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
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.
Ware (In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.
Days before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping; as a result, she is unable to sleep. By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. Despite this successful formula, and a whole lot of slowly unraveling tension, the end is somehow unsatisfying. And the newspaper and social media inserts add little depth.
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3293-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
