Published in Esquire in the mid-1970's but never before in book form, here are the three extant chapters from Capote's notorious, never-finished "non-fiction novel" about his society/literary friends—part roman á clef, part naked gossip using real names. (A fourth chapter, "Mojave," was cut from the novel and published separately in Music for Chameleons, his final collection.) All three pieces are narrated circa 1971 by 35-ish P.B. Jones—a composite portrait (including some Capote) of the ultimate bisexual writer/hustler/gigolo, impish and languid and bitchy. In "Unspoiled Monsters," P.B. recounts his climb from St. Louis orphanage to teen-age "Hershey Bar whore" ("there wasn't much I wouldn't do for a nickel's worth of chocolate") to New York—where he gets published via sex with Turner Boatwright, fiction editor of a women's fashion magazine; from there he moves on to opportunistic liaisons with legendary Southern writer Alice Lee Langman ("a relentless bedroom back-seat driver"), drug-addict Denny Fouts in Paris ("Best-Kept Boy in the World" of Isherwood fame), et al.—but ends up penniless back in NY, reduced to working as a professional whore for Miss Victoria Self's "Self Service." (Among his clients: a thinly disguised Tennessee Williams—in the grotesque, pathetic version that's now familiar, thanks to Dotson Rader and others.) Then, in "Kate McCloud," P.B. recalls his first meeting with reclusive beauty Kate—"goddess of the fashion press," ex-wife of a mad young society scion, current estranged wife of an old billionaire German industrialist; P.B. is hired to be Kate's masseur/bodyguard (the German hubby may be out to kill her), there's great erotic tension. . .but the story remains incomplete. Finally, in the infamous "La Cote Basque," P.B. recalls a lunch date at that restaurant: a nonstop gossip-a-thon, including overheard conversation from the nearby table occupied by Gloria Vanderbilt and Mrs. Walter Matthau (an unflattering duo-portrait). Along, the way, P.B. delivers (or hears) nasty tidbits about bygone celebs—Barbara Hutton, Dorothy Parker, Montgomery Clift, Tallulah, Cole Porter, Peggy Guggenheim, Natalie Barney—as well as some still living; (Ned Rorem is "an intolerable combination of brimstone behavior and sell-righteous piety.") So, though dated, this is an undeniable source of slimy scuttlebutt—especially for those able, or interested enough, to decode the clefs. And, along with the malicious eloquence and an unprecedented ribaldry (sometimes exuberant, sometimes just gross), there are glimmers of Capote's storytelling talent. But the overall effect, somewhat wearying even at novella length, is shiny and shallow—with nothing to suggest that a completed Answered Prayers would have been anything like a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1987
ISBN: 0679751823
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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