Characterization

• In November 1975, Truman Capote, the proudly gay author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, unveiled the hotly anticipated second instalment of his unpublished novel, Answered Prayers.
• Capote ended his days a social pariah in his former New York society circles, incapacitated by a lifetime of prodigious substance abuse.
• The story to blame, La Côte Basque, 1965, takes its title from its setting: an achingly fashionable French restaurant in Manhattan.
• However, Mrs. Hopkins was une autre chose: a sensation to unsettle the suavest Côte Basque client.
• Mrs. Kennedy and her sister had elicited not a murmur, nor had the entrances of Lauren Bacall and Katharine Cornell and Clare Booth Luce.
• However, Mrs. Hopkins was une autre chose: a sensation to unsettle the suavest Côte Basque client.

The real-life ‘Mrs. Bang-Bang’

• There was talk of the spate of burglaries that had recently occurred in the area.
• Ann, who suffered from insecurity and social anxiety, drank more than usual.
• Returning home with her husband, she washed down some sleeping pills and went to bed, not long after midnight.
• At two in the morning, Ann was woken by the sound of her dog growling.

‘What I’m writing is true’

• Regardless of whether he truly appreciated this, it seems fair to say Capote’s encounter with Ann Woodward made quite the impression on him.
• Capote’s conception of Answered Prayers, which he struggled with and talked about for decades, developed over time.
• In his monumental novel-cycle Remembrance of Things Past, Proust scrutinised the social machinations of the Parisian upper classes at the turn of the 20th century.
• Capote conceived of his project – which took shape as a roman à clef – in equivalent terms.
• What I’m writing is true, it’s real and it’s done in the very best prose style that I think any American writer could possibly achieve.
• […] If Proust were an American living now in New York, this is what he would be doing.
• What I’m writing is true, it’s real and it’s done in the very best prose style that I think any American writer could possibly achieve.
• as is generally conceded, a beautiful girl of twelve or twenty, while she may merit attention, does not deserve admiration.

Masturbation, misogyny, murder

• At the start of January 1966, Capote signed a contract with Random House for a novel titled Answered Prayers.
• However, by the time he actually sat down to write the book, he was already under a great deal of pressure.
• Masturbation, menstruation, misogyny, murder.
• Readers who thought they were getting a finely wrought piece of social critique were left scratching their heads in bemusement.
• Read more:
  In Killers of the Flower Moon, true crime reveals the paradoxes of the past

Was the book any good?

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the overwhelming majority missed the memo when it came to Answered Prayers.

• By the same token, it is clear Answered Prayers responds to (and even builds on) advances made in his earlier work.
• Gossip can serve a positive, even joyous function: it is a “social activity which produces and maintains the filiations” of community.
• To put this another way: if used in a strategic and appropriate fashion, gossip can bring people together.
• It can help to build and sustain social groupings predicated on the basis of shared knowledge (of sexual matters).
• Consider Unspoiled Monsters, the first chapter in the posthumously published book.
• If he had been absolutely factual, it would have been less believable but […] it might have been better.

Settling scores

• In part, he was looking to settle scores.
• Try as he might, Capote, who claimed his intentions had been misunderstood, couldn’t win the swans back over.
• As chance, or maybe fate would have it, he died at exactly the same age as Ann Woodward.
• Given how much they despised each other, I can’t help but wonder what Capote and Woodward would have made of such dismal symmetries.

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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