Tuesday Tea and Tomes: BTS takes a swan dive: 'Capote's Women' and 'Answered Prayers'

BTS took a swan dive with Truman Capote books:  "Capote's Women" and "Answered Prayers".

 

The recent miniseries on FX, "Feud: Capote vs. the Swans" has many of us eagerly anticipating Wednesday evenings at 10:00 pm for the latest installment. With only two more episodes to go, as of this week, the true-life drama of the gifted and celebrated author and his cadre of elegant socialites, the series inspired us to read more about Truman Capote's roller coaster ride of fame, friendship and betrayal - specifically, "Answered Prayers" and "Capote's Women".  The former is Truman Capote's unfinished book, filled with gossip and scandal and the latter is a recently published tome which the current "Feud" miniseries is based.  Both books are filled with as many captivating and cringey stories as the television adaptation, but this wasn't our first encounter with the "Swans", the name Capote gave to his exclusive club of beautiful and wealthy women. That came with the 2021 book by Anderson Cooper.

Anderson Cooper's mother, Gloria, was once a Capote "swan" as noted in his 2021 book.

A quick step back to a past BTS Tea and Tomes featuring the book "Vanderbilt, the Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty", by Anderson Cooper, which details the family's astounding rise to wealth via Cornelius Vanderbilt, his great-great-great grandfather, and the equally spellbinding spiral of loss by generations who were more gifted at spending than fortifying the clan's fortune. One of the last Vanderbilt's to live that unchecked lavish lifestyle was Cooper's mother, Gloria, once one of Truman Capote's "Swans". Anderson Cooper devotes several pages of his book to Cote Basque, the favored lunch spot of New York elite and, eventually the title given to the spare-no-feelings, tattle-tale chapter from "Answered Prayers". Gloria's instincts cautioned against sharing intimate details with the author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and that served her well. Although Capote's depiction of Gloria Vanderbilt is certainly not flattering, she was not as brutally exposed as many of her fellow "swans".

 Which bring us to "Capote's Women" and "Answered Prayers".

"Capote's Women", by Laurence Leamer, published the same year as Anderson Cooper's "Vanderbilt" , certainly focuses on Truman's swans, but also weaves the story of Capote's life throughout the 316 pages, starting with his southern roots in Monroeville, Alabama, relatively undistinguished save for his next-door-neighbor and friend, Harper Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" (another BTS Tuesday Tea and Tomes).  The book also charts Capote's impressive writing career, which peaked with his wildly successful "In Cold Blood", a true story masterfully told in the style of fiction. 

Unfortunately, the time at the top, professionally and socially, was not to last. Leamer takes the reader through the slow and sad decline of Truman Capote, propelled by a self-sabotage mix of drugs, alcohol and abandonment of people he considered "friends".

We visited the Monroe Museum in 2022

The Alabama museum includes a Capote section

                                 

We visited Monroeville in January of 2022 and stopped in the Monroe County Museum, which served as a model for the courtroom in the movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird". It also includes rooms devoted to the hometown's two authors, Harper Lee and Truman Capote. A fascinating building full of history in an otherwise small, sleepy, southern town.

"Capote's Women" is a page-turning, entertaining read.  A highlight of the book, as well as Truman's celebrity, is the "Black and White Ball" he hosted at the Plaza Hotel (and, yes, we had afternoon tea in this sumptuous place last year, see,  Afternoon Tea at the Plaza). Using a trick from Gilded Age hostesses (or versions of New York's Studio 54's strategy), keep the guest list so exclusive, everyone will want "in" no matter what the party really delivers. (With chicken hash as an entree and balloons for decorations, in substance, it didn't match - or even come close to, for that matter - most of the grand parties of this high-end social strata, but the attraction was being "included". Only the well-heeled party from Italy left early and were overheard grumbling - we flew in for this?).

NYC's Plaza Hotel, home of Capote's Black and White Ball, 1966, and our afternoon tea, 2023

Many over-the-top details of the "jet set" lifestyles from European palaces to oceanside estates in Palm Springs, Florida, elicit both feelings of awe and awful. Endless parties of look-alike one-percenters whose world is so tightly bound, they divorce and remarry each other spouses, as though there's danger outside the circle. Titles (real, removed or faux) are cherished, even if the one bestowed is as dull and dim as unpolished silver. 

It makes sense that Truman Capote would add some color to this society. He was a favorite invitee - his dramatic storytelling enchanted the upscale crowd, like their own personal one-man reality television show, before it was even a concept.

Palm Beach tea, "swimming pools, movie stars"

Flagler Museum in Palm Beach Florida.

                

We visited Palm Beach, Florida, in January of this year and visited the Flagler Museum (a Gilded Age mansion). We entered the world of docked yachts as big as school busses and a city center so clean and manicured, it looks like Disneyland  - "swimming pools, movie stars." IYKYN ( more in a future blog).

Some sad, but at times funny, stories include Jackie Kennedy Onassis' younger sister, Lee Radziwill's attempt at a mid-life acting career and Joanne Carson's in-house wake for Truman. The second wife of Johnny Carson, Joanne trumpeted that her memorial for Truman would be a star-studded attended event, but the only celebrities who came were an aging and senile, Jim Backus, propped up on a couch, and an unrecognizable Esther Williams.  The press that camped out on Carson's lawn were sorely disappointed. 

We enjoyed "Capote's Women" and found it a bit easier to follow the jumping timelines in the book than the series. But, nonetheless, we eagerly await the final episodes of "Capote vs. the Swans". The rollercoaster ride of Capote and the swans provides readers and viewers a "fantastic voyeur-age" into the thrills and spills of an almost alien lifestyle, but once it's over, it's good -actually almost a relief - to unbuckle and return to the pleasures of the happy ordinary. 

And, for "Answered Prayers" interesting, but meandering (though, we're fond of "meandering"), especially the first chapter, "Unspoiled Monsters".  The third and final Chapter, "La Cote Basque" is gossipy with unlikeable characters bound by an oddly codified society that's both shallow and confining, with consequences to those who puncture the glittering bubble.  Sentenced by the tribe, Truman Capote was quickly outcast for exposing confidences, finding there was a cost to biting the satin-gloved hand that fed him.