Conversations with Capote Book

Truman Capote gave free rein to his gossipy id in these conversations with Lawrence Grobel. Thus we learn that Greta Garbo hung two of her four Picassos upside down (allegedly), Adlai Stevenson was a very good friend (they lived together in London, allegedly), he loathed Jacqueline Onassis, and felt nothing but scorn for the work of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, and Bernard Malamud, just to mention a few. Joyce Carol Oates (what she did to deserve it, I have no idea) comes in for the deepest bile: "She's a joke monster who ought to be beheaded in a public auditorium," "the most loathsome creature in America....I've seen her, and to see her is to loathe her. To read her is to absolutely vomit...She's written me extreme fan letters. But that's the kind of hoax she is." On John Updike: "I hate him. Everything about him bores me." (His evisceration of Updike is quite interesting, and what little I've read of Updike suggests Capote's stylistic analysis might be on the money.) Meryl Streep has "a nose like a chicken" and is "totally untalented." Capote reserves his undiluted affection for a tiny handful of people, including Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, and it's probably not accidental that they're long dead. If you lived long enough, you were bound to get on his bad side somehow.

James Michener, inexplicably, wrote the introduction to this book. When Grobel asks Capote who some possible Nobel prizewinners might be - might Michener fit the bill? Capote answers:

Well, James Michener - it's a good thing publishers have him. I'm glad he's at Random House. They're my publishers. He keeps their cash flow flowing.

Have you ever read his work?

I never have, no, so I really have no opinion. He's never written anything that would remotely interest me. Why on earth would I be interested in reading a book called Chesapeake?