Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life
Keith, Slim. Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life. First Edition. 1990. Co-written by Annette Tapert. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition.
It is easy to become absorbed in the life story of Slim Hawks Hayward Keith, the only one of Truman Capote’s legendary Swans to write a full-length memoir. Slim was known for her individuality, wit, and glamour, all which come across in this book. Her journey from an upper-middle-class childhood in Monterey, California to the heights of international society was a meandering one. Particularly fascinating are the chapters on Hollywood, Babe Paley, Truman Capote, and Ernest Hemingway, but it is her seemingly perfect but ill-fated marriage to Leland Hayward that is the most captivating. Every book needs a good villain, and who better than Pam Churchill, who stole away Leland while simultaneously pretending to be Slim’s new best friend? (Of course, as Zsa Zsa Gabor mused, “Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended.”) Bill Blass’s memoir, published a decade later, reveals a sharper side to Slim that doesn’t quite come across in her own memoir. She was, however, loved and admired by a brood of stepchildren from three separate marriages, which says quite a lot in her favor, indeed (just ask Cinderella).
“Leland understood me. His analysis was sound, accurate, and very helpful. He once said, ‘I can’t call you ‘Slim’ because you really aren’t’. That’s an invention. It’s a brilliant one. You’ve made it up, you make it work, you’ve become that in a way, but you’re really Nan. You’re quite a different person than you appear to be in public. It’s true of most of us, but much more so of you because you’re such a successful invention.”
--Slim Keith