{"id":2033,"date":"2024-03-07T22:17:51","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T03:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2024-06-14T23:52:42","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T03:52:42","slug":"on-truman-capote-and-feud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/on-truman-capote-and-feud\/","title":{"rendered":"On Truman Capote and “Feud”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Picture this: It\u2019s the 1970s. My grandmother and I are walking in Manhattan, where I spent the first few years of my life. (She is the same grandmother from my Halloween story<\/a>, if you were wondering.) Maybe we\u2019re grocery shopping, or maybe she\u2019s collected me from kindergarten and is taking me home. I can\u2019t quite remember. I only remember what happens next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While we\u2019re walking, Grandmom\u00a0glances in the window of a salon as we pass by. And she freezes in place, riveted by someone inside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Truman Capote<\/i>.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m probably no more than six. I have no earthly idea who Truman Capote is. But Grandmom is not an easily-impressed sort and yet I can tell by her tone of voice that she\u2019s clearly impressed by whoever this is. (And no wonder. If this happened\u00a0when I think it did, he was pretty much the king of New York City at that point.)<\/p>\n

So I join her by the salon window.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, an older man with a round, ruddy face and sparse pale hair is getting what looks like some kind of vigorous scalp massage. A salon attendant notices us peering in at Capote and says something to him. And Capote glances around and gives us a small smile and a little Yes dears, hello, it\u2019s me<\/i> wave.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That satisfies Grandmom. It satisfies me, too. This very important person who I\u2019ve never heard of just waved at me. Things like that feel so significant\u00a0when you\u2019re so young.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The name \u201cTruman Capote\u201d stuck with me from that day on, and when I saw In Cold Blood<\/i> in our school library several years later, I immediately checked it out. A music teacher saw me with it and kicked up quite a fuss over me reading such a \u201chorrible\u201d book, but my parents never minded me reading above my age bracket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time I was in college and had read almost all of Capote\u2019s published output and would have loved to spot him in Manhattan\u2014or anywhere else\u2014he and my grandmom were both long gone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This winter I\u2019ve been watching Feud: Capote vs. The Swans<\/i> on FX. The way Capote committed social suicide by publishing a short story skewering his glamorous society friends, the \u201cswans\u201d in question, has always fascinated me. Talk about authors behaving badly.\u00a0Why would he do that? What could\u00a0he possibly have been thinking?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With one episode left to go of Feud<\/i>, I have to say\u00a0I\u2019m none the wiser.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This series should have been a movie, or a much shorter miniseries. It\u2019s not much of\u00a0a feud if one side drops the rope and walks away, as most of the real-life swans did, and so Feud<\/i> is loaded with redundant filler and a lot of inventions. There are only so many times that even the finest of actresses can make “Should we forgive Truman?” “Hmph!” “But I miss him!” “Harrumph<\/strong>, I say!” “Oh, I suppose you’re right”<\/em>\u00a0very compelling.<\/p>\n

Also, I realize that non-linear timelines in movies and TV shows are all the rage right now and will probably become even more so thanks to Oppenheimer\u2019s <\/i>wild success, but that doesn\u2019t mean every story benefits from being told that way.<\/p>\n

However, the performances are top notch. Tom Hollander is a truly uncanny Capote. Naomi Watts, who deserves to be way more famous and awarded than she has been, is wonderful as Babe Paley, Capote\u2019s favorite swan. I also loved Joe Mantello as Capote\u2019s long-suffering companion Jack. I will never say no to more Jessica Lange, appearing as Capote\u2019s mother Lillie Mae. And as an 80s teen, I always love seeing Molly Ringwald again.<\/p>\n

And if Feud<\/i> inspires some people to seek out Capote\u2019s work, that\u2019s a\u00a0good thing. With true crime being all the rage, there\u2019s no better time to check out In Cold Blood<\/i>, the \u201cnonfiction novel\u201d that catapulted Capote\u00a0to\u00a0the very social heights from which he’d later be exiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture this: It\u2019s the 1970s. My grandmother and I are walking in Manhattan, where I spent the first few years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,113,139],"tags":[131,17,145,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2084,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}