In his upcoming memoirs, Gore Vidal calls his crony/rival/fellow Great Writer Truman Capote a "marvelous liar" who "lived for gossip."  Last year's Oscar-winning film, frankly, doesn't paint him in much better of a light--suggesting, as many have, that the elfin, bespectacled, squeaky voiced lil' jinx manipulated just about everyone and everything to write In Cold Blood.  Verdict's still out on how good ol' Tru comes across in this year's star-studded biopic.

You know what? It doesn't matter.  When someone writes the way Capote did--as no one else ever could--you can quibble all you want over his megalomania, superficiality or ethical flaws.  I enjoy sussing that stuff out too.  But the books, stories etc that he's left behind . . . they'll be read til time immemorial.  Here's what I had to say a while back about his recovered first book Summer Crossing.  As long as he didn't commit those Clutter murders himself, Tru will still have me as a fanboy.

Twenty-plus years after his death, Truman Capote looms large. An Oscar-nominated biopic has reignited interest in this rather inscrutable genius, but the best way to understand and celebrate Capote is to read him. The recent discovery and publication of Summer Crossing, then, is an historic boon. Handwritten in notebooks by an obscure, 19-year-old Tru and misplaced for over half a century, this is far more than auction-block memorabilia—it is a debut that literally took my breath away. Even as a teen, he wrote in prose that effervesced with timeless wit and beauty. His youth shows in his empathy for teenaged protagonist Grady McNeil, a beautiful Manhattan socialite aching to rebel against her moneyed, airless world. Left alone for the first time one summer, Grady plunges into an intense affair with a man from the wrong side of the tracks. This triggers a chain of events both exhilarating and cataclysmic—a tragic, heartbreaking romp still ringing in my ears months later. Like Grady, I lost myself in vibrant, dangerous mid-century Manhattan: breakfast at the Plaza (not Tiffany’s), a seedy downtown jazz club, Times Square at night. I finished this rediscovered classic with the same please-don’t-let-this-end euphoria as our heroine. Thank you, Tru.