How Truman Capote sold out his high-society muses

In 1976, the author published a short story that destroyed his friendships with New York’s elite and damaged his literary reputation. Katie Rosseinsky explores the scandal, which has been brought to life in drama Feud: Capote vs The Swans’

- Katie Rosseinsky

“All literature is gossip,” Truman Capote once proclaimed. The author was certainly very good at both: by the mid-Seventies, he was not just lauded as the author of the groundbreaking In Cold Blood, but the proud possessor of one of the most star-studded contact books in New York. His wild anecdotes and deliciously bitchy quips, dished out in distinctively high-pitched Southern tones, made him a fixture on every guest list, the diminutive court jester of high society. But Answered Prayers, the novel he pictured as his answer to Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, would prove that literature and gossip could also be a truly toxic combination.

On an autumn morning in 1975, Babe Paley, the darling of New York high society and one of Capote’s best friends, picked up the phone and dialled the number for fellow socialite Nancy “Slim” Keith. “Have you seen Esquire?” she asked, imploring Keith to call back once she had read the November issue. Why was the usually cool, even imperious Paley so shaken? Because within the magazine’s pages was a chapter from Answered Prayers, and it was less a short story than the literary equivalent of a grenade.