Wednesday 15 March 2023

THE RISE AND FALL OF TRUMAN CAPOTE


Truman Capote's life (and his psycho-dramatic implications) is intrinsically linked with the evolution of his literary talent to its culmination with "in Cold Blood" in 1965 and its decline from the publication of the same ... Simultaneously with the peak of his public recognition and the fame so well built, fed and accentuated by Truman himself, with the organization of the famous party "The black and white ball" at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Here, Capote demonstrated all his artifices and manipulative strategies with enough precedence, to leave the whole "High Society" in suspense and in doubt of who will or will not be invited... helped in the final stage of preparation by Andy Warhol, when finally the 500 guests arrived, legions of reporters and "curious onlookers" were waiting for us at the entrance ...

It is this event that marks the beginning of his decadence of literary production and also of an inevitable conflict with the social milieu that surrounded him and that he ambiguously cultivated ... and manipulated and used.

In fact, the long contact in Kansas with the real killers of the story in real life, where his "In Cold Blood" was based, and in a very special way with Perry Smith, opened a psychological door of deep confrontation with his own history (a child who grew up abandoned by his parents, whose mother suffered from the same obsessions of social status which led her to suicide) threw him into a psychological ambiguity and a conflict with himself,  that has never been resolved and what has projected him into a destructive spiral of alcohol, drugs and medicines, alienating and isolating him progressively and definitively ...

He himself contributed largely to this, ceasing to produce literature and feeding the myth of a work that never came to exist in its entirety ("Answered Prayers") and whose publication of excerpts led to the indignation and ostracization of the Society, for its use of friendly people as poorly disguised characters ...

How far gone were the times of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958)...


































No comments: