Reviews for Truman Capote

The average rating for Truman Capote based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-25 00:00:00 Justin Lamb I saw the movie, Infamous, which is more or less based on part of this book, and because I liked the movie, I thought I'd get even more out of the book. WRONG. The author interviewed about 200 people who knew something about Capote, then cut that material into a bunch of paragraph length gossips, then pasted all the stuff together in chronological order. NOT the way to write an interesting book. In fact, I'd say Plimpton didn't really write a book, he just recorded conversations and pasted other peoples thoughts together. In this case the movie is much better than the book, Toby Jones gives a great performance as Capote.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-25 00:00:00 Dave Dake If you haven't seen the movie INFAMOUS, with Toby Stephens and Sandra Bullock, you should watch it right away. It was based on this book, and it's amazing! This is the best biography of a great American writer that I have ever read. The reason is that it's more of an oral history, (my favorite kind of book) or a collection of interviews, in the tradition of THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES by Lawrence Ritter or BLOODS by Wallace Terry. There's something funny or touching or memorable on almost every single page. My favorite section was an interview with Truman Capote where he explains in very precise detail how he writes each draft and edits them before publication. There were also some great stories about his childhood in Alabama, and interviewing the real life killers who inspired IN COLD BLOOD. The chapters on high society weren't that interesting, but even at the very end there were some great passages, like the eulogy by the poet James Dickey. This is an amazing book!