A few biographers or memoirists have treated him well. Both John Malcolm Brinnin in
Sextet: T. S. Eliot and Truman Capote and Others (1981) and
Dear Heart, Old Buddy (1986) and Gerald Clarke in
Truman Capote (1988) present a balanced view of the writer (although Vidal gratuitously attacks Clarke's truthfulness in research). Brinnin and Clarke characterize Capote as a complex, charming, volatile, and emotional man who evoked strong feelings in those who knew him. On the other hand, writer Donald Windham and artist Andy Warhol--friends at first and later enemies of Capote--like Vidal, maliciously attack Capote for everything from his appearance to his writing. Warhol even asserts that Jack Dunphy, Capote's longtime lover, probably wrote some of his material. (A quick scan of Dunphy's writings should be enough to convince any reader of the ludicrousness of the charge.) Two relatives of Capote's produced a type of "as told to" reminiscences of the writer's childhood. The earlier book, Marie Rudisill's (with James C. Simmons)
Truman Capote: The Story of His Bizarre and Exotic Boyhood by an Aunt Who Helped Raise Him, published in 1983, horrified and dismayed him. Not only did he reject it as untruthful, but so did his aunt Mary Ida Carter and his childhood friend Harper Lee, author of
To Kill A Mockingbird (1965).
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