truman capote is easily the most versatile american author of all time. this time he turns to something perhaps closest to his true nature - gossip. i swam through the filth of his last, unfinished novel with remarkable easiness - it's like reading perez hilton, only masterly written. it's as witty as it is observant and capote to me was a true genius.
honestly, this book was the main focus of my 90-page-long MA thesis so I would be undoing myself by reviewing it like any other book. all i can say is that it is a true harbinger of our times and absolutely must be read!

So yea I watched Feud: Capote vs The Swans and desperately wanted to read Answered Prayers because I was really curious. Here's the thing...the best chapter was the third, Le Côte Basque, and is proabably the most memorable of the 3 chapters that were released from this unfinshed novel. The first chapter, Unspoiled Monsters, was a big chaotic mess. This is probably the best way to describe Truman Capote while he was writing this. It is known that P.B. Jones is based on Capote and this line from chapter 1 to me is the nail in the coffin of his downfall, “And, to be honest, I keep thinking that maybe, if I change most of the names, I could publish this as a novel. Hell, I’ve nothing to lose; of course, a couple of people might try to kill me, but I’d consider that a favor.” It's like he knew this would be the end.

stfu

I love Truman Capote. And I love his self mythology almost as much as his writing. That said, this was a bit of a disaster, and unworthy of being the last book of a man who had a lot of genius. I read a review of this book that said it was written as "his internal editor was collapsing" and that feels super true.

If “he’s too gay” was a book. Отвратителна книга, особено втората част. Третата част ми хареса. Сериалът също.

Too bad that this is an unfinished novel. I could have given this at least 4 stars.

According to Wiki, Capote was not able to finish this novel because he got busy with the stardom In Cold Blood (4 stars) gave him. In 1966, he signed a contract with Random House to write this book with January 1st 1968 as the delivery date. He missed the date and the contract was renegotiated in 1969 with 1973 as the new delivery date. He missed again so it was moved further to 1974. Missed again so on to 1977. Missed again so it was moved to 1981. Then he died of liver cancer in 1984. He was 59 years old.

But he was able to finish these 4 chapters and they got published in Esquire. One of the four, "Mojave" was moved to his earlier book Music for Chameleons (3 stars) and only 3 got compiled in this book that was first published in 1986, the year of his death.

The story revolves around P. B. Jones the 30ish masseur who is also the narrator of the story. Jones is also an aspiring writer so he always looks forward to meeting writers and entertainment personalities. Not contented with his income, he is lured to also sell his body as a male prostitute catering to the needs of rich gays and lonely matrons.

Capote's original plan was to make this book the modern counterpart of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The whole idea was to write his own experiences including the lives of the rich and famous in the high society but changing the names of his characters to protect them. Well, he did that in these 3 chapters and the result, for me, was very promising: the prose is well-written, the exposes are intriguing and the telling is frank and no-holds-barred. I do not know all of these people mentioned in the book except those famous ones whose real names Capote used such these three: here Montgomery Cliff is being touched by the drunk Dorothy Parker and Estelle Winwood is telling Dottie to stop but she continues: "Sensitive. So finely made. The most beautiful young man I've ever seen. What a pity he's a cocksucker."

Kate McCloud (2nd chapter) or Ann Dillon (3rd chapter) are housewives of rich businessmen who they killed apparently to get their inheritance and marry their respective lovers. Well, another reason why Capote was unable to finish this book was that the characters in this book were his friends and upon publication of the stories, they started to stay away from him. An example of this is the chapter "La Cote Basque" that readers are saying to be a resemblance of what happened to Capote's benefactor, CBS Mogul Bill Paley and his wife Babe. Another Wiki entry says that Kate McCloud was in fact a real person who shot her husband in the shower thinking that he was a burglar. She went unpunished, got her inheritance but later killed herself. Their two kids also committed suicide some years later.

These juicy exposes that Capote told in elegant fashion make this book really an entertaining read. Behind the posh and glamour of the American and Parisian societies are stories of prostitution, drugs, alcoholism, deceit and murder. However, the book does not end up like those showbiz gossip magazines, Capote is too brilliant to allow his last book to be like those.

An example is this scene when Woodrow Hamilton is asking P. B. Jones about the novel that the latter is trying to write. Jones says that the title is Answered Prayers.:

WH: "Answered Prayers. A quote. I suppose."

PBJ: "St. Teresa. I never looked it up myself, so I don't know exactly what she said, but it was something like 'More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.'"

WH: "I see a light flickering. This book - it's about Kate McCloud, and gang."

PBJ: "I wouldn't say it's about them - though they're in it."

WH: "Then what is it about?"

PBJ: "Truth as illusion."

WH: "And illusion is truth?"

PBJ: "The first. The second is another proposition."

WH: "How so?"

PBJ: "As truth is nonexistent, it can never be anything but illusion - but illusion, the by-product of revealing artifice, can reach the summits nearer the unobtainable peak of Perfect Truth. For example, female impersonators. The impersonator is in fact a man (truth), until he recreates himself as a woman (illusion) - and of the two, the illusion is the truer."

If that is not brilliant writing, I don't know what it is.

Capote at his best is amazing. This is Capote at his worst. Oh he still knows how to write, by gosh, but it’s all the most annoying parts of Capote‘s writing what with the bitchiness and the name-dropping and being shocking just to be shocking. This was his unfinished novel, of which there are only three chapters ever written. All chapters had been previously published independently as short stories. I found the first chapter unbearable. The second chapter made the main character even more unlikable. The last chapter is the story in which he burned all his bridges with New York society by telling secrets, making nasty insinuations, and basically being the worst friend ever. No wonder society dropped him like a hot potato. I read about that story as published in a magazine in Anderson Cooper’s book about the Vanderbilt family (Gloria Vanderbilt was featured unkindly.) and was curious to read it myself. I feel bad for having done so. The second star is only because Capote is a damn good writer.

This is my favorite Capote book even over Other Voices, Other Rooms. Perhaps because it IS unfinished and shrouded in such mystery, despair, potential, and ultimately dissolution. I reread it every couple years. Was Capote blacklisted because he was telling tales outside of school, or because he revealed the glitterati for what they were, hypocrites and debauches? A novel that raises more questions as it moves to conclusion. Answered Prayers indeed!

I fear this may have not been the best place to start with Truman Capote. This book is filled with name-dropping, slurs, and booze. To the extent where every single page a character is calling their famous literary friend a slur whilst swigging back a gin martini. That's not an over-exaggeration, that literally is the entire book, and it got very tiresome at some points - and I'm a problematic gossip who loves a cocktail! I feel bad criticizing this book too much because the unfinished manuscript was published after Capote died and it was pretty evident he never wanted it to see the light of day (probably because he just shit-talks all his friends in it). Despite all this, I still want to read more Capote as his charm and wit nearly prevailed his relentless back-stabbing.

Between June 1975 and December 1976 an American magazine previewed half a forthcoming Truman Capote book that never materialized: ANSWERED PRAYERS. For the next 36 years only four out of eight proposed chapters were available to the public until another magazine printed the first six manuscript pages of a fifth. Speculation as to the existence and/or whereabouts of the four other phantom chapters has always been rife and conflicting since ANSWERED PRAYERS appeared in the mid-seventies.

If ANSWERED PRAYERS is not as poetic as some of the whimsical pieces Capote published in the forties, it is definitely far more compelling reading. As chilling as `Miriam' and `Master Misery' are, they're not riveting the way the existing chapters of ANSWERED PRAYERS are. I re-read the 1988 Plume imprint I own last night, became totally engrossed, always surprised at just how good it is despite my dislike of many of the hero's traits.

ANSWERED PRAYERS fascinated me since Esquire sold me an issue of their magazine by cleverly printing the first 47 intriguing words of `Mojave' in large point type on the front cover and concluding the story inside. Although unknown at the time `Mojave' (which doesn't appear in this book) was part of a longer work from which Esquire published three more excerpts: `La Cote Basque 1965,' `Unspoiled Monsters,' and `Kate McCloud.' The Editor's Note introduction to ANSWERED PRAYERS---THE UNFINISHED NOVEL explains Capote intended `Mojave' to be the second chapter although he later excised it from the novel. That's why the first few paragraphs of the third chapter `Kate McCloud' are rewritten in ANSWERED PRAYERS---THE UNFINISHED NOVEL; they are significantly different in Esquire's edition when `Mojave' presumably preceded it in the overall narrative.

Assuredly the novel would've been Capote's magnum opus; the gossip column ink devoted to its debut appearances in Esquire eclipsed all the publicity IN COLD BLOOD ever got. Although ANSWERED PRAYERS is unfinished Capote divulged plenty of information about his work-in-progress. First, one can dismiss the idea of the trilogy that Capote was under contract for at one point, all his life he wrote short novels (even IN COLD BLOOD isn't massive) so it's rather doubtful there would be any thousand page versions rolling off the press. Second, forget about all the parallels to Proust babble, certainly the book is tart and gossipy, but I agree with Norman Mailer's assessment that most of the dirt dished was frivolous. ANSWERED PRAYERS is largely concerned with New York café society's vanities, love affairs and, in one instance, a murder. One might be tempted to prejudge it as a rambling study of human foibles, but just try to stop reading once you've started at the beginning: `Unspoiled Monsters.' As mentioned earlier fully half the novel's been published in book and magazine serial form but, in December 2012, Vanity Fair printed the beginning of `Yachts and Things' and that provided a huge key to imagining the completed novel that never was.

Critics who insist the surviving material of ANSWERED PRAYERS is disjointed and without a discernible plot are missing the big picture. It is extremely easy to discern the complete novel's structure and plot after reading every word of ANSWERED PRAYERS that is currently available and paying special attention to the chapter titles in correct sequence. The story would have played out logically on the page based on Capote's original vision of including `Mojave' in his own numbering of the chapters; as well as considering the Esquire versions as the definitive text. From all that can be confirmed Capote intended the finished novel to run in the following order (with the possibility of chapters 4 and 6 being flipflopped):

1. Unspoiled Monsters
2. Mojave
3. Kate McCloud
4. And Audrey Wilder Sang
5. A Severe Insult to the Brain
6. Yachts and Things
7. La Cote Basque 1965
8. Father Flanagan's All-Night N*****-Queen Kosher Café

The single most important aspect Capote revealed, I think, was ANSWERED PRAYERS would be the only work of his with a happy ending. In the last chapter the hero would ostensibly kidnap the child of his lady love away from her evil husband's island, slaying the `monster husband' in the process so they could marry and live happily ever after. More than likely this heroic deed would be accomplished in part by utilizing The Witchcraft ship and crew featured in `Yachts and Things' as getaway car and driver(s).

Capote wrote some of ANSWERED PRAYERS on legal pads at Johnny Carson's ex-wife Joanne's home. She, and three or four others, claimed to have held the actual manuscript pages of `three very long chapters' in hand and read them. The day before he died Capote told her he stowed the unpublished chapters away in a bus terminal locker and gave her a key. They've never been located. A popular theory is Capote may have destroyed them in a pique. Too bad we readers will never know unless those lost chapters ever surface and are eventually published. Hope it happens in my lifetime.

definitely more of a 3.5! i had a lot of fun reading this, but that’s just about where i feel any thoughts or feelings on this ends. it’s hard to judge because it’s unfinished and i guess barely even a story but i still liked

n  

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” — Saint Teresa

n

Answered Prayers was published in 1987 after Truman Capote’s death in 1986. There is still uncertainty as to what happened to the complete manuscript. What remains was published as a series of short and loosely connected short stories. In the Preface to Music for Chameleons Capote wrote:

n  

“For four years, roughly from 1968 through 1972, I spent most of my time reading and selecting, rewriting and indexing my own letters, other people’s letters, my diaries and journals (which contain detailed accounts of hundreds of scenes and conversations) for the years 1943 through 1965. I intended to use much of this material in a book that I had long been planning: a variation on the nonfiction novel. I called the book ‘Answered Prayers’ . . . . .”

“In 1972 I began work on this book by writing the last chapter first (it’s always good to know where one’s going). Then I wrote the first chapter, ‘Unspoiled Monsters.’ Then the fifth, ‘A Severe Insult to the Brain.’ Then the seventh, ‘La Cote Basque.’ I went on in this manner, writing different chapters out of sequence. I was able to do this only because the plot—or rather plots—was true, all the characters were real; it wasn’t difficult to keep it all in mind, for I hadn’t invented anything.”

n

Against advice to the contrary, Truman Capote decided to publish some of the chapters from Answered Prayers in Esquire. When “La Cote Basque” was published it caused a furor in that small literary and social group of his friends that he had set out to describe. Truman Capote was not dismayed by their reaction, basically asking what did they expect as he was a writer, and, as such, he used everything. Whatever happened to the complete manuscript remains a mystery although there are many theories about the missing chapters. There are moments when the style is rich and immersing with Capote’s snarky blend of humor and gossip throughout but the overall effect is wearying. It is certainly not one of my favorite books by Truman Capote but I am glad that I read it.