Finally, Capote addressedAnswered Prayersand why he stopped writing it in 1977.
Read the full thing, fromVogues December 1979 issue, below.
I started writing when I was eightout of the blue, uninspired by any example.
A portrait of Truman Capote by Irving Penn, published alongside his essay “Truman Capote by Truman Capote.”
I’d never known anyone who wrote; in fact, I knew few people who read.
But, of course, I didn’t know that.
It was a lot of funat first.
And after that, the whip came down!
Actually, I never did any homework.
Not to mention the grand overall design, the great demanding arc of middle-beginning-end.
Descriptions of a neighbor.
Long verbatim accounts of overheard conversations.
By the time I was seventeen, I was an accomplished writer.
Had I been a pianist, it would have been the moment for my first public concert.
Then I published a novel:Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Indeed, many people attributed the commercial success of the novel to the photograph.
I’d only been writing day in and day out for fourteen years!
Still, the novel was a satisfying conclusion to the first cycle in my development.
A short novel,Breakfast at Tiffany’s, ended the second cycle in 1958.
I conceived of the whole adventure as a short comic novel, the first.
Still, it did not attract any special notice, and the sales were moderate.
Nevertheless, that book was an important event, personally speaking.
Or words to that effect.
Anyway, Mr. James is laying it on the line there; he’s telling you folks the truth.
And the darkest part of the dark, the maddest part of the madness is the relentless gambling involved.
Those were long summers.
But I just kept on dealing the cards, playing my hand as best I could.
Then it turned out Ididhave a book.
Then I wrote the first chapter, “Unspoiled Monsters.”
Then the fifth, “A Severe Insult to the Brain.”
Then the seventh, “La Cote Basque.”
And yetAnswered Prayersis not intended as any ordinaryroman a clef, a form where facts are disguised as fiction.
My intentions are the reverse: to remove disguises, not manufacture them.
I don’t intend to discuss this; the issue involves social politics, not artistic merit.
Condemn, but not deny.
To begin with, I think most writers, even the best, overwrite.
I prefer to underwrite.
Simple, clear as a country creek.
The answer, revealed to me after months of bewildered meditation, was simple but not very satisfying.
Certainly, it did nothing to lessen my depression; indeed, it thickened it.
I returned toAnswered Prayers.
I removed one chapter, and rewrote two others.
Christ, here we are off again on one of those grim gambles!
But I was excited; I felt an invisible sun shining on me.
Still, my first experiments were very awkward.
I did truly feel like a child with a box of crayons.
Actually, in all my reportage, I tried to keep myself as invisible as possible.
Last January, I started publishing samples of these Conversational Portraits inInterviewmagazine.
Also, using a modified version of this technique, I’ve written a sizable number of short stories.
Next September, Random House is publishing a book of my new writing entitledStrange Dents.
And how has all this affected my other work-in-progress,Answered Prayers?
