Most Charismatic #9: Truman Capote

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

The 1950’s and 60’s saw the rise of the Television Author. That person called upon to be the Voice of Literature for the video-numbed masses on talk shows hosted by David Susskind, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and the like. Of course, the writer was supposed to behave like a celebrity– a character– and Truman Capote was very good at it. Here he is on the Tonight Show:

This was a time when literature and writers mattered.

Others such as Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal also embraced the spotlight, but Truman Capote edges them out in our assessment by being a more distinctive character, with a memorable persona and voice (immortalized in two recent movies, one starring Philip Seymour Hoffman). He was, if you will, a stronger, more recognizable brand. With his innovative non-fiction “novel,” In Cold Blood, Capote created a bigger, more noteworthy work. (Which Mailer tried to match, and failed to.)

Truman Capote then takes the #9 spot as a Charismatic American Writer.

NEXT: Also-Rans #3.
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Most Charismatic #13: Gore Vidal

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

WHY are we doing this series about charismatic writers? To show that, at one time in this society, creative writers mattered. They were at the epicenter of society’s debates. One of those figures was Gore Vidal.

An intelligent and glib rich kid from a well-connected family of politicians, Vidal was raised to believe he could be President. Instead he became a novelist and essayist. A competent novelist. A brilliant essayist. At that time– the 1950’s and 60’s– in the wake of Hemingway and other literary giants, “novelist” was one of the most prestigious and valued roles a young man could aspire to. Right after President. The new television age pushed the most articulate and photogenic writers into the media spotlight– Gore Vidal among them.

We’ve made him #13 on our list of Charismatic American Writers.. Here’s his most famous appearance– his argument with William F. Buckley (himself a writer and editor) on national TV during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Contentious campaigns in American politics are not new!

NEXT: Also Rans #1
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Overheard at NPL Combine

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

(Norman Mailer.)
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NOTE: Some stray comments among themselves were inadvertently made by our broadcast team at the New Pop Lit Writers Combine. A partial transcript.
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Mel Diper:  “What I don’t want us doing is smiling. No grinning. No smiling. Notice I never smile when the camera is ON. I’m an expert! I never smile. Never smile. Experts don’t smile.”

Norman Mailer:  “I wouldn’t say I smile, I mean, I’d never say I never smile because I do in fact smile only very rarely, very occasionally but I could never say never categorically that I never smile after all ‘never’ is a term of some fixity some fixed authority some like fecal tangibility and I’d not go there. No. Never. I mean, never in the statement, not the smile.”

Diper:  “I just don’t want us with fixed Howdy Doody grins like the hosts at the Winter Olympics. Grinning like idiots. Katie Couric and the guy. They never stopped smiling! It was a freak show. Scary.”

Mailer:  “Yes, ghoulish, I entirely agree.”

Diper:  “–grins plastered over their faces. Even when snowboarders wiped out, breaking legs or in body casts. Thought  I saw one of them in a body cast anyway. What a crazy sport. Guy in a cast. There they are. The NBC hosts. Grinning! My God! But Couric has had so much plastic surgery all she can do is grin.”

Mailer:  “I look forward to Vidal wiping out on something, as a matter of fact. Or Lillian. Or Mary! Did the Count put up an obstacle course?”

Emily Dickinson:  “You shouldn’t wish bad things on people, Norman. We are all writers. Well, not Mel, but everyone else. The participants.”

Diper:  “Are you prepped and ready, Emily?”

Dickinson:  “Am I ready? In a sense, I’ve always been ‘ready.’ then again, I’ve never been. I am concerned about the large peering glassy objects and the red lights.”

Mailer:  “Cameras, my dear. Cameras! Hon, those are cameras.”

Dickinson:  “I’m not your ‘hon,’ Norman.”

Diper:  “Uh, Norman, nowadays there’s something called ‘mansplaining.’ We’re never supposed to mansplain. Not on camera anyway. So please watch that.”

Mailer:  “The feminists, you mean? Had ’em in my day. Conflicted with them often. Is Emily, I mean, Ms. Dickinson, is she– or let me direct my question to you directly, Emily– I trust I may be allowed to call you Emily? My question is: Are you a proto-feminist? Sorry– an amusing idea.” (Turns to Mel.) “Mel, were you just mansplaining to me about mansplaining?”
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The Macho Fifties

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

In the wake of Ernest Hemingway, who made the idea of the Great American Novelist respectable– even macho– the 1950’s was the heyday of the male American novelist. The decade showcased a score of ambitious new male authors, if no great ones, all pursuing the traditional novel.

Among them, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, James Jones, Norman Mailer, James Michener, J.D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, William Styron, Gore Vidal, and Herman Wouk. At the end of the decade but ably writing about it, J.F. Powers and Richard Yates.

(Throw in playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge; poets from John Berryman to Kenneth Rexroth to the Beats; and short fiction writers like Truman Capote, and the list becomes more impressive.)

The role of novelist was thought of not as an effete pursuit but as masculine as working construction– and as fast a road to celebrity as pop singer or baseball player. A legion of men leaving military service in particular wanted to be novelists. They wanted to be Hemingway.

Not every one of these men can make the tourney brackets.

Should any of them?