January 5, 2013 |
The scene is a small pond in the woods midway between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. A bronze plaque on a tall stone by the water’s edge is inscribed with the names of Truman Capote and his longtime companion Jack Dunphy. I am using light tackle and a Mepps spinner to cast for the largemouth bass known to inhabit this secluded pond. Flies are buzzing, catbirds creak like hinges in the scrub oaks, and ticks cluster in the tall grass. The mere scent of mammal blood will trigger a deer tick’s brief and vicious life cycle, which can leave innocent ramblers half-paralysed if the bite is right. A high-pitched nasal voice inserts itself into this summer idyll: “Helloooo, you big fairy fisherman.” I look around and espy, on a vast green lily pad, a tiny frog that appears to have the power of speech.
MAX BLAGG: “Are you a talking frog or is this weed better than I thought?”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “I am a frog that speaks. Indeed, I am the true Truman, the Capote of In Cold Blood fame, the artiste who was immolated by his own answered prayers, addressing you, big feller, through the agency of this green amphibian, which would make fine live bait for the pickerel in this pond. But what do you expect to catch here? I’ve been here since 1994 – well, my ashes have – and I’ve seen only teeny largemouths. The pike eats ’em all.”
MAX BLAGG: “I’d love to catch that finny creature, but you, Mister Frog, have distracted me. What have you been doing since you kicked off in Joanne Carson’s kitchen back in 1984?”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Bedroom. It was her guest bedroom, and she keeps it as a shrine to me, as you have probably heard. And I haven’t been doing anything, except rearranging the lilies around here.”
MAX BLAGG: “I did hear that about Joanne, or read it in your biography [Capote by Gerald Clarke], which is juicy but has some dry spells in its 600 pages. Just like you, Truman. George Plimpton’s bio is more selective and a bit dishier. Your muses were not amused after Esquire published those chapters from Answered Prayers, and they say some awfully nasty things about you, describing you at least twice as ‘a toad’.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Nothing new there. I wasn’t a very nice person for much of my time down here, so I didn’t really expect hosannas from anyone. Though I didn’t expect to be cut quite[ITALS] so loose by my swans for revealing a little too much about their vacuous lives. Didn’t they realise that ‘Happiness leaves such slender records – it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented’.”
MAX BLAGG: “Those ladies who lunch made your days dark for the few years you lasted after that. You were fabulously successful at a very early age, almost as much for your author photo by Cartier-Bresson as for the writing… ”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Touché! Not the case, dear fisherman. Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany’s both display a prose muscular, poetic and exquisite, as many admirers have remarked.”
MAX BLAGG: “And I do agree they made you famous before In Cold Blood, an incredible tour de force[ITALS] that took years of your life and made you even more famous. And very rich. But ICB wasn’t a novel, and you wanted, above all, to write a better novel than Proust’s. And that never happened. Even though various witnesses claim to have seen the missing manuscript. The fact that you didn’t level Proust with Answered Prayers eventually put you here in this pond.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Hmmm. Listen, could you drive me over to Agway in Bridgehampton? I want to get some fish food for my pals here.”
MAX BLAGG: “Of course. You won’t believe how much it has changed. You know that the painter Ross Bleckner bought your house. I think he made a few changes.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “I’m sure he did. It was a scruffy little place when I had it, and Jack’s shack next door was quite austere also. A tiny cottage that is charming in high summer when the wisteria is in bloom, but can be utterly depressing in the winter time, stuck in the middle of these grey potato fields under those grey skies and the freezing blue-grey ocean… ”
MAX BLAGG: “Sounds divine – I’m sure Ross thinks so. Your local, Bobby Van’s, is still on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, but it has morphed into an upscale restaurant. It used to be a piano bar where a guy named Bobby Van actually played piano and people ate mediocre food and drank lots of alcohol. This was before DWI; people drove around practically paralytic all the time. I heard the cops frequently took you home, or escorted you home while you ‘drove’.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “They did indeed, the stalwart policemen of Southampton town. I salute them for their everlasting courtesy.”
MAX BLAGG: “And I’m sure they thank you for the tips you gave them. Your neighbours were designated also, an illustrious group that included Kurt Vonnegut, William Styron and John Knowles, yet nobody ever took you further than the end of the driveway, whatever condition you were in. Why was that?”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “They might have seen the manuscript lying on the table and that would have been bad luck. And there were terrible brambles, wild roses on either side – they’d give your vehicle a terrible scratching. I once lost $4,000-worth of coke on that driveway; it just dematerialized. I’m sure Ross has cleared those brambles out by now.”
MAX BLAGG: “Okay, hop in the front seat here. Haha, you still can’t see over the wheel. Why don’t you sit up on the dash? You know Brian Jones was tiny like you, and Keith Richards was always stealing the cushion that Brian kept in his Bentley so he could see the road – drove him nuts. You toured with the Stones in 1972, a tour that has entered the annals of legend. Robert Frank was filming it, too, a film the Stones have managed to suppress for 40 years [Cocksucker Blues].”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Yes, I was supposed to write about the tour for Rolling Stone, supplemented by Peter Beard’s photographs. Frank filmed too many people doing drugs – that’s why his movie never saw the light. Anywhere you looked there seemed to be people shooting up. There were so many distractions, I never really got anything done … and I was still avoiding the big novel.”
We drive through farmland studded with enormous and astonishingly ugly McMansions.
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “My God, Sagaponack, what happened? How on earth did they let them build these monstrosities over every patch of green field out here?”
MAX BLAGG: “I think it’s called money, Truman. And every one of them owned by bankers and hedge funders and 21st-century white-collar criminals. This is where the 1% have their summer homes nowadays. Let’s go to Bobby Van’s and sneer at the nouveau riche bitches there.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Oh that’s too easy, like Martin Amis making fun of chavs. I only like the wealthy who don’t even think about how much they are worth. The ones who don’t count the number of yachts or servants they have. Never try to borrow money from a rich person. As someone said, they might give you a small Rembrandt for Christmas, but God forbid you try to borrow cash – you’ll never hear from them again. They like to hold on to their money.”
Car arrives outside Bobby Van’s.
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Oh my God, this looks dull. A sea of Prada sandals and Kelly bags on all the wrong people. At least the Candy Kitchen is still there on the corner. Let’s go and say hello to Gus. All these new stores, it’s tackier than Key West. I loved it here, though, before I got totally sozzled. How I miss those talks with Joe Heller and Kurt and Jim Jones, each of us resenting the tiniest success the other might have had, lying through our teeth as we praised each other ever so faintly.”
MAX BLAGG: “I’m always so disappointed to hear that writers secretly hate each other. I think that’s why I prefer the company of artists. Oooh look, there’s Keith Sonnier.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “A Southern boy like myself. Keith looks good – he lost some weight. It is odd how even the most successful writers can still be so envious of others. Like me with Gore Vidal. Both of us exceeding our expectations, yet the slightest bit of good news about him could instantly rouse the most spiteful, unsisterly feelings in me.”
MAX BLAGG: “I guess Gore won in the end, when he sued you and got you to write a letter of apology for libelling him.”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Gore the bore, let’s talk about something else.”
MAX BLAGG: “Okay. How about your attraction to rather crushingly dull heterosexuals, such as the air-conditioning repair guy in Palm Springs, whose teeth you fixed and who you took on the Grand Tour of the Continent, and he just hated all your friends? And the same with the bank teller who you stole away from his family, and eventually stole his family from him as well, while he stole your money and affection… ”
TRUMAN CAPOTE: “Fortunately, I don’t think we have the space to go into that. Let’s just say love is blind, and it’s such fun to bend a straight boy. You know what, my skin’s getting dried out from this sun. Let’s pop into Agway for the fish food and then you can take me back to the pond.”
We drove back across to Narrow Lane, past Glenn O’Brien’s former house, past Mary Heilmann’s beautiful farm field and brick-red studio, across the turnpike and then left on Sagg Road toward Widow Gavits Road. The pond is at a crook in the road. I opened the door of the car and Truman hopped out, sprang forward and disappeared beneath the surface as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the pickerel.
by Max Blagg
