Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, an eight-episode restricted collection from Ryan Murphy and directed by Gus Van Sant, is impressed by Truman Capote’s real-life friendships with the crème de la crème of New York society within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties: “Babe” Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) and Jackie Kennedy’s sister Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart). Capote nicknamed these girls “the swans” and the present follows how Capote went from being an excellent confidante to the author’s very personal swan dive, when he is ostracized for publishing the gossip he learns.

For these tuning in and eager about studying extra concerning the true story that impressed Capote vs. The Swans, under we’ve compiled a listing of books by and about Capote and the socialites.

What to examine Truman Capote

Capote: A Biography

The 2005 film Capote starring Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is predicated on this 1988 biography of the author by former TIME leisure author Gerald Clarke, who spent lots of of hours interviewing Capote. The guide tracks Capote’s rise as a teen alliteration sensation to the ultimate years of his life marred by drug abuse and alcoholism. “It was clear that he wanted to die for a long time,” Clarke mentioned when the guide got here out.

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Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career

As the title suggests, writer George Plimpton crafted his 1997 biography of Capote primarily based on interviews with Capote’s exes, enemies, colleagues, and acquaintances. Among these featured are Lee Radziwill, Lauren Bacall, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, and Kurt Vonnegut. The guide impressed the 2006 film Infamous—which depicts Capote socializing with Babe Paley and Slim Keith—plus there’s additionally a documentary referred to as The Capote Tapes, that includes recordings of Plimpton’s interviews for the guide.

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Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote

Capote biographer Clarke edited this 2004 guide of Capote’s private letters so followers of Feud can see Capote’s Nineteen Sixties in his personal phrases. Because Capote by no means wrote an autobiography, these letters are the closest factor to 1. Note the varied phrases of endearment he used for males and girls, like “lover lamb” and “Blessed plum.”

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What to examine Capote’s “swans”

Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era

Feud is essentially primarily based on this 2021 guide, all about how Capote befriended socialites like Lee Radziwill, Barbara “Babe” Paley, Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest throughout a interval of author’s block within the Nineteen Sixties. Their secrets and techniques and amorous affairs turned materials for his novel Answered Prayers, excerpted in Esquire within the Seventies, and Capote was subsequently banished from the society girls’ orbit.

Buy Now: Capote’s Women on Bookshop | Amazon

Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill

Those who need to learn extra about Jackie Kennedy’s sister Lee Radziwill, featured in Feud, can try biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli’s 2018 guide profiling the socialite, her sister Jackie Kennedy and her mom Janet Lee Auchincloss. The guide reveals how jealous Radziwill was of her sister Jackie’s fame, and traces her life by her three marriages, as her mom Janet urged her daughters to marry the wealthiest males they may discover.

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Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire’s Wife, and the Murder of the Century

Roseanne Montillo’s 2022 guide tracks the dynamic between Capote and Ann Woodward, one of many socialites featured in Feud. The two met in 1956, a few yr after she made headlines for capturing her husband—an accident, she claims, as a result of she thought he was a burglar. Montillo says Capote nicknamed her “Mrs. Bang Bang,” and gossiped about her for years, in the end writing a personality primarily based on her in his well-known story about “the swans” referred to as “La Côte Basque 1965.”

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What to learn by Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The 1958 book is about a call girl named Holly Golightly who lives in an Upper East Side brownstone and befriends a new male neighbor. Whenever she’s sad, she hops in a taxi cab and goes to Tiffany’s. The book was made into an Oscar-winning movie by the same name, starring Audrey Hepburn as Golightly.

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In Cold Blood

Known for perfecting the “nonfiction novel” genre—a book about real people and events told in a narrative style—this 1965 novel focuses on two men who murdered a Kansas family. Capote spent six years writing it, from the murder in 1959 to the hanging of the killers in 1965. But it became controversial because of the way that he befriended the killers in prison and even showed them a manuscript of the book.

Buy Now: In Cold Blood on Bookshop | Amazon

Answered Prayers/”La Côte Basque“

Published in Esquire magazine in 1975, “La Côte Basque” was the first installment of Capote’s planned novel Answered Prayers, and its title is the name of a power lunch spot that New York’s society women frequented, like Lee Radziwill, Gloria Vanderbilt, Babe Paley, and Slim Keith. The women recognized themselves in the text immediately, and Paley was mortified that Capote basically exposed her husband’s infidelity. Capote never finished the novel.

Read Now: Answered Prayers/”La Côte Basque” in Esquire