1 SEPTEMBER 1984, Page 34

High life

Truman

Taki

I've rarely heard Gianni Agnelli, that most charismatic and charming of men, sound sadder over the telephone. We spoke last Sunday and it was the chairman of Fiat who informed me of Truman Capote's death. Gianni is no humbug. He had every right to feel sad. After all, he was among the few of Truman's powerful friends who didn't turn against him after excerpts of the most famous unfinished work appeared in Esquire about eight years ago. The excerpts aroused a furore among the rich and privileged because many of them thought they recognised themselves in the book's scandalous chronicle of their life. Well, all I can say is that it was the other way round. The ones who howled the loudest were the ones who could not recognise themselves however hard they tried. Ironically, the three main characters were composites of Babe Paley, Anne Woodward, and Nelson Rockefeller, none of whom made too much of what was called by the parasites among them the betrayal of the century. I remember the furore well. Truman had made it very clear that he felt his only capital was his past experience of life. And that resenting the fact that a writer dips into his assets was like resenting the fact that a rich man spends his money. (Just as ironically, most of his rich critics were the type known in France as vivre a droite et voter a gauche.) Needless to say, Capote didn't mind at all about his soi disant loss of friends among the rich and. famous. It was the press that played that particular angle tiP. Well, all I can say is it was par for the course. After all, what else is the prCSS good for except to get it wrong where writing is concerned. The unkindest cut of all, I thought, was that in later Years Capote was always portrayed as a man Who turned to drink and dope following the closing of ranks by the very rich. All I can say to that is a composite word not suited to appear in the Spectator except in the column immediately following mine. Ca; pote, like most writers in general, an southern American writers in particular, drank and doped from the start. His earliest novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, and many of his short stories were in the mainstream of southern literature a haunted narrative poem about a h°Y moving through a Gothic childhood. (The American South produces writers writing about the tortures of childhood like Cali- fornia produces tennis players and hip pies.) And his childhood was certainly rt, Gothic tale of terror. His mother locker; him up in a room for long periods arw, made it clear to him that she bathe

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him. She later committed suicide after div- . orcing his father. I guess it doesn't take a $1,000-per-hour Beverly Hills shrink to see that perhaps his childhood had something to do with his self-destructive streak once he had become famous.

And famous — as well as extremely

bitchy he was. After I got into trouble recently he rang me and assured me that it would all blow over one day. I wasn't so sure — and still am not — but he insisted that the writing is what lasts. Not the scandals. I only hope he was right. Which he was most of the time. As far as I'm concerned, in fact, Truman should be appreciated by lovers of books if only for his definition of the stream of conscious- ness way of novel-writing. 'It's typing, not Writing,' was the way he explained the

Phenomenon during its heyday in the early Sixties.

His bitchiness, of course, was legendary. When David Susskind, a nice man, inter- viewed him on television and indiscreetly asked him if he had ever made love to a woman; Truman declined to answer. But a. fterwards, at Elaine's with 20 pairs of Indiscreet ears listening, he told us how the only woman he had ever made love to was Mrs David Susskind. His fights with Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer I always sus- Pected were not for real, although he did remark once that the only thing wrong with Gore is the fact that he goes to sleazy massage parlours. He was a farceur, but not a poseur, and he saw through most of the humbug in today's revolting world. When I spoke to him about the mess I'd got myself into, he told me about the Ferraro woman, and how phony she is. It seems that she was known as Mrs Zaccaro until 1978, when she first ran and was elected to Congress. She changed her name because she knew that Zaccaro Meant slum dwelllings and low dealings, not because — as the media believe — she Trumananted to honour her mother and father.

knew, because he, too, had Changed his name. And for the same reason as Ferraro. Shame for his family.