Customer Reviews

Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This dazzlingly scandalous unfinished novel could only have come from the pen of Truman Capote. He pokes fun at world famous celebrities, some of whom P.B. Jones, an aspiring writer of great promise, mixes it up with. In his adventures, Jones also falls under the influence of con men, drug and alcohol abusers and those of ill and near ill repute.

Forced to support himself financially, P.B. Jones must temporarily resort to hustling and other slightly more socially acceptable activities. Jones learns about a low-life, but physically attractive, young woman who marries, then allegedly murders, a naive son of a millionaire, only to get away with the crime because his parents do not want to blacken their name. Jones, himself, is requested to get involved in kidnapping and homicide by a woman who had married into a monied family. One woman, who fancies herself an animal lover, gains some noteriety by shooting a man who kills a white leopard.

Mr. Capote supposedly lost the friendships of a number of prominent people whom he so casually reveals conversations that were never meant to be displayed on the printed page. While some may deplore Mr. Capote's disloyalty to these individuals, it makes for some dishy fun reading about their ex-husbands, their scandalous love affairs, and other such dirty laundry, including badly defiled bed sheets. Such is the down side of fame.

_Answered Prayers_ is oftentimes very funny (the portion starring Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead is a scream) and sometimes very, very naughty. This book occasionally borders on the pornographic. I doubt very much that if Mr. Capote had completed his supposed magnum opus that the critics would have considered it great art. There is nothing in these pages that suggests any such potential. But as fly on the wall eaves dropping and "fictonalized" reportage (as what one might read in The Star or in Cindy Adams's columns) it is never boring.

To read this odd book is to get a real look at Truman Capote at the end of his life. Capote was vain, bitchy, narcissistic, but alas the profoundly weird old queen was fascinating. He was truely unique, he made himself a superstar, he willed it so, this man was nakedly ambitious, he makes Trump look like a piker. This book ruined him and probably led to increased alcoholism, that ultimatly caused his death at sixty. When he wrote an excert of this book in a top magazine of the day, he became persona non grata among the brahman class of New York. This was Capote's own personal hell. It shows his arrogance and narcissism that he did not see that a book like this would make these people close ranks and ostracize him, he was stunned that they stopped taking his calls and dropped him from their party lists, they broke his heart and frankly I'm sure the parties were considerable less amusing with Truman gone. In this book you see in Capote a really unhappy man, that relished in the misfortune of others, but having said that I do find his dish very interesting, what does that say about me, lol. I believe that after he became a sensation after the great In Cold Blood, he really was paralized, he knew people expected another book of singular greatness, I think this absolutely destroyed him and he was so desperate that he conceived this ill advised book, it makes you understand why Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger never published a book after their masterpieces, Truman should have looked to his childhood friend Lee as an example, but he could not resist the spotlight and he wanted that feeling of adulation again. I recommend this book, it is not Capote's best work, of course, but it is something of a memoir and you get an unflinching look at this complex man.

Although "Answered Prayers" can be read as dated since most of it's "characters" live in the 1960's and 1970's, there is still marvelous prose and stories that pique the interest. Capote had promised to complete several short stories for this tome, but this collection contains only three. All of them are marvels to read, but the last, "La Cote Basque", is a stinging expose of the New York Socialite clique. Not only does Capote mention real celebrities, but he also exposes the deepest and darkest secrets of high society with a thin veil. It's no wonder he was ostracized from this egregious group. Some of the events he describes are beyond scandalous, yet witty and viciously funny. He somehow manages to bring the `so-called' social deviants to the same level as the most respected socialites, making it clear that money is the only difference.

The Editor's Note is the most intriguing part of the book, as it describes how Capote managed to promise to produce these stories for years without delivering and obtained millions from the publishers, enabling him to live with a high level of social activity. He was a celebrity as well as an author and a clever, if not conniving man. The biggest tragedy is that so many stories will never be read due to his early alcoholic induced death. Still, these three stories are inspired gems.

First of all, let me say this: I am a Truman Capote fanatic, an absolute Truman Capote maniac. I read "Answered Prayers" when I was in the 11th grade, and I was so angry that he died before he could finish it. I devour Capote's work as though it were an edible delicacy, or as though it were a lunar eclipse, something that is so incredibly rare, something to be cherished by all. I love "Answered Prayers" because it is like a man spilling secrets about his high-class, muckety-muck friends. Damaging secrets, secrets that we all knew they would refute, though we knew they were true. Secrets like Montgomery Clift's homosexuality. This book was rather vulgar, depicting Capote's wilder side, the Capote side that rages like a forest fire, rages unchecked. Read this book, do yourself a favor, read this book.

~Steven Harvey

"Answered Prayers" is written as a collection of loosely connected short stories, some of them better than others. Because the book has no ending, the stories kind of hang in the air by themselves, leaving fragmented memories. I thought about Hemingway's collections of stories when reading "Answered Prayers". Observations of life in different colors... The language is superb. One cannot help thinking what the end of the book could have been if Capote cared to finish it.

Capote's unfinished work is definitely worth reading but read his other stuff first. It takes a seasoned Capote fanatic to really enjoy this book. It is a shame that he never finished it. After reading "Kate McCloud" I could not wait to find out what would happen next, but I guess no one will ever know. And we all want to read La Cote Basque 1965 to get the real dirt.

But the truth is that Capote was indeed a gifted writer who left us very little to read. So take it all in, even these "tell all" stories that have less significance than his earlier work.

Capote tells us many stories in ANSWERED PRAYERS...the story of the Upper East Side lawyer who whores himself to pay his son's way at Exeter, the new wife who murders her husband for fear of losing the money into which she's married, and the hauntingly beautiful Kate McCloud, the toast of St. Moritz, who plots to kidnap her child from her new husband, whom she rightfully suspects is trying to kill her. It is also the story of Capote's dark doppleganger, P.B. Jones, and the self-loathing hue in which he paints his life in episodes of both tremendous scandal and surprising pathos. The greatest story, however, the one with which this fragment tantalizes the reader, is the story of a man and a separate society whose worse fate was to have every prayer they ever offered up answered, in spades. Answered Prayers is the novel Truman Capote never finished, but the one his most ardent fans wish he had finished, above all others. Also highly recommended: THE CHILDREN'S CORNER by Jackson McCrae.

In my opinion, the first chapter of this book, 'Unspoiled Monsters' is superb and worthy of anyone's attention that is interested in Capote. The following two chapters are less focused, and while they are at times memorable, they come off more as a nasty, grotesque end-note to the author's glittery life amongst the literati and heterosexual rich.
This book is worth owning to complete your Capote collection, but don't expect too much.

Nowhere is the waste of Truman Capote's later life and talent more obvious than in these fragments of the novel that, according to the author, was to be his "masterpiece." (Always beware of writers who claim masterpiece status for works they have not actually managed to write.) Far gone on alcohol and drugs at the time, Capote was unable to bring this ambitious work to completion---but based on these bits and pieces,it is difficult to imagine that, had he finished it, the novel would have had much merit other than as a bestseller of the H. Robbins-J. Susann glitzy/trashy variety. Occasional passages of real beauty are undone by frightening lapses in style and taste, unlikely plotting, and silly gossip stories about the once-famous. On a talk show Capote once said he felt that publishing these excerpts was "a form of suicide." He was right. Those who are tantalyzed by what "might have been" in this case are naive: Capote gives us quite enough to show what would have been, and why, most likely, he chose never to finish it. This book has little value as fiction, but will be of great fascination to those who wonder what happened to Capote in his later career.

The existing, published chapters of Answered Prayers constitute the most intelligent, edgy and well focused prose in American literature. The stories are dark and intimate, deep confession in the purest American tradition.

Capote took hell for writing these chapters. The doors into society he worked all his life to pry open were slammed shut, as his most famous friends read their lives printed in Esquire, where these works were originally published serially. Detractors that say his stories are innacurate should note this reaction from those he depicted.

Another chapter originally meant for Answered Prayers is Mojave, published in Music for Chameleons, and is excellent as well.