Truman Capote & The Trouble With Gossip
Jan. 30th, 2024 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraAt regular intervals, I like to lecture all 4.2 of my regular readers on the complicated relationship between art & pop culture.
Genius & Kitsch may be BFF and wear matching outfits to the Meta Gala afterparties, but 50 years from now, it’s likely no one will recognize the name “Taylor Swift.”
###
Some time in the next 20 years or so, for example, I expect the entire art market to crater. That’s gonna be one of the unanticipated results of AI! If Artificial Intelligence can create a Guernica that’s in all respects identical to Picasso’s Guernica, what’s the point of commodifying Picasso’s Guernica? It will be like what’s presently happening with the natural diamond market now that there’s an oversupply of cheap, lab-grown diamonds.
One must note here the singular brilliance of that Maestro of Kitsch, Thomas Kinkade, who had the foresight to infuse the pigments he used to create kitsch masterpieces like the one below with his own blood:
Will there ever come a time when a Kinkade will be worth more $$$$ than a Picasso?
You bet there will because you’ll be able to authenticate the Kinkade.
###
The stuff that does survive tends to be descriptions of the quotidian. Samuel Pepys, circa 16-something, making a cheerful morning excursion to Charing Cross to watch Major General Harrison get hung, drawn, & quartered. Jane Austen writing (for what we must assume was her own amusement) about the strange marital customs of the 18th-century Brits.
###
All these are random thoughts I’ve had while reading two biographies of Truman Capote.
I breezed through George Plimpton’s oral biography, but Gerald Clarke’s Capote: A Biography is taking longer to work through, and I fear I may not be able to finish it by the time it’s due back to the library Thursday.
(I see that Ryan Murphy’s Capote Vs. the Swans is due to drop tomorrow—Hubba, Hubba!—but that’s not actually why I started reading these bios.)
###
Capote could write! He had a natural ear for the innate rhythm of a sentence, which is actually more important than the sense of a sentence. But he was kind of an idiot savant in that he was not particularly smart, and that meant there were only a limited number of things he could write about.
He could write about his childhood: You can load everything fellow Southern Gothicist Carson McCullers ever wrote in a wheel barrel and roll it out to the garden to mulch the potatoes, but Other Voices, Other Rooms continues to move, and even the cloying The Grass Harp has lyrical passages of singular heft.
He could write when someone else laid out all the points on a page and explained how to connect them. I’m inclined to think In Cold Blood’s structure is all Harper Lee though its prose is Capote’s.
But Capote didn’t really have the brain capacity to write about much of anything else.
Hence, when the pressures grew to write something else after the immense success of In Cold Blood, Capote was forced to fall back on writing gossip.
###
There are two very real issues with writing gossip.
First, gossip is other people’s secrets. And people dislike having their secrets broadcast however much they may relish the singular confessional to a therapist or an intimate friend. People consider gossip about themselves a form of betrayal.
Second, gossip has an exceedingly short shelf life.
pinstripe_bindi dropped an amusing anecdote the other day about GenZ & Jackie Kennedy. Trust me! In her day, Jackie-O (yes, darlings, that’s what we called her on account of her marriage to—oh, maybe you had to be there) was bigger than Taylor Swift! But who remembers her now? Only Boomers, and that’s just until their next dementia diagnosis.
Does anybody really give a shit that Bill Paley fucked Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller while she was having her period?
No. Because nobody remembers who Bill Paley and Nelson Rockefeller were, and anyway, what’s the big deal about menstrual sex?
So, in the end, all contemporary readers of La Cote Basque or Unspoiled Monsters are left with is very badly written prose.
###
All of Capote’s ultra-rich friends dropped him upon the publication of La Cote Basque, Unspoiled Monsters, and the other two chapters of his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. (Brilliant title, by the way.)
Capote still had plenty of friends left, but they didn’t have enough money to matter. So he had to drink and drug until he could die of liver failure.
A brilliant career move, Gore Vidal called Truman Capote’s death.
###
Anyway.
It is just as grey, forbidding, & cold today as it was yesterday.
I tried to go tromping yesterday & lasted less than a mile because Cold! Grey! Forbidding! This sucks!
I put my miles in on the stationary bike while watching the new Mr. Monk Solves a Murder While Acting Crazy made-for-TV movie.
I cannot recommend it!
It is simply unnerving to see Tony Shalhoub & Natalie looking so old.
Genius & Kitsch may be BFF and wear matching outfits to the Meta Gala afterparties, but 50 years from now, it’s likely no one will recognize the name “Taylor Swift.”
###
Some time in the next 20 years or so, for example, I expect the entire art market to crater. That’s gonna be one of the unanticipated results of AI! If Artificial Intelligence can create a Guernica that’s in all respects identical to Picasso’s Guernica, what’s the point of commodifying Picasso’s Guernica? It will be like what’s presently happening with the natural diamond market now that there’s an oversupply of cheap, lab-grown diamonds.
One must note here the singular brilliance of that Maestro of Kitsch, Thomas Kinkade, who had the foresight to infuse the pigments he used to create kitsch masterpieces like the one below with his own blood:
Will there ever come a time when a Kinkade will be worth more $$$$ than a Picasso?
You bet there will because you’ll be able to authenticate the Kinkade.
###
The stuff that does survive tends to be descriptions of the quotidian. Samuel Pepys, circa 16-something, making a cheerful morning excursion to Charing Cross to watch Major General Harrison get hung, drawn, & quartered. Jane Austen writing (for what we must assume was her own amusement) about the strange marital customs of the 18th-century Brits.
###
All these are random thoughts I’ve had while reading two biographies of Truman Capote.
I breezed through George Plimpton’s oral biography, but Gerald Clarke’s Capote: A Biography is taking longer to work through, and I fear I may not be able to finish it by the time it’s due back to the library Thursday.
(I see that Ryan Murphy’s Capote Vs. the Swans is due to drop tomorrow—Hubba, Hubba!—but that’s not actually why I started reading these bios.)
###
Capote could write! He had a natural ear for the innate rhythm of a sentence, which is actually more important than the sense of a sentence. But he was kind of an idiot savant in that he was not particularly smart, and that meant there were only a limited number of things he could write about.
He could write about his childhood: You can load everything fellow Southern Gothicist Carson McCullers ever wrote in a wheel barrel and roll it out to the garden to mulch the potatoes, but Other Voices, Other Rooms continues to move, and even the cloying The Grass Harp has lyrical passages of singular heft.
He could write when someone else laid out all the points on a page and explained how to connect them. I’m inclined to think In Cold Blood’s structure is all Harper Lee though its prose is Capote’s.
But Capote didn’t really have the brain capacity to write about much of anything else.
Hence, when the pressures grew to write something else after the immense success of In Cold Blood, Capote was forced to fall back on writing gossip.
###
There are two very real issues with writing gossip.
First, gossip is other people’s secrets. And people dislike having their secrets broadcast however much they may relish the singular confessional to a therapist or an intimate friend. People consider gossip about themselves a form of betrayal.
Second, gossip has an exceedingly short shelf life.
pinstripe_bindi dropped an amusing anecdote the other day about GenZ & Jackie Kennedy. Trust me! In her day, Jackie-O (yes, darlings, that’s what we called her on account of her marriage to—oh, maybe you had to be there) was bigger than Taylor Swift! But who remembers her now? Only Boomers, and that’s just until their next dementia diagnosis. Does anybody really give a shit that Bill Paley fucked Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller while she was having her period?
No. Because nobody remembers who Bill Paley and Nelson Rockefeller were, and anyway, what’s the big deal about menstrual sex?
So, in the end, all contemporary readers of La Cote Basque or Unspoiled Monsters are left with is very badly written prose.
###
All of Capote’s ultra-rich friends dropped him upon the publication of La Cote Basque, Unspoiled Monsters, and the other two chapters of his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. (Brilliant title, by the way.)
Capote still had plenty of friends left, but they didn’t have enough money to matter. So he had to drink and drug until he could die of liver failure.
A brilliant career move, Gore Vidal called Truman Capote’s death.
###
Anyway.
It is just as grey, forbidding, & cold today as it was yesterday.
I tried to go tromping yesterday & lasted less than a mile because Cold! Grey! Forbidding! This sucks!
I put my miles in on the stationary bike while watching the new Mr. Monk Solves a Murder While Acting Crazy made-for-TV movie.
I cannot recommend it!
It is simply unnerving to see Tony Shalhoub & Natalie looking so old.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-30 07:50 pm (UTC)Also, I did not know that about Thomas Kincade; you're right: that's a genius move. Who could have known.
... Okay but now I'm thinking of someone kidnapping a famous artist and bleeding him and then infusing the famous artist's blood into their own paintings as a long-game attempt to raise their mediocre art's valuation. Something something vampirism something something talent. (actually, just typing that out, I realize it would be a boring movie. Oh well.)
no subject
Date: 2024-01-30 07:58 pm (UTC)With Jeremy Allen White as the Picasso clone! 😀
no subject
Date: 2024-01-30 08:03 pm (UTC)There has to be SOMEone who wants to produce this!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-30 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-30 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 05:40 pm (UTC)And now I'm even more convinced there was some sort of wicked pact involved in his popularity.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 06:52 pm (UTC)I will confess to a certain sneaking affection for the artwork of Thomas Kinkade. Those cottages look so cozy! 😀