Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career.

If the latest biography of Truman Capote downplays the legendary author's literary contributions and focuses on his life among the rich and famous, it's by design: Author George Plimpton knows that, like Capote himself, we want dessert first. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career constructs a careful portrait of the child genius, the author of the best-sellers Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, and the sad, drunken caricature that Capote became. But it soars when its famous cast of characters evoke the occasionally terrible man they all loathed and admired and the often awful things he did during his lifetime.

Plimpton employs the oral-biography format he made famous with previous books on Robert Kennedy and Edie Sedgwick, drawing his reader into an ersatz cocktail party where an the guests attempt to outdo one another with "I knew Truman" stories. But while his contemporaries are doing the talking, it's Capote's inimitably squeaky voice that resounds throughout the book's nearly 500 pages.

Norman Mailer, who once called Capote the best writer of his generation, is among those who recall the author's very gay life. Others remember his long relationship with his lover Jack Dunphy and his sad romance with academic Newton Arvin. His cousin reveals that after Capote achieved fame family members prevented him from moving back to his hometown of Monroeville, Ala., fearing that he'd bring his gay friends with him.

Plimpton's powerful interviews--with such luminaries as Gore Vidal, Lauren Bacall, Liz Smith, and Lee Radziwill--provide both a cacophony of famous voices and an unnerving number of contradictions. There are several versions of how Capote and Dunphy met and differing accounts of how he responded to his mother's death. But even with all this weighing in, the story on Capote is far from complete: Despite a longish section on his groundbreaking true-crime "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood, cover age of Capote's writing career is modest, and his stint as a playwright in the early '50s is all but passed over.

Still, there are fascinating revelations about Capote's elaborate love life. One comrade recalls that Capote was in love with handsome Perry Smith, one of the murderers he depicted in In Cold Blood; still another asserts that the pair were lovers. And Andreas Brown opines that Capote wrote the bitchy Answered Prayers--an unfinished novel in which he skewered many of his high-society friends--in retribution for the death of his mother, who ruined her life over her obsession with the rich and famous.

Almost all of Capote's cohorts abandoned him after Esquire published excerpts from Answered Prayers, and he sought solace in drugs and drink, habits that chased Dunphy off too and eventually killed Capote. Before his death he confided in gal pal Joanne Carson that, regarding his wildly prevaricated life, "if that's not the way it was, that's the way it should have been." With no apologies to Capote, Plimpton and company have set the record straight.

RELATED ARTICLE: the tube

Biography. "Truman Capote: The Tiny Terror" (A&E, premieres December 17, check local listings) Reviewed by Robert L. Pela

Fans can treat themselves to a double dose of Truman Capote this month: A&E's television portrait of the writer serves as a remarkable visual aid to George Plimpton's new biography. Capote often listed homosexuality as one of his shortcomings. But at least he talked about it in an era when no other celebrity did. Dierdre O'Hearn's excellent documentary is as forthright about Capote's gay life as was the man himself.