. So none of this stuff is new. Other people had written true stories that are vivid and put you there in the way a novel would. One of the things I love about that book is the way in which it describes small-town America, not with any condescension or exoticism. Capote grew up in a small town in the south, and even though he was gay and became this big celebrity in New York, there was a part of him that was still able to connect with the people in small towns, in a way that many people from the coast couldn’t. He really shows the complexity of that community and that family in Kansas. It’s so well observed."