Truman, the Brussel Sprout Who Could Talk

In my in Paris just next to the door I had three pictures taken by Irving Berlin that I tore out of three different old magazines. I framed them behind glass without a frame because I wanted to give them the feeling that they were taped up pictures on the wall - to recapture that teenage time when anything that mattered to me was given its own special place on the galleries of my bedroom wall (like my poster of New Kids on the Block).

I hung the pictures in a vertical row.

All three of these pictures meant something different to me. Magnani & Rossellini represented passion & truth; Capote the craft; and Saint Laurent beauty.

Finally seeing Infamous made me remember why - of all the writers there are pictures of, and even those who sat for portraits with Irving Penn (he did a haunting portrait of Anais Nin) - I put that picture of Capote behind glass so that it would be one of the last things that might catch my eye as I left my refuge. Truman Capote was not only an amazing writer, but he had a fascinating life.

Capote knew he wanted to be a writer by the time he was 11 years old. He lived in Monroeville, Alabama after his parents divorced and pretty much abandoned him. He was a close friend and neighbour to the future Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), though as he cruelly points out in the movie when he's having a little fight with Lee that he wrote many books to her one.

After a difficult childhood that included his stepfather (from where he gets the Capote) was convicted of embezzlement and the family was forced to leave Park Avenue with nothing, Capote got a job in the art department of The New Yorker from which he was fired for angering Robert Frost. Still he considered the job more about becoming a writer than being a copyboy.

"I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case."

He had had some success with Breakfast At Tiffany's and was the toast of New York. He was friends with Babe Paley and Slim Keith (two of the most amazing women to ever walk the earth) and called them his "Swans".

And then came In Cold Blood and Capote's success seemed forever secured.

What neither the movie Capote or Infamous go into is that while Capote claimed every word in "In Cold Blood" was true, there were people who said that Capote's claim in itself was just one of the lies he was telling. True crime fiction was already a genre by the time Capote wrote the book, but its success (to the tune of $6 million in 1960's money as true crime writer James Olsen put it) made a major impact on the publishing industry.

"I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it," Olsen says. "Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes... The book made something like $6 million in 1960s money, and nobody wanted to discuss anything wrong with a moneymaker like that in the publishing business."

Olsen admitted he was jealous of the money, but that while the book was superbly written, there were a lot of discrepancies. Even the investigator, Alvin Dewey said certain events never happened.

Capote survived any fallout from the allegations of fabricating things for his nonfiction book because of the skill he wrote it with and that I have always admired. He used his money to live life and that included his famous Black and White Ball. It was the biggest social event of the 1960's and the guestlist included Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow, Lee Raziwell, Babe Paley, Norman Mailer, and 495 other stars, socialites, and important persons to whom Mr. Capote was acquainted.

But I also put up Capote as a cautionary tale (and perhaps I put up YSL for partly the same reason). Capote had a long and hard fall from his lofty perch that included drug abuse, losing most of his friends, and drinking until his brain literally shrank. He died of liver disease in 1984.

Lots of people I know who would like to be successful writers often comment to me that they think they have to suffer for their art. I hate this cliché because honestly, striving to become a successful author by your own definition is suffering enough for me. I want success, but I don't want it to cost more than I'm willing to pay. I'm a lot like Capote. I could see myself throwing a massive ball to celebrate my literary success (and could come up with 500 people to invite and would serve better champagne) and I share a trait with Truman in the sense that I am the person my friends all confide in but we are also vastly different. I am flattered that my friends turn to me. I keep their secrets to myself and try to help, even if it's just by listening.

Capote's book "Answered Prayers" took the confidence his friends and supporters gave him and aired them to the public. He slandered Tennesse Williams in print when their friendship went south. All one has to do is look at the facts of Capote's childhood and early life to see he had plenty of other things he could have written about and I suppose that's why I don't see my friends as fair game when it comes time to write. I have my own stories to tell, maybe I'm too self-centered to bother telling anyone else's?

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" will always be a beloved book for me (and the movie wasn't shabby either) and Capote always an inspiration because of the relentless determination he had when it came to being a writer. He was a small man, but he had big dreams and he went after them. Whenever I think of Capote as a child determinedly carrying around his dictionary and his note pad, I remember that younger version of me and the suffering I mentioned earlier seems to fade away a little under the fire that leaps up inside of me.

Infamous is a pretty good movie, not to take away from Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, but it's better than Capote. Even if Gwenth Paltrow's part of the film involves having to listen to her sing and act badly in a dress that just seems too tight and anachronistic for the year it was supposed to be in the film.