This is the third of George Plimpton's "oral biographies", and the most entertaining. The subtitle is "In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career", which means Plimpton has gathered the juiciest - and in some cases the sourest - gossip available about this diminutive Southern, homosexual novelist, social climber, loyal friend and implacable enemy, and self-proclaimed inventor of the "non-fiction novel". Certainly In Cold Blood, Capote's account of the murder of a Kansas family and the subsequent trial and execution of the two killers, is a superb achievement. The book made him extremely rich and extremely famous, two conditions to which he had aspired all his life, but it could not prevent - in fact, may have speeded up - the sad decline into drink and loneliness of his final years. Plimpton has done a superb job of editing the reminiscences of Capote's wide circle of friends and enemies into a shocking, funny, and curiously moving account of a life that flared and fell like a roman candle.
John Banville