So famous and so gay: the fabulous potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein PDF
Preview So famous and so gay: the fabulous potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein
So Famous and So Gay This page intentionally left blank So Famous and So Gay The Fabulous Potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein Jeff Solomon University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance provided for the publication of this book by the Office of the Dean, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California. An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as “Young, Effeminate, and Strange: Early Photographic Portraits of Truman Capote,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 6, no. 3 (2005): 293– 326; reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis. An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “Capote and the Trillings: Homophobia and Literary Culture at Mid- Century,” Twentieth- Century Literature 54, no. 2 (2009): 129– 65. An earlier version of chapter 3 was published as “Gertrude Stein, Opium Queen: Notes on an Unlikely Embrace,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 17, no. 1 (2013): 7– 24; and as “Broadly Queer and Specifically Gay: The Celebrity and Career of Gertrude Stein,” in Literary Careers in the Modern Era, ed. Guy Davidson and Nicola Evans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); reprinted with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. Copyright 2017 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu ISBN 978-0-8166-9679-6 (hc) ISBN 978-0-8166-9682-6 (pb) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Prologue Beneath the Mask vii Introduction Stein and Capote in Theory 1 Part I. truman CaPote: “Here Was tHIs LIttLe Creature” 1. Young, Effeminate, and Strange The Debut of Truman Capote 25 2. Capote, Forster, and the Trillings Homophobia and Literary Culture at Midcentury 53 Part II. Gertrude steIn: a FurtHer order oF stranGe 3. Gertrude Stein, Opium Queen Notes on a Mistaken Embrace 83 4. Gertrude Stein in Life and TIME A Respectable Commodity 115 5. Three Lesbian Lives A Map of Same- Sex Passion 139 Coda Janet Malcolm and Woody Allen Adrift in the Past 203 Acknowledgments 209 Notes 213 Index 257 This page intentionally left blank ProLoGue Beneath the Mask Get a Dog By February 1949, Truman Capote was ready to leave the country. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, had been a great success of 1948, and his first book of short stories, A Tree of Night, was now in stores. His celeb- rity, which he had nursed carefully, was secure. His personal life was not. His new boyfriend, Jack Dunphy, might have been sent by central casting as the “manly” lover of a young, effemi- nate gay man. Dunphy had about ten years on Capote and was a soli- tary man with craggy features, red hair, and a tough, working- class Irish background and manner. He also had creative authority; his first novel, John Fury (about a tough, working- class Irishman), had received good notices, and he had supported himself as a dancer on Broadway under Agnes de Mille. Usually, this last detail would make his masculinity suspect, but Dunphy was an unambitious dancer who refused solos; he just wanted to make a buck. Even better for Capote, Dunphy had identi- fied as straight until recently and was fresh from a divorce from Joan McCracken, a dancer and actress known for a star turn in Oklahoma! Capote thus could “win” a man from an iconic American girl. In part to escape the press of celebrity, which distracted him from his writing, and in part to offer Dunphy a free trip and thus secure the relationship, Capote planned an extended stay abroad.1 Among those he said goodbye to was John Malcolm Brinnin. Capote and Brinnin had become friends in 1946, when both were artists in resi- dence at Yaddo, a distinguished arts colony; Brinnin, also gay, was a poet who taught at Vassar. Later, in 1949, Brinnin would accept a position as director of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association vii Prologue Poetry Center, and in that capacity he would invite poet Dylan Thomas for his first U.S. tour, an experience that would lead to Brinnin’s 1955 biog- raphy, Dylan Thomas in America. At the time of his meeting with Capote, Brinnin had received an advance to write a biography of Gertrude Stein, which would not be completed and published until 1959.2 Brinnin records in his journal that he and Capote began their visit exchanging jokes about Capote’s ubiquitous appearances in the “columns of the tabloids,” with Brinnin suggesting that Capote had “planted” the stories about himself for “twenty- five dollars an item.” When Capote af- firmed, “Of course, it’s true,” Brinnin posed a more serious question about Capote’s growing celebrity: “But won’t there come a day when that item called Truman Capote will turn into a public commodity? Won’t the fig- ure begin to take on a life of its own— separate from the person?” This question is the central point of the journal entry, which Brinnin frames by stating that he was “concerned about [Truman] in ways I’d not yet had a chance to express.” Nonetheless, Capote remained confident, even defiant— “So what? I know who I am.” Brinnin parries with an anecdote: “That’s what Gertrude Stein thought. Then when she became famous, she wasn’t so sure. ‘I am because my little dog knows me,’ she told herself, but it didn’t do. ‘That doesn’t prove anything about me,’ she said, ‘it only proves something about the dog.’ Truman, you don’t even have a dog.” After joking about Capote’s lack of even a pet to keep hold of a true sense of self, Brinnin drove his friend to Dunphy’s place, and Capote circled back to the great modernist: “ ‘What you were saying about Gertrude Stein . . .’ says Truman. ‘Who except pedants ever knew about her until she made herself famous? It wasn’t the work that did it. . . . Can you honestly say you know anyone who’s read Tender Buttons through? The thing that made her famous was the story of the work and all that went with it. It may be a sad commentary, one you academics have trouble ac- cepting, but people are people.’ ” As he was dropped off, in the pounding rain, at a tenement door, Capote offered a farewell that was also a final response to his friend’s earlier concerns: “ ‘This is it,’ he says. ‘Don’t fret about me, just don’t forget me.’ ”3 People Are People I knew Truman Capote was gay before I knew he was a writer. Or before I knew who he was. Or before I knew what “gay” was. Or before I knew I was gay. viii Prologue I first saw him on television, when I flipped into the movie Murder by Death. The movie came out in 1976, but this was later. I was seven or eight, too young to stay up past 9:00, so I must have watched it during the day. I doubt that I watched from the beginning, but even if I had, I would have been lost, as the movie depends upon knowledge that I lacked. Caricatures of Charlie Chan (and son), Hercule Poirot (and chauffeur), Miss Marple (and nurse), Sam Spade (and secretary), and Nick and Nora Charles (and terrier) come to the home of Lionel Twain, played by Truman Capote. Murder will be served with dinner, and the detective who solves it will earn one million dollars. Who gets murdered at mid- night? Twain himself. Then the blind butler is killed. Then the deaf- mute cook, who was actually a dummy. But Twain is not dead! But he is! But the butler is not dead! But he is! And so on.4 My fascination was immediate and ardent. I needed to see the movie again— but how? I did not know the movie’s name— or if I did, I soon for- got. I searched in the helpless, hapless way that children negotiate the big world. I could not explain what I wanted, and I could not find it in the TV Guide. We did not own a VCR and would not for years. All I could do was watch TV and wait. I did not see the movie again for a good twenty years— and when I did, I could not get past the first few minutes, which were bad. Not campy bad, or interesting bad, but boring bad. As Capote in the 1940s and ’50s is the focus of my research, I spared myself and did not watch the movie properly until I was almost finished with this book. At a conference presentation of parts of chapter 2, I was asked how I first got interested in Capote. I said I had no idea; he had always been in my head. Later, my boyfriend reminded me of Murder by Death, which I must have mentioned sometime, though neither he nor I remem- ber when. Okay then. Roll credits. I was surprised and alarmed to learn that the movie was written by Neil Simon. My first gay aesthetic experience came from Neil Simon, the king of middlebrow stage and screen, whose reign lasted longer than the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations combined? Simon’s star is in eclipse now, and he never had much (if any) elite cred, but the 1970s and early ’80s were spangled with his plays and the movies made from his plays and screenplays, and the awards they all won. I was also impressed by the strength of the cast of Murder by Death— but my seven- year- old self would not have cared. So what did I remember, and what now struck a chord?5 I remembered the movie’s best pun, when Sidney Wang— played by ix
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