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Tiny Terror

Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered Prayers
by William Todd Schultz
Tiny Terror: Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered Prayers. Oxford Univ. (Inner Lives). Apr. 2011. c.190p. ISBN 9780199752041. $17.95. LIT
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In this amalgam of literary criticism and psychological insight on the life and work of Truman Capote, Schultz (psychology, Pacific University; editor, Handbook of Psychobiography) focuses on Capote's last, unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, a searing roman à clef, which, after Capote authorized excerpts to be published in Esquire magazine, left him estranged from his "swans"—the high-society women who were formerly his most loyal friends and supporters. Using the technique of psychobiography, i.e., referring to selected biographical details to look at the why rather than the who and what, Schultz draws convincing evidence from Capote's life and written work to form a plausible theory of why he would create such a vindictive and self-destructive work of art.
VERDICT This book will be most useful to those with academic and or historical interests in American literature, psychology, queer studies, or popular culture. There may also be a more general secondary audience among readers of Capote's fiction.
Reviewed by Alison M. Lewis, Coll. of Information Science & Technology, Drexel Univ., Philadelphia , Apr 15, 2011
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