Why a Booktrail?
1975: They told him everything. He told everyone else.
Swan Song
What you need to know before your trail
Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.
In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he’d worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable: nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons . . . Words.
Travel Guide
Travel around the literary world according to Truman Capote
Capote is that he was born in Louisiana, in 1924, but moved to Monroeville, Alabama at age 4. There is a museum and plaque dedicated to him there and it’s definately worth a visit to find out more about his early life as contained in this book. It was obvious from the start that his mother wanted the family to move up in the world.
Capote soon moved to New York and worked on The New Yorker. It was here, in the glittering city, that he befriended the famous and the rich of the time: Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (sister of Jackie Kennedy). Life here was a series of parties and Truman was keen to tag along for as long as he could.
In 1975,Esquire magazine published a chapter of a book Truman had been working on for some time it is said. The book entitled ‘La Côte Basque 1965’, was effectively a character assassination of some of these friends. He had destroyed the world he seemed so desperate to join.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Swan Song
Destination: New York, Paris, USA, Mexico, Italy Author/Guide: Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott Departure Time: 1975
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