- Truman Capote and the Swans
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- Capote: A Biography, by Gerald Clarke
Capote: A Biography, by Gerald Clarke
Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. First Edition. 1988. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition.
Truman Capote blazed a wide, incandescent trail across the 20th Century. If someone was in the public conversation, either by way of literature, film, journalism, or society, Capote not only knew this person; he claimed to know his or her darkest secrets (sometimes truthfully). What was behind his tremendous drive? According to Gerald Clarke, it was Truman’s “ceaseless but unsuccessful search for love.” That it goes back to one’s mother is a cliché, but Truman’s case, it was true. Might this pain have also been the source of his literary genius? That is a central question of this book, in which Capote’s eventful life (with its constant stream of boldfaced names) ensures there is no filler, leaving the reader wanting more. It is a fascinating psychological portrait of a complicated man living in rapidly changing times, who, even four decades after his death and a century after his birth, continues to fascinate.
“There were even signs that [Capote] was growing disenchanted with the very rich and that, on occasion, he was bored by the swans. He had walked on Olympus and had discovered that those who resided there were not heaven’s anointed after all. It was a shock—not to his intellect, which had always known better, but to his emotions, which had not. The myth by which he had lived was starting to crumble.
--Gerald Clarke