498 ARTS AND LETTERS

change in his perspective on suffering after the date of his conversion." In

considering The Problem of Pain, a poetic sequence called "Five Sonnets,"
and A Grief Observed, Ward demonstrates how Lewis continued to refiect
upon "the logic of personal relations" in the context of suffering.
The volume ends with a section of five essays on Lewis's creative writing.
David Jasper examines The Pilgrim's Regress and Surprised by Joy; Thomas
Shippey examines the Ransom Trilogy; Jerry Walls examines The Great
Divorce; Alan Jacobs examines The Chronicles ofNamia; and Peter Schäkel
examines Till We Have Faces. Finally Malcolm Cuite provides an essay on
Lewis as poet and explores his controversy with T. S. EHot.
What strikes me most about these essays, written independently of one
another, is the way diat they present a picture of Lewis as a creative scholar
and popular writer who continued to develop in his thought and understand-
ing until die end of his hfe. Those who stul read Lewis statically, without
regard to historical context, will miss how he continued to correct himself as
he grew older. The essays are a pleasure to read for their clear prose. The
authors lay out their own prejudices and make clear those points at which
they take exception with Lewis, while cutting to the heart of the matter in
concise and cogent terms.

AN ODD PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE

MYLES WEBER

In a letter sent from Sicily dated June 24, 1950, Tmman Capote—already
the audior of a notorious first novel and a collection of highly admired short
stories—scolded his high-school friend Phoebe Pierce for being a poor cor-
respondent. "Why are you so silent?" he implored.
Twelve years later Capote—by then the celebrated author of seven books,
two Broadway plays, and three produced screenplays—instructed his for-
mer beau Newton Arvin, "There are certain people with whom one can
be tlie closest and longest and most loving friends—and yet they can quite
quickly drop out of one's hfe forever simply because they belong to some
odd psychological type. A type that only writes when he is written to, that
only telephones when he is telephoned. That is—if one does not write him
or phone one just will never hear from him again." Capote then reported on

William Todd Schultz, Tiny Terror: Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered
Prayers. Oxford University Press, 2011. 208 pages. $17.95.
 ARTS AND LETTERS 499

an experiment he had conducted with Pierce, having decided six years ear-
lier not to contact her unless she contacted him first. She never did. "After
16 years of the closest friendship!" he complained.
Capote's purpose for sharing the results of his experiment was to berate
Arvin for belonging to that same fmstrating group of psychological misfits
who never initiate contact. Far from becoming a self-absorbed celebrity
who shed his less-famous contacts once he hit pay dirt. Capote remained a
loyal friend who resented being given the cold shoulder His sensitivity to
abandonment is central to WilUam Todd Schultz's new "psychobiography"
of the author.
"Psychobiography is not biography," states Schultz, a professor of psychol-
ogy at Pacific University. Whereas biograpby examines tbe "wbat, where,
when, how, and who" of the subject's Ufe, be explains, psycbobiograpby
"zeros in on tbe why." In particular Scbultz attempts to answer why Capote,
as early as 1958, set out to research and write a novel, "Answered Prayers,"
that would skewer the wealthy New York women who had welcomed this
elfin homosexual into their social circle—a book that, upon publication, was
guaranteed to destroy his close friendships with those women.
"There is somediing a Uttle mesmerizing about locating mysteries in
people's Uves, then fleshing these mysteries out and, finaUy, shedding what
intensity of Ught one can on them," Schultz writes. As that presumptuous
passage might suggest, the author's analysis of Capote's motives can at times
become annoying, but for the usual reason astute psychoanalysis is often
annoying—because it is so convincing. Capote "feared closeness, intimacy,
and die vulnerabiUty occasioned by seeking out love, because these things,
from his earUest chilcUiood, ended in rejection or abandonment," asserts
Schultz before adding, quite plausibly, diat the noveUst kept the poison-
ous book project in reserve as the ultimate weapon should Gloria Vander-
bilt. Babe Paley, Diana Vreeland, or Capote's other swans consider turning
him out. But why pubUsh the three extant chapters of a book be would
never finisb, and at a time wben Capote was stiU on good terms witb tbese
women? Scbultz cites a "hyperactivating strategy" of preventive abandon-
ment: Capote "set café society on flre in order not to get burned." Capote's
act of Uterary arson thereby spared bim the pain of rejection: "He wasn't
abandoned. He wasn't a victim. He was a victimizer." Once bis victims retal-
iated. Capote predictably found bimself banisbed from café society.
Authors of forthcoming books in the Oxford University Press's Inner Lives
series, of which Schultz is the editor, plan to analyze the science-fiction
noveUst PhiUp K. Dick, the pop musician John Lennon, and—inevitably—
Sigmund Ereud. But Schultz called dibs on what is probably the best mate-
rial. "Capote's early Ufe provides us a near-perfect grapb for any student
of Freud wbo predicts tbat a disastrous adultbood is tbe aU but inevitable
result of a miserable cbildbood," writes Reynolds Price in introducing tbe
postbumous Complete Stories of Truman Capote (2004). Tbe tbemes of
500 ARTS AND LETTERS

Capote's published writing bear this out. Schultz offers a brilliant reading
of die early short story "Miriam" (1945), in which a ghostlike child exacts
revenge on a middle-aged woman who refuses to assume parental respon-
sibility for the girl. Schultz attempts to enter furdier into Capote's psyche
dirough In Cold Blood (1966); Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), Capote's
truncated bildungsroinaii; and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), in which Holly
Cohghdy gives the autobiographical narrator an implausible account of her
ovwi childhood, consisting of "swimming and summer, Christmas trees,
pretty cousins and parties." This is not at all what one expects from an indi-
gent orphan married off by age fourteen. "But really, darhng," Holly explains
to Capote's alter ego, "you made such a tragedy of your chüdliood I didn't
feel I should compete."
Schultz returns repeatedly to four anecdotes drawn from what Capote
called his "ghastly" upbringing in Monroeville, Alabama, where his divorced
mother dumped him widi relatives, whue in New York City she pursued a
wealthy man to become her second husband. The young Truman was some-
times locked in a hotel room, we are told; a babysitter abandoned him at
the zoo when two lions escaped from their cage and pandemonium ensued;
diagnosed as slow by his teachers. Capote vindicated himself by acing an i.Q.
exam; and, having submitted a gossip-filled article to the Mobile Press-Reg-
ister newspaper, die adolescent Capote scandalized his hometown residents
by spilling their secrets in print. "Here again," Schultz notes of one of die
episodes, "it's hard to know, maybe impossible, if the scene really happened.
But it doesn't matter, if it's psychologically tme."
Maybe it does matter. If we are to accept Schultz's assertion that Capote
later "reenacted dynamics from early on"—using his rich swans as stand-
ins for his hateful modier and "Answered Prayers" as the second install-
ment of his "Old Mr. Busybody" newspaper series—it would help to know
with certainty wlietlier die early events in question actually occurred—or
whether tlie mature Capote, knowing a little about Freudian theory him-
self, invented childhood episodes that neatly explained or even justified his
pernicious adult behavior. Such certainty eludes Schultz, who never met
his subject: he rehes entirely on Capote's interviews and published writing,
and on tlie Capote biographies written by Gerald Clarke (1988) and Ceorge
Phmpton (1997). To his credit Schultz recognizes die hmitations of his own
mediods. "My aim is to make Capote's hfe story 'cohere'—to the degree
anyone's really coheres," he sensibly notes. "Life is blurry; personality, too."
Competing theories therefore abound. Schultz himself suggests that,
far from attacking a group of substitute mothers, the author of "Answered
Prayers" may have been avenging Nina Capote, a suicide who had obses-
sively tried to shoehorn her way into high society but never quite made it.
"He 'lcQled' the people who 'killed' his mother," Schultz explains. Or, sug-
gests the psychobiographer. Capote may have simply tired of the frivoHty
of his New York friends: playing die role of a young court jester was no
 ARTS AND LETTERS 501

doubt Fun For a while, but being stuck in diat role in middle age might have
seemed pathedc—so why not chuck it all in a blaze oFpubHeity? Friends oF
Capote's quoted in Plimpton's biography, on die other hand, suggest that
tlie celebrated author was merely desperate to keep his Hterary work in die
pubHc eye, even iF tlie Fallout From pubHeadon should prove disastrous—
and even iF the wridng wasn't very good. "He knew he was in terrible shape
mentally and physically," Schultz reports. "He was dmnk and dmgged up
more days than not."
I should think Capote's largely incoherent condidon From the late 1960s
until his death in 1984 would make psyehobiographical analysis oF diis kind
impossible. "It was disastrous. And to me, inexpHcable," intoned WilHam
Styron about Capote's decision to pubHsh in the November 1975 issue oF
Esquire the most oFFensive excerpt From "Answered Prayers": "La Côte
Basque, 1965." "There's something there diat defies analysis," concurred
John O'Shea, one in a series oF Capote's unlikely beaux From die period. "I
can't pretend to possess all tlie answers—diat's Far too much to ask oF psy-
chobiography," Schultz concedes. "But I can recommend a Few oFthe better
vistas, a way oF seeing what Capote was up to, whedier he knew it himselF
or not." But there's the rub.
"What do they tefl us?" Schultz uldmately asks oF the three oFFending
excerpts. "They tell us, first oFF, that Answered Prayers was an exeeecHngly
bitchy, nasty, corrosive work, with no precursors in Capote's oeuvre." That's
not precisely tme. In The Muses Are Heard (1956), Capote's account oFhis
travels in the Soviet Union widi the cast oF Porgy and Bess (a book Schultz
chooses not to "unpack" here). Capote mercilessly ridicules Marina Sulz-
burger and Mrs. Ira "Lee" Gershwin, diemselves women oF some stature.
The next year, in his New Yorker profile "The Duke in His Domain," Capote
portrays Marlon Brando as a selF-absorbed dimwit, triggering die actor's
wrath. Like die ladies oF New York caFé society, Brando Felt he had been
trieked by a purported Friend into eonFessing private matters. And even
as early as Other Voices, Other Rooms, the author was telHng tales out oF
school: he modeled a lesbian character, Idabel, on a childhood Friend who
fiercely guarded her privacy, the Future noveHst Harper Lee.
That said, one cannot accuse Sehultz oF shirking on his research. He cov-
ers a great deal oF material in a relatively short book. Still he admits diat
convendonal biographers "do not leave many stones unturned," while he
readies a justification For his own glaring omissions, sinee psychobiogra-
phers, he notes, do leave stones unturned—on purpose. "They selectively
set their sights on some Facets oF the HFe above others," he explains. The
most glaring omission here is Sehultz's Failure even to consider Music for
Chameleons (1980), die only book Capote completed aFter tlie "Answered
Prayers" debacle and a work diat has become oddly invisible. "In Cold Blood
inade Tmman Capote die most Famous writer in America. He never finished
anodier book," reads the movie screen—inaccurately—^just beFore the clos-
502 ARTS AND LETTERS

ing credits of Bennett Miller's film Capote (2005). Douglas McGratb's com-
peting bio-film. Infamous (2006), comes closer to tbe truth wben Peter
Bogdanovicb, playing tbe editor Bennett Cerf, states of Capote: "He never
wrote anytbing big again. Just coflections, fragments pulled togetber." But
Music for Chameleons was a surprisingly unified work of previously uncol-
lected material, most of it composed during montbs of relative sobriety in
1979. And it spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestsefler list. In
otber words it was not a liapbazard footnote to Capote's career; instead it
was something substantial. "Music for Chameleons had been tbe product of
a supreme, almost beroic feat of concentration," wrote Gerald Clarke in bis
biograpby. Capote, be claimed, "bad wanted to make one last effort to sbow
wbat be could do wben be put bis mind to it." After succeeding witb that
final collection. Capote surrendered fufly to bis demons. "Let me go," be
responded to friends who were issuing warnings about bis excessive drink-
ing and drug use. "I want to go."
It may be asking too mucb to expect Scbultz to incorporate a fufl account
of Capote's temporary resurgence—botb personal and literary—in bis analy-
sis of tbe autbor's decline and self-destruction. Psycbobiograpbers, as you
migbt expect, accentuate tbe negative. But we are left to wonder wbetber
Capote, at tbe time be submitted tbe "Answered Prayers" excerpts to
Esquire, believed tbe ensuing broubalia would be only temporary and tbat
he could eventually move on from tbe distraction. He clid move on, but only
briefly.
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