Truman Capote: Screenwriter

I enjoy some of Capote's work, but if the rumor mill grinds true it seems that a good many of his tales were highly embroidered if not invented outright. I've always had the feeling that In Cold Blood somehow did him in as a writer. I think he may have discovered that his true metier was journalistic rather than as a novelist per se, and that this was something he had not really anticipated or wanted, and he was never really able to overcome it for the remainder of his life. It seems more than mere coincidence that he never produced another novel-length work after ICB, and that he attempted to essentially resuscitate a somewhat moribund writing career by things like the hoax of Answered Prayers, essentially a roman a clef with a journalistic edge that never came off apart from the aborted couple of chapters printed in Esquire, and the novella Handcarved Coffins (from Music for Chameleons) which was another go at the 'true life' crime genre--and which later research strongly suggests Capote made up from essentially whole cloth, stitching together elements of several murders that the FBI had been involved in investigating.

Could be that the aftereffects of the level of immersion involved in writing ICB--not to mention the storm of controversy in a number of circles, surrounding it--helped to propel Capote into the downward spiral of drugs and drink that led to his untimely demise. By the time of his death he was already well on the way to being known to a generation more as a figure on the jet-set partygoing circuit than as a distinguished writer, which was particularly sad.