Did Truman Capote's

swans

, that group of sophisticated ladies of the American jet set of the 60s, deserve to be betrayed by the writer?

Was it fair that Capote published, as a story, L

a Côte Basque 1965

, first in the magazine Esquire and then in the famous novel

Prayers answered

all the confidences and intimacies that those women of high society had confided to him, opening their hearts to him? ?

Or did he behave like a perfect scoundrel?

Was it worth it, for all of humanity, for the narrative that has been left to us?

Was it worth it to the writer for the infidelity caused by the abandonment of his 'friends'?

Were they unfair or too strict by never forgiving him, by condemning him forever to the hell of loneliness, by ostracism, by separating him from the only world that mattered to him, to which he had dedicated so many hours, so much effort, so many efforts?

If you are interested in these questions and the universe they contain (real and recognizable characters, betrayals, anguish, ravages of literary creation, extravagances, descents into hell, glamour, sarcasm and a paradigmatic cast), your series is called Feud: Capote

vs. .The Swans

, consists of eight chapters and can be found on HBO Max.

After seeing it, you will never read that posthumous novel in the same way again and you may see Truman Capote, whose death has been 40 years since, played by British actor Tom Hollander, with less complacency.

But the most relevant question, at this moment, when it is 100 years since his birth and 40 years since his death (New Orleans, September 30, 1924 - Los Angeles, August 25, 1984) and his figure is studied again, with a new look: was Capote, deep down, a complete misogynist, one of those gays who, deep down, also really hate women?

On February 24, in one of the episodes of the

American

late show

Saturday Night Live

, on NBC, a very stinging parody of the writer was broadcast, played by actor Bowen Yang.

The presenter thanks him for coming to the program precisely at this moment, when 'historical women's month' is celebrated.

-I'm surprised that you want to speak this month, the presenter tells him.

-Why? If I love women, Capote's character tells him, exaggerating his already irritating tone.

-Well, I'm watching the new season of Feud, where we can see how you betray them all, he answers.

-I have not betrayed them, I have only published what they told me privately...

The sarcastic conversation continues, the script insists that he ridicule and vilify different women, such as Betsy Ross, the American who is credited with the design of the US flag, with thirteen stars, which represent the famous thirteen British colonies.

The famous invented Capote says of her:

-There are thirteen stars, because that's as far as she could count.

The interview continues with taunts at other women, so the driver replies:

-But Truman, you said you like women.

-Of course, there is nothing more beautiful than a woman, except a man's ass, responds the actor

But the best comes at the end where Capote's transcript gives what would be a good definition of the gay misogynist:

“No one loves women as much as a gay man who hates them.”

There are more places to find answers to those questions in general and the big question in particular.

In the fictionalized biography

'Swan Song' (Lumen),

the American writer Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott tries to explain what led Capote to that major betrayal, which sank him forever, leading him to social hell.

She gives voice to the swans (so called because of the very long neck that one of them, Marella Agnelli, had), and they talk about jealousy, the desire for revenge, an uncontrolled vanity... According to the author, who spent years researching about the writer to compose this biography, after the success of

Cold Blood

the relationship between them and him changed third, “they were already on the same level and he began to look at them as equals.

He discovered, among other things, that they used to call him because they were bored.

That story (which, although very meticulous and very exhaustive, is still fiction), and what is extracted from all of Capote's public interventions throughout his last years on television and the press, is together with the private conversations of an incontinent verbal writer, all we have to find the answers.

And now there is, as I said, the series, which masterfully and with a sharp look tells the relationship between the swans and the writer.

It goes into details, breaks it down and places those of us who like their literature in a dilemma: that of understanding that the narrative material that those very long and succulent days with them gave of themselves, could not remain unwritten, or that of thinking that What Capote did with the swans was a real sleaze when he recounted their miseries and thus betrayed their complete trust.

The fact is that when he decided that he would publish the story, where he told everything without mentioning their real names, he did not think that his swans would recognize each other, in fact, he did not even think that they would read it.

But they did it, they saw themselves clearly in that satire, (them and all the New York they cared about) and they flipped out.

That anger, that stupefaction of the ladies, and that exemplary punishment without turning back that they carried out have often been told.

No invitations, no lunches at their privileged tables, no darling.

When he was criticized for his writing, he defended himself: “I don't know what they expected.

I am a writer.

“They are my material.”

At that moment the entire circle of that select group in Manhattan was the powerful one, and Capote was actually his servant, whom they immediately turned into an enemy.

Although the one who finally went down in history is the writer, who defined himself with this sentence: “I am an alcoholic.

I'm a drug addict.

I am gay.

I am a genius".

The swans and their voices

Let's go with the swans and the relationship they had with the writer.

Were they good girls?

No, they were viperous, superficial, racist, classist, liars and cruel if necessary, with a good part of their environment and of course among themselves.

Were they with Capote?

Well, Capote was his entertainment, his amusement, his greatest extravagance, the intellectual and refined buffoon who gave them just the right amount of madness in their supposedly perfect lives.

She was not “one of them”, nor was she above, nor below, so she was not someone to put down either.

He was something different, more complex, more bombastic, more outlandish, more worldly too.

A faithful and unconditional friend, for some of them, like Babe Paley, who came to feel a

deep love

for him.

Babe Paley, who is played by Naomi Watts in the series, was a style icon, a 'perfect' woman as Capote defined her, an editor of fashion magazines and married to a recurrently unfaithful husband.

She cried to Capote, she told him secrets, ailments of the soul, and the writer returned all that to her as a fable in the story.

That is why, for her especially, the article La Côte Basque, 1965, published first in Esquire

magazine

, and later in

Prayers Attended

, was a blow to the heart, a betrayal.

Beyond the shame she made him feel, seeing her intimate and sordid details written about her, even though she did not mention them with her real name.

Capote, that child in need of affection, saw in the swans those ladies who rejected his mother (who committed suicide and whose ghost is played in the series by Jessica Lange, a faithful actress in the career of Ryan Murphy, executive producer of the series) who She always aspired to be part of that female social elite.

He didn't succeed, so Capote put all his effort, almost without realizing it, into getting revenge in some way for that rudeness.

For years he was a confidant, advisor, entertainer, tearjerker, sexless lover, playmate and slanderer.

“I make them feel seen and safe,” he declared to a journalist with whom he filmed a documentary with all of them, when he asked him how he had gotten them to eat in his hand.

As if it were a stiletto, in the fifth chapter of the series he cruelly summarizes what he truly believes about them, once he has been separated from them forever: “They are only white, American and Protestant (and racist and classists).

They have no empathy or compassion, and are only interested in making it seem like they do.

All my swans are horrible mothers.

Everything they do is superficial, their lives are interesting, but they are not.

And for them, black people are there to serve and gay people are there to entertain.”

In case something was missing in this lethal story, he adds, "they are obsessed with not aging, so they undergo all kinds of interventions, they don't eat, they live on air and water and tiny portions of very rare meat."

And there appears the actress Diane Lane as Nancy 'Slim' Keith, another lady of high society, a close friend of Babe, who however has no intention of sleeping with her husband.

Or the distinguished CZ Guest, who was also a designer, and who is played by actress Chloë Sevigny (

Boys Don't Cry, American Horror Story

).

There is a very special swan, that of Joanne Carson, (the wife of the famous

American television

showman , Johnny Carson) because she is brought to life by Molly Ringwald

(Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer

), in what marks his return to fiction.

In the series she is Capote's friend, confidant and of course one of that group of ladies who gather at that private table at

La Côte Basque

, at the entrance, to look and be seen, and who only want the world to adore them. .

There is a legend that says that one day before her death the writer gave Joanne Carson, in whose house she settled when she eventually fell ill, a key.

It was, they say, from a safe deposit box in California and there was the manuscript of the complete novel,

Answered Prayers

.

She did not specify more, neither the bank nor any other information.

“She will be found when she wants to be found,” she told him.

Of course Capote drank with them, of course he was malicious towards them, of course he was biting, of course he was brilliant, and all the time he swung between his love for them and the certainty that those hours on yachts, houses, parties, restaurants , they only had one final intention: to tell a story that had never been told.

There is a fourth swan, the one played by actress Calista Flockhart, (the beloved Ally McBeal) and who is none other than Lee Radziwill, the famous younger sister of Jackie Kennedy.

She was what we would now call a

socialite

, and she was the one who had the least acrimonious relationship with Capote in the end, when everyone else denied him bread and salt.

Along with these four actresses appears Demi Moore, who plays Anne Woodward, who had worked in the radio, who came from a lower class, and whom Capote sank socially and drove to actual suicide by spreading that perhaps her husband's death was not an accident and that it was she who killed him (even though she was tried and declared innocent).

That event cost her everyone's rejection, aggravated by Capote's insistence on always putting her within reach.

Something else to celebrate, by the way, in this series: all of these actresses, except Chloe Sevigny, who turns 50 this year, are on their way to 60, which has not prevented them from being chosen for this glorious cast.

In the fifth chapter, Capote goes to an appointment, which never took place, with the black writer James Baldwin, (whose essay

The Fire Next Time

I take the opportunity to highly recommend), proposed by him.

By then Capote had already given up on literature and himself; he was a self-confessed alcoholic, lonely and ruined.

The call from Baldwin, whose texts Capote himself had vigorously criticized, literally brought him out of a monumental hangover, lying in bed one more morning, worn out and undressed.

They meet to eat at the famous restaurant, they talk about the swans, Capote portrays them with his two incisors, with his fangs and with all the acidity of his pen, but he painfully laments the punishment he received.

Baldwin's intention with this quote is to get the writer out of his self-absorption and make him see what he is worth, the strength he has, his brilliance.

Therefore, this formidable conversation takes place, which did not take place, but which I hope:

-People think he wanted to hurt them, Capote tells him.

-Admit it and move on, responds Baldwin

- I have been hurt my entire life over and over again.

Life with them, life without them, both are unbearable... Capote laments.

And later, at home, after kissing him lovingly and denying him alcohol, the great Baldwin tells him:

“You are the strongest sissy.

The lunches, excursions, soufflés, yachts... And the nausea of ​​those insane privileges, of those pathetic creatures were over.

Their world you have captured forever.

And everyone knows that what you have written is a dictionary of disgust, the thesaurus of American nausea, and I promise you that one day it will be seen.

Your book is your slave revolt, it is the firing squad of the Romanovs, it is your consecration of spring that will usher in a new world.”

The next day Capote wakes up without a hangover for the first time in months and gets to work, writing.

Several scenes later we find him dining on a filleted swan, brought from the Central Park lake, which Capote has asked a young chef to capture and cook, in exchange for a succulent sum of money.

A few more years would pass until the writer's death (whose causes have always been unclear) and during all that time, his former swans walked on one side, never forgetting without forgiving, and Capote on the other.

Was the punishment that New York high society imposed on the frivolous and ruthless writer for revealing his miseries excessive?

The series serves to ask you that and many other questions and to reach some conclusions: they did not fully measure the writer's capacity to be evil, they felt superior at all times and, accustomed as they were to being the queens of all the parties , they could not even consider that betrayal could take place.

And perhaps he never showed a sincere affection for them, without artifice, without imposture, and he sold them at the lowest price for a piece of glory, when he realized that, after writing In Cold Blood, no story could overshadow him.

We will never know to what extent he regretted that

La Côte Basque.