Slim Keith on Truman Capote

He was just one half of a pair of bitching fags, OP. He could also sometimes be useful when one’s sister was a raging cunt and the younger, more attractive sister was ignored.

Yet, he was still a faggot.

He must have been very amusing and great company to catch the attention and friendships of these ‘swans’. I’m sure they were as bitchy and catty as they come.

[quote] What hit home to me is that she thought Truman knew the book (and the chapters released to 'Esquire' beforehand, in 1975) would go over badly with his beloved Swans, but he published them anyway. Was Truman just being a catty bitch?

Whatever really happened with "In Cold Blood," the involvement with it and with the two killersproved destriuctive to Capote. he never was able to produce a full book again, and his writing thereafter was of a demonstrably lesser quality. he started drinking heavily and doing a lot of drugs. He was also living the high life and desperately needed money, and in desperation when he ran out of material or the ability to create more, he relied on his love for gossip because he knew it would be seen as salacious to the public and the magazines would snap it up. So he pretended he was writing a proustian long novel about high society, when he obviously wasn;t, and just produced the gossipy snippets like "La Cote basque," the story that cause the swans to drop him.

Also, most of his critics and biographers think he had a buried love-hate relationship with the swans. On the one hand, they gave him a social success his mother who abandoned him in childhood never achieved. She wanted to be popular with C-list socialities in NYC, and they mostly rejected her; but Truman became popular with the A=-list jet set women who never would have had anything to do with his mother.

But deep down he felt resentful towards those women because their sort had rejected his mother, whom he couldn't help loving, since she was his mother. And, although he spent time and energy courting women like Babe Paley and Slim Keith, they always went home to their husbands (whom he knew mistreated them). So the telling tales out of school was likely due towards some hostility towards them.

Also, and finally, he was extremely self-destructive in the last years of his life.

Everyone likes gossip until it's about them.

[quote] I’m sure they were as bitchy and catty as they come.

Some of them were, like Slim Keith.

My understanding is that Babe Paley loved hearing gossip but did not have much as a reputation herself for spreading gossip. But she unwisely trusted Truman, and so she told him stories about her own marriage, which was a mistake.

He was a *vulgarian.*

Can anyone summarize what he wrote about the swans? Like, the 12 main takeaways, the way they did with Harry’s book?

[quote]r2 I’m sure they were as bitchy and catty as they come.

[quote] r5 Some of them were, like Slim Keith.

Slim Keith was the most interesting of those society wives. She grew up in the farmlands of California and had to make her own way. She married the most creative men (Howard Hawks, Leland Hayward, then a Baron) and had the most individual fashion sense.

R7, sorry for the late reply. Truman essentially usedvery thinly veiled versions of all his Swans (Babe Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Slim Keith, etc) to repeat gossip from them that he'd overheard and been told for years. He wrote it under the guise of fiction; that didn't fly for a minute when all the ladies could pick out their own caricatures in the x4 chapters published in 'Esquire'. I don't believe he skewered Jackie O and Princess Lee, but I could be wrong.

I've read the x4 chapters from 'Esquire' and they were difficult to get through. Babe Paley was sick with lung cancer when the articles came out, and she never spoke to Truman again before she died. One of the ladies who was a minor Swan committed suicide after recognizing her caricature in the 'Esquire' excerpts. (She had "accidentally" killed her husband when she thought he was an intruder at night. She was found not guilty, but people still suspected she murdered him.)