The tragedy of Capote’s failed revenge against ‘swans’

On the Hulu streaming network right now there are two features about Truman Capote—FEUD: Capote vs. the Swans from FX, and The Capote Tapes—which are each so bad they are almost unwatchable separately. And yet, seen together, back-to-back, as if they had been intended as a package (Tapes was originally released in 2019,) they prop up each other’s weaknesses. More than that. They present an absolutely fascinating story about Capote.

It’s Shakespearean in its level of human drama. 

It’s practically Greek tragedy in its classical storyline.

If you don’t already know the story, I don’t think you can fully appreciate it unless you force yourself to sit through both features. That’s not easy. Feud, which is only watchable for its remarkable cast of “swans” (Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald,) is all pathos and drama, but lacking any solid structure or context. The director and writers, trying to turn this story into some sort of tepid Housewives from the Upper East Side, couldn’t make the story any more confusing, or stupid. Tapes, which is a documentary based on interviews, archival footage, and a few scraps of not terribly interesting audio tapes someone recently unearthed, provides bits of historical and factual context, but lacks any emotive punch. They couldn’t make it more boring.

After I watched them both, though, I was amazed when I finally put the story together.

I’m no Capote fan or scholar, though I did write a short story, “The Brazilian Millionaire’s Butler,” which is inspired by his Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the book, not the movie.) So this whole “swans” epic is new to me. I’m sure avid Capote fans and scholars have been well aware of this tale forever. Surely it’s part of his legend. Ultimately, it seems to be who Capote was. It’s a great tragedy of our times, Truman’s story.

Here’s the tale I pieced together from these two Hulu programs. My take might not be exactly accurate; it’s the story I see should have been, or should be: 

Truman Capote was on a lifelong mission of revenge.

In the 1940s and ‘50s, his mother had climbed fairly high in New York society, only to be crushed by it. She committed suicide. He wanted to punish those whom he blamed for her misery and death.

With the entrée card of his literary success, Truman followed Mom into Manhattan’s top social scene in the ’60s. He made himself into the trusted, beloved, adored, unpredictable, fun, witty, insightful, outrageous, celebrity, gay, confidant that all high-society women (whom he called “swans”) appeared to covet and cherish. To paraphrase Rod Stewart: No party was complete without Truman. Over time, they told him everything. 

All the while, he was plotting revenge for what he believed they did to his mother. He intended to destroy them all with a tell-all book betraying their confidences and exposing the Proustian debauchery he saw across all of Manhattan’s high society. He even told them that. He told everybody. He said it on TV. Mostly, his threats were met by amusement, doubt, and morbid curiosity: Let’s see if he has the balls. This could be interesting. He wouldn’t dare.

Being more powerful, the swans destroyed him first. They kept him close, as either a friend or an enemy. Their approval became an addiction he could not kick. With the actual drugs, alcohol, and corrosive all-night lifestyle he pursued to keep up, Capote devolved into a pathetic shambles of a writer. Years of hype and tease for this ballyhooed tell-all became a decade-plus of empty promises. Even his supporters lost faith that he ever would or could follow through with this skyscraper-shaking book he kept promising called Answered Prayers.

Eventually, as if out of desperation to prove he and his plan still breathed, Capote published an excerpt, in Esquire magazine. It wasn’t much, compared with what people had imagined. It was enough to end all his friendships. But it wasn’t enough to destroy the swans, most of them, anyway. The Esquire piece, he insisted, was only a tantalizer of what would be his greatest work.

The full Answered Prayers never materialized though.

Capote died at 59, loathed by the swans. And he apparently died self-loathed, for he had failed to avenge his mother. If he ever actually wrote the whole swan-destroying masterwork, no one ever found the manuscript.

Can’t you see this story written in Shakespearean English? Five acts? We could have a ghost of Truman’s mother. The swans could wear witches’ costumes. Truman could be a Shakespearean fool, Puck maybe, or Falstaff. For heaven’s sake somebody (other than the writers of Feud or Tapes) take it on.

Meanwhile, feel free to read “The Brazilian Millionaire’s Butler”. It’s my take on what might happen if a lovable party girl with a flighty, irresponsible reputation—yet with a survivor’s spirit—actually married a Brazilian millionaire and ran off with him to Brazil in 1944, as Capote’s Holly Golightly did at the end of the book version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It ain’t pretty.

You’ve got nothing to lose. Literally. Amazon is offering “The Brazilian Millionaire’s Butler” for free for download to Kindle. I don’t know how long this deal will last. Go for it!