John Malcolm Brinnin

This sextet of reminiscences is based on a journal kept over a period of forty years. A number of entries taken from it have been incorporated into the text more or less intact. Others have remained where they were: bits of information, ephemeral as days, preserved out of habit and serving to tell me little more than where I was, what I did, and whom I saw. - p. v.

Duplicate

"This collection is weighted on the side of pleasure--the pleasure of first encounter, the pleasure of old acquaintance, the pleasure of poems that speak with . . . particularly human resonance." -- Preface.

Using oral biography, a technique that perfectly matches the style of his subject, George Plimpton blends the voices of Capote's lovers, haters, acquaintances, and colleagues into a highly readable narrative. Here we are present for the entire span of Capote's life: his Southern childhood and his early days in New York; his first literary success with the publication of Other Voices, Other Rooms; his highly active love life; the groundbreaking excitement of In Cold Blood, the first "nonfiction novel"; his years as a jet-setter; and his final days of flagging inspiration, alcoholism, and isolation. All his famous friends and enemies are here: Katherine Graham, Lauren Bacall, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Lee Radziwill, John Huston, John Knowles, William F. Buckley, Jr., and dozens of others.

The Glorious Age of passenger ships has ended. Here, splendors and miseries together, is the whole marvelous story. It begins on a January morning in 1818 when, frosted with snow, a creaking little New York packet ship starts for Liverpool with six passengers. It ends, mid-ocean, on a September night 150 years later when the mighty Queens Elizabeth and Mary blast valedictory salutes to one another and start for oblivion.