#*anne vanderbilt | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

covid-safer-hotties · 5 months ago

Text

The Tripledemic That Wasn’t - Published Dec 16, 2024

Covid mitigations kept respiratory diseases like RSV and Influenza at bay during 2020 and 2021. Dropping mask mandates brought them back, giving us the "tripledemics" and "quademics" being experienced right now. Mask up. Keep everyone safe and healthy.

By Marie Rosenthal, MS As the “traditional” respiratory season began during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts, infectious disease doctors and hospital administrators were gearing up for a “tripledemic”—they were anticipating months of fighting not only SARS-CoV-2, but also influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

With the three viruses expected to surge across the country, experts were offering advice about protecting family, friends and colleagues. At the time, 12,000 people were dying from COVID-19 each day in the United States alone. Hospitals were barely handling the onslaught of incoming cases. What would they do if 200,000 or more people showed up at their doors with influenza or RSV? A “normal” flu season sees 100,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 to 51,000 deaths. A “normal” RSV season could hospitalize at least 120,000 people and kill 6,100.

Yet, to the relief of many, the tripledemic was not seen during the 2020-2021 respiratory season. So, what happened? Infectious Disease Special Edition spoke with three respiratory virus experts about what they saw, and why they think they saw it, and what that means for the future of influenza.

“The 2020 to 2021 season was the lowest influenza on record,” said William Schaffner, MD, FIDSA, a professor of medicine, Department of Infectious Diseases, and a professor of preventive medicine, Department of Health Policy, at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, Tenn. “The curve was essentially flat. We even had some conversations with our colleagues in Canada, who said that the flu cases we were discovering were probably in error,” he jested.

“Flu was not just mild; it was absent, because of the very things that drove people crazy about COVID: segregation and wearing masks,” explained Arnold S. Monto, MD, the co-director of the Michigan Center for Respiratory Virus Research and Response, as well as professor emeritus in epidemiology and public health at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health, in Ann Arbor.

Mitigating Factors

There probably were two factors at play, according to the experts. The first was viral exclusion or interference, which can occur when people or animals are exposed to multiple viruses simultaneously. As the organisms jockey for position, one becomes dominant and the others wait their turn, so to speak. This is seen frequently during normal flu seasons—one strain of flu, often influenza A, sweeps across the country first, and then influenza B comes through near the end of the season.

“I think that when there is a respiratory virus roaring through the community, it can be hard for other respiratory viruses to break in,” said Richard J. Webby, PhD, the director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, and a member of the staff of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, Tenn.

“When you look at peaks of influenza A, influenza B or RSV over a winter season, more often than not, those peaks don’t overlay [one another]. One comes first and then when one is coming down, the other one will come up,” he said.

The other dynamic—and probably the biggest influencer—was the actions that were put into place to mitigate COVID-19. Social distancing and masking had much to do with stopping the spread of all the respiratory diseases, all three experts told Infectious Disease Special Edition.

“I think it was the unexpected consequence of everything that we were doing against COVID,” Dr. Webby said. “But influenza activity went to very low levels [that season] as did other respiratory viruses as well.”

Mitigation factors were important, according to Dr. Schaffner, because once people stopped wearing masks, attended church services and headed back to school, influenza quickly regained its place in the respiratory hierarchy.

“Quite clearly people were staying home [during COVID],” Dr. Schaffner said. “And most importantly, children were not going to school. They were not playing together, and of course, children have the great ‘distribution franchise’ … for influenza virus.”

One reason children are such efficient spreaders in the community is they shed flu virus for longer periods than adults do. While at school, daycare or play, they spread the virus among themselves and then bring it home to adult family and friends, Dr. Schaffner said.

“So, it’s clear the opportunities to spread the virus were so profoundly reduced in 2021, and we did not have an influenza season,” he added.

“I don’t think it was the interference between COVID and flu. Most people think it was the lockdowns and the changes in patterns, particularly schools being closed because schools are where everything is usually being spread. Just look at rhinovirus. Rhinovirus season starts after school opens,” Dr. Monto said.

Another factor that typically affects influenza hospitalizations and deaths is vaccination, but in this case, influenza vaccination was down, which is another reason the experts point to nonpharmacologic mitigation factors. Influenza vaccination has been decreasing since the pandemic. The CDC estimates that in the 2023-2024 flu season, only 55.4% of children from 6 months through 17 years received a flu vaccination—a decrease of 2 percentage points compared with the previous flu season (57.4%) and a decrease of 8.3 percentage points compared with 2019-2020 (63.7%).

Flu vaccination coverage was also low among adults. Only 44.9% of adults ages 18 and older were vaccinated against flu, a decrease of 2.0 percentage points from the previous season (46.9%). Adults saw an initial increase in flu coverage right after the pandemic started, but coverage has continued to decline, according to the CDC (bit.ly/49s7iVu-IDSE).

Taking Its Course

To tease out what happened to the other respiratory viruses, an Israeli study examined hospital admissions related to respiratory diseases among children before and after the pandemic. They retrospectively reviewed medical records from November 2020 to January 2021, and compared them with the same periods during the previous two years. They found 1,488 hospitalizations due to respiratory illnesses: 632 in 2018-2019, 701 in 2019-2020, and 144 in 2020-2021. They attributed the significant decline in respiratory viral and bacterial coinfections during the pandemic to viral interference, as well as social distancing and wearing masks (Isr Med Assoc J 2023;25[3]:171-176).

This was reiterated in several studies, including a recent review in Emerging Infectious Diseases, which predicted a return to more normal flu seasons as the COVID-19 emergency abated (2022;28[2]:273-281). “During the coronavirus disease pandemic, nonpharmacologic interventions have prevented the circulation of most respiratory viruses. Once the sanitary restrictions are lifted, circulation of seasonal respiratory viruses is expected to resume and will offer the opportunity to study their interactions, notably with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.”

As predicted, flu did fight its way back into circulation. The following year, 2021-2022, influenza started later than usual, but in 2022-2023, it started earlier, as “though the virus was getting back into its rhythm,” Dr. Schaffner said, and the 2024-2025 season appears to be behaving “just the way a conventional flu season starts.”

Dr. Webby added: “I think because we stopped doing everything that we were doing during the height of the pandemic—we stopped wearing masks, we started traveling again—COVID settled into more peaks of activity rather than year-round activity, so all of those things that helped keep flu away were gone.”

A Prudent Response

Based on this experience and what they know about respiratory viruses, all three experts agreed that wearing a mask in public during respiratory season is a prudent thing to do, especially if a person is immunocompromised. They also reiterated the importance of staying home when people are sick to stop the spread of all respiratory viruses.

“I recommend a mask for people who are at increased risk of getting more severe disease should they become infected,” Dr. Schaffner said. They should ask themselves these questions: “Are they more likely to become seriously ill and require hospitalization and intensive care admission? Are they at increased risk of dying? Eighty percent of the deaths occur in people 65 and older.

“As a person who is in that group, when I go to the supermarket or the drugstore, or anywhere, I wear a mask,” he said. “So, I think it would be a good idea.”

The viruses are respiratory, and thus spread through airborne particles, reminded Dr. Monto; therefore, anything that reduces that spread is worthwhile. He said he doesn’t understand the resistance to wearing a mask, “because it does work. Why does a surgeon wear a mask in an operating room? Because we know that wearing masks helps to stop the spread of infection,” Dr. Monto said. “It’s not a total answer, but it’s a partial one.”

“In some parts of the world, wearing a mask is still a pretty common practice, so obviously, it does work,” Dr. Webby said, but he added that he thinks it’s the combination of actions that is important. “What impact does wearing a mask on its own have? I don’t think we know,” he said. “People are traveling or were still maybe a little more likely to go to work with a bit of the sniffles as opposed to staying home, so it is hard to tease those out in my mind, but it makes good sense to wear a mask.”

In addition, they said healthcare providers should continue to recommend vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza, as well as RSV, if eligible, because the vaccines help reduce the risk for hospitalizations and death.

Despite the best prognostications, flu is unpredictable, Dr. Schaffner reminded. Although everyone thought a tripledemic would occur, it didn’t. It wasn’t the end of flu by a long shot, and flu came back this season just as it always has.

Dr. Monto concurred: “There are a lot of people who like to say, ‘We understand this.’ But in reality, when you look at what happens, there is a lot we don’t understand. We observe, and we try to predict.”

#mask up #public health #wear a mask #wear a respirator #pandemic #covid #still coviding #covid 19 #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #rsv #flu

24 notes · View notes

huriya · 1 year ago

Text

College Shitlist (boycott these colleges)

This is the updating list of colleges where pro-palestine protests are present that have brutalized/arrested/punished their students for protesting the ongoing palestinian genocide.

REMEMBER: DO NOT GIVE YOUR MONEY TO THESE COLLEGES. PROTESTS ON THESE CAMPUSES ARE IMPORTANT, BUT KEEPING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AND MONEY AWAY FROM THESE ABHORRENT INSTITUTIONS DIMINISHES THEIR POWER. THEIR ONLY POWER COMES FROM THEIR STUDENTS AND THEIR MONEY. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO TAKE THEIR PRESTIGE AWAY.

In No Particular Order:

Princeton University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of California - Berkeley

Stanford University

Virginia Tech

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

University of Washington

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Harvard University

Yale University

University of California - Los Angeles

Cornell University

University of Pittsburgh

University of Chicago

University of Southern California

University of California - San Diego

Tufts University

Northeastern University

Stony Brook University

University of Connecticut

University of California - Merced

University of Massachusetts - Amherst

University of Iowa

University of Arizona

Arizona State University

University of California - Irvine

George Washington University

DePaul University

University of Pennsylvania

Pomona College

University of Texas - Dallas

The New School

University of Houston

University of Rochester

University of New Mexico

Duke University

New York University

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Barnards College

University of Vanderbilt

Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Columbia University

Portland State University

University of Oregon

California Polytechnic Institute Humboldt

California Polytechnic University - San Luis Obispo

Northern Arizona University

University of Utah

University of Kansas

University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign

Washington University

New Mexico State University

University of Texas - Austin

Tulane University

University of South Florida

University of North Florida

University of Florida

Emory University

University of Georgia

Mercer University

Notre Dame University

Case Western Reserve University

The Ohio State University

Virginian Commonwealth University

University of Virginia

University of Buffalo

State University of New York - Purchase

State University of New York - New Paltz

Brown University

Brandeis University

Dartmouth College

University of New Hampshire

Emerson College

CUNY City College of New York

International List:

University of Amsterdam

University of Alberta

University of Queensland

University of Sydney

University of Melbourne

Australian National University

University of New South Wales

University of Calgary

University of Oxford

Feel free to share this list, send me additional colleges to add (WITH SOURCES), and/or request more information on a particular college

49 notes · View notes

aselectsociety · 3 months ago

Text

Minor Changes

In my exploration of Dickinson’s sensitivity to and use of tonal qualities and shifts provided through different types of rhyme, I posted two poems recently which play on the term “minor.” Yesterday, I posted one of them, “Further in Summer than the birds,” a poem which has some interesting bits of trivia associated with it.

First, there are six variations of this poem, and the longest version (with seven stanzas) was sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt.

And are you ready for this?

R. W. Franklin’s research states that this long version of the poem “was sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt, who was seriously injured in 1864 when shot by a suitor her maid had rejected. During her recovery, ED sent several poems, including this one, signed ‘Emily,’ about late summer 1865.”

Say what?

My first exploration into “Gertrude Vanderbilt” led me to the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who founded the Whitney Museum in New York City, but this was not the correct Gertrude Vanderbilt (as she was not born until 1875).

Further research led me to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, and I discovered this information:

“The poem…(referred) to as the Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ takes its name from its first reader, Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt (1824 – 1902) of Evans 8 Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, to whom Dickinson mailed the poem during the summer of 1865. Although Dickinson and Vanderbilt likely never met in person, they knew each other through Dickinson’s close friend and sister-in-law Susan Dickinson, with whom Vanderbilt went to school. Vanderbilt suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound, a scandalous event that drew national attention. In what the Brooklyn Eagle and the Springfield Republican called ‘an attempt at revenge,’ a farm laborer named William Cutter, the spurned suitor of Vanderbilt’s servant Anne Walker, attacked and shot both Walker and Vanderbilt. Perhaps to aid Vanderbilt during her recovery, Dickinson sent four letter-poems to Vanderbilt during the year after her injury. The Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ was one of them.”

And get this – another strange twist to the “Vanderbilt variant”:

“For more than eighty years, scholars believed that the earliest version of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Further in Summer than the Birds,’ a major mid-career poem often regarded as ‘one of Dickinson’s finest’ (McSweeney 155) and ‘best-known poems,’ had been lost (Franklin, ‘The Manuscripts’ 552). They only knew of the existence of this elusive variant because Dickinson’s first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, made a transcript in the 1890s, marking the last recorded sighting of Dickinson’s original manuscript before its mysterious disappearance…Yet, against all odds, the manuscript survived, resurfacing miraculously at Ella Strong Denison Library, the special collections library at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 1986, exactly a century after Dickinson’s death.”

Dissatisfied with the final five stanzas, Dickinson substituted two new ones which created a four-stanza version that, with a few changes, prevailed after that.

Dickinson included this shortened version in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1866 in which she told him that her beloved dog “Carlo died”; she asked, “Would you instruct me now?”

Seventeen years later, in 1883, the poet returned to the poem and made two further copies. In March 1883 she enclosed a two stanza version of the poem in a letter to Thomas Niles, referring to this one as “My Cricket” (i.e., a member of the “minor Nation” in line 3 that celebrates its “unobtrusive Mass”).

Another version was prepared for Mabel Loomis Todd. It also included a cricket wrapped in a piece of paper.

ONE LAST THING TO WONDER ABOUT: When I Google-searched “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt,” an entry popped up involving Edith Wharton’s novel “The Age of Innocence.” In a list of “Minor Characters” from the book (hmm…there’s that word “minor” again), I spotted a character by the name of “Lawrence Lefferts,” a wealthy young man and a member of Archer's social circle, and his wife – who suspects that he is having an affair – is Mrs. Gertrude Lefferts,

Do you think that the “Gertrude Lefferts” in the book, written in 1920, has any connection at all to “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt”? The time period highlighted in the book is the 1870s; Gertrude Lefferts, 1824 - 1902, lived in Brooklyn, and Edith Wharton grew up in New York City.

#poetry #Emily Dickinson #rhyme #Gertrude Vanderbilt #R. W. Franklin #The Age of Innocence #Edith Wharton #Thomas Niles

3 notes · View notes

archibaldgoldenboy · 6 months ago

Text

Anne Archibald Vanderbilt Socialite

#quickfacts

Before Howard's infamous arrest, Anne was the perfect socialite. She thrived on the Upper East Side. Anne ran committees, hosted events, ran the most exciting (and wine-soaked) book club, never cooked and mostly learned French.

The years chipped away at Anne, she thinks. Piece by piece, little by little. She molded herself into this perfect doll that when Howard started showing signs of... Well, all of it-- she ignored it. Anne knows it now, that she stuck her head in the sand. She just wanted it to be okay, even if it meant playing the fool. Even if it meant hurting Nate.

When Howard was perp walked by the FBI out of Ella Fairchild's ball, the world came crashing down around Anne but she didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything. She'd been numb for longer than that night and it didn't get better.

She left Nate behind when he needed her most-- something she is trying to make up for every day now. She ran from the Upper East Side, back to the judgemental and loving arms of her father. Anne hasn't been back since (almost 2 years).

Anne has done a lot of work since Howard left. She's trying to get back to feeling like herself, whoever she used to be. She changed her name back to Vanderbilt, she kept herself busy. She's trying to move forward now.

Connections:

Adrian and Jo Tsang-Vanderbilt (Nick/Chris/Peter's parents)- Adrian's her brother and Jo's her sister-in-law.

William and Julie Vanderbilt (Tripp and Juliette's parents) - Anne's brother and sister-in-law.

Eleanor Waldorf (Blair's mom) and Lilly van der Woodsen (Serena's mom) - their kids have been best friends (to say the least) from the crib.

Children: Nate Archibald Ex-Husband: Howard Archibald Nieces and Nephews: Nick, Chris and Peter Vanderbilt. Juliette and Tripp Vanderbilt.

#tfrparent #*anne archibald #about nate #*anne vanderbilt

2 notes · View notes

pheohun · 3 months ago

Text

READING TRACKER

============================

FINISHED

House of Leaves- Mark Z. Danielewski

Last Night at the Telegraph Club- Malinda Lo

1984- George Orwell

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream- Harlan Ellison

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- Robert Lewis Stevenson

Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka

The Time Machine- H. G. Wells

============================

CURRENTLY READING

We Could Be Rats- Emily Austin- 27%

The Broposal- Sonora Reyes- 5%

Blood Meridian- Cormac McCarthy- 21%

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen- 4%

The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde- 12%

Only Revolutions- Mark Z Danielewski

============================

PLAN TO READ

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Arthur Conan Doyle

The Alchemist- Ben Jonson

Animal Farm- George Orwell

Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe- Douglas Adams

Life, the Universe and Everything- Douglas Adams

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish- Douglas Adams

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe- Douglas Adams

The Iliad- Homer

Lord of the Flies- William Goldberg

The Odyssey- Homer

Phantom of the Opera- Gaston Leroux

Wuthering Heights- Emily Brontë

The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien

Lord of the Rings- J.R.R. Tolkien

I Who Have Never Known Men- Jacqueline Harpman

Tender Is the Flesh- Agustina Bazterrica

Never Let Me Go- Kazuo Ishiguro

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

The Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood

The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

The Giver- Lois Lowry

Slaughter House Five- Kurt Vonnecut

A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess

Catch 22- Joseph Heller

Man's Search for Meaning- Viktor E. Frankl

Dracula- Bram Stoker

Babel- R. F. Kuang

The Shining- Stephen King

Tress of the Emerald Sea- Brandon Sanderson

Born to Run- Christopher McDougall

Vanderbilt- Anderson Cooper

Giovanni's Room- James Baldwin

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms- George R.R. Martin

Twisted Love- Anna Huang

The Diary of a Young Girl- Anne Frank

Little Women- Louisa May Alcott

The Nickel Boys- Colson Whitehead

Normal People- Sally Rooney

The Secret History- Donna Tartt

A Darker Shade of Magic- V.E. Schwab

A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J. Maas

City of Bones- Cassandra Clare

Severance- Ling Ma

Intermezzo- Sally Rooney

Open Water- Caleb Azumah Nelson

Everything I Never Told You- Celeste Ng

Less- Andrew Sean Greer

The Idiot- Elif Batuman

Ripe- Sarah Rose Etter

Betty- Tiffany McDaniel

My Brilliant Friend- Elena Ferrante

All's Well- Mona Awad

The Remains of the Day- Kazuo Ishiguro

One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Rebecca- Daphne du Maurier

A Room of One's Own- Virginia Woolf

The Master and Margarita- Mikhail Bulgakov

Jane Eyre- Charlotte Brontë

The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera

Crime & Punishment- Fyodor Dostoesvky

Brideshead Revisited- Evelyn Waugh

Go Tell it On the Mountain- James Baldwin

The Death of Ivan Ilyich- Leo Tolstoy

Gideon the Ninth- Tamsyn Muir

Project Hail Mary- Andy Weir

Scythe- Neal Shusterman

Dry- Neal Shusterman, Jarrod Shusterman

This is How You Lose the Time War- Max Gladstone

An Ember in the Ashes- Sabaa Tahir

The Poppy War- R. F. Kuang

Vicious- V. E. Schwab

The Will of the Many- James Islington

The Name of the Wind- Patrick Rothfuss

Red Rising- Pierce Brown

An Enchantment of Ravens- Margaret Rogerson

Misborn- Brandon Sanderson

The Outsiders- S. E. Hinton

Ramona Blue- Julie Murphy

Radio Silence- Alice Oseman

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Betty Smith

I'll Give You the Sun- Jandy Nelson

Turtles All the Way Down- John Green

The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt

Lovely War- Julie Berry

The Book Thief- Markus Zusak

Salt to the Sea- Ruta Sepetys

The Marriage Portrait- Maggie O'Farrell

Pachinko- Min Jin Lee

Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini

Kitchen Confidential- Anthony Bourdain

Educated- Tara Westover

Beautiful Boy- David Sheff

The Glass Castle- Jeanette Walls

Upstream- Mary Oliver

Women, Race, & Class- Angela Y. Davis

If We Were Villains- M. L. Rio

Mythos- Stephen Fry

Crying in H Mart- Michelle Zauner

This Savage Song- Victoria Schwab

Flowers for Algernon- Daniel Keyes

If You Could See the Sun- Ann Liang

Homesick for Another World- Ottessa Moshfegh

Sharp Objects- Gillian Flynn

Station Eleven- Emily St. John Mandel

Penance- Eliza Clark

Perfume- Patrick Süskind

Daisy Jones & The Six- Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Memory Police- Yoko Ogawa

Abigail- Magda Szabó

Heartless Hunter- Kirsten Ciccarelli

Deadly Occupants- Mads Rafferty

What Lies Beyond the Veil- Harper L. Woods

Lights Out- Navessa Allen

Blood of Hercules- Jasmine Mas

The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelids

The Last Thing He Told Me- Laura Dave

Verity- Colleen Hoover

Then She Was Gone- Lisa Jewell

Powerless- Lauren Roberts

Fourth Wing- Rebecca Yarros

The Serpent Wings of the Night- Carissa Broadbent

In the Likely Event- Rebecca Yarros

Things We Never Got Over- Lucy Score

Archer's Voice- Mia Sheridan

Flawless- Elise Silver

The Last Letter- Rebecca Yarros

One True Loves- Taylor Jenkins Ried

Love & Other Words- Christina Lauren

Before We Were Strangers- Renée Carlind

Book Lovers- Emily Henry

Holiday Romance- Catherine Walsh

Divine Rivals- Rebecca Ross

The Simple Wind- K. A. Tucker

The Nightingale- Kristin Hannah

The Giver of Stars- Jojo Moyes

The Beekeeper's Promise- Fiona Valpy

The Great Alone- Kristin Hannah

Redeeming Love- Francine Rivers

The Unmaking of June Farrow- Adrienne Young

The Last Letter From Your Lover- Jojo Moyes

Remarkably Bright Creatures- Shelby Van Pelt

Shogun- James Clavell

The Pillars of the Earth- Ken Follett

Lonesome Dove- Larry McMurtry

11/22/63- Stephen King

The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinback

The Fisherman- John Langan

The End of Loneliness- Benedict Wells

To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee

As Old as Time- Liz Braswell

Johnny Got His Gun- Dalton Trumbo

Starship Troopers- Robert A. Heinlin

Into That Darkness- Getta Serena

Good Omens- Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchet

No Longer Human- Osmau Dazai

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke- Eric LaRocca

The Song of Achilles- Madeline Millar

The Road- Cormic McCarthy

Sea of Tranquility- Emily St. John Mandel

The Unworthy- Agustina Bazterica

Parable of the Sower- Octavia E. Butler

The Water Knife- Paolo Bacigalupi

Klara and the Sun- Kazuo Ishiguaro

The School of Good Mothers- Jessamine Chan

The Power- Naomi Alderman

We- Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Wall- Marlen Haushofer

The Dispossessed- Ursula K. LeGuin

White Nights- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Cather in the Rye- J. D. Sailnger

The Fall- Albert Camus

Ethan Frome- Edith Wharton

Of Mice and Men- John Steinback

Death of a Salesman- Arthur Millar

First Love- Ivan Turgenev

Breakfast at Tiffany's- Truman Capote

Cycle of the Werewolf- Stephen King

Come Closer- Sara Gran

Foster- Claire Keegan

The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison

The Jakarta Method- Vincent Bevins

This Other Eden- Paul Harding

Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov

Bunny- Mona Awad

We Have Always Lived In the Castle- Shirley Jackson

American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis

Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn

We Were Liars- E. Lockheart

Rouge- Mona Awad

The Count of Monte Christo- Alexander Dumas

Hard Rain Falling- Don Carpenter

The Stranger- Albert Camus

The Many Lives of Mama Love- Lara Love Hardin

The Prelude- William Wordsworth

The Yellow Wallpaper- Charolette Perkins Gilman

Notes from Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Despair- Vladimir Nabokov

Blind Owl- Sadeq Hedayat

Steppenwolf- Hermann Hesse

The Driver's Seat- Muriel Spark

Madame Bovary- Gustave Falubert

Anna Karina- Leo Tolstoy

The Beautiful and Damned- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lady Chatterly's Lover- D. H. Lawrence

Incidents Around the House- Josh Mallerman

The Heart's Invisible Furies- John Boyne

In Cold Blood- Truman Capote

The Castle- Franz Kafka

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter S. Thompson

Diary of an Oxygen Thief- Anonymous

The Plague- Albert Camus

Nausea- Jean-Paul Sartre

Four Perfect Pebbles- Lila Perl, Marion Blumenthal Lazan

False Start- Kandi Steiner

Pack Up the Moon- Krista Higgins

Caught Up- Liz Tomforde

Saving 6- Chloe Walsh

Swift and Saddled- Lily Sage

One Dark Window- Rachel Gillig

Quicksilver- Callie Hart

Long Shot- Kennedy Ryan

Sum- David Eagleman

A Promised Land- Barrack Obama

When Breath Becomes Air- Paul Kalenithi

Challenger- Adam Higginbotham

Our Revolution- Bernie Sanders

My Friend Anne Frank- Hannah Pick Goslar

Mort- Terry Pratchett

The Color Purple- Alice Walker

The Soul of an Octopus- Sy Montgomery

Haunting Adeline- H. D. Carlton

The Perfect Marriage- Jeneva Rose

The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelides

The Wedding People- Alison Espach

Demon Copperhead- Barbara Kingsolver

Us Against You- Fredrick Backman

The Wish- Nicholas Sparks

Tuesdays with Morrie- Mitch Albom

The House on Mango Street- Sandra Cisneros

Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston

The Little Prince- Antonie de Saint Exupéry

Beloved- Toni Morrison

Frankenstein- Mary Shelly

The Virgin Suicides- Jeffery Eugenides

What Moves the Dead- T. Kingfisher

A Man Called Ove- Fredrik Backman

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo- Taylor Jenkins Reid

Just For the Summer- Abby Jimenez

City of Quartz- Mike Davis

The Knockout Artist- Harry Crews

Paris in the Present Tense- Mark Helprin

Dead Inside- Chandler Morrison

Cows- Matthew Stokoe

100% Match- Patrick C. Harrison III

No One Rides For Free- Judith Sonnet

The Black Farm- Elias Witherow

Full Brutal- Kristopher Triana

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren- Iona and Peter Opie

Lies My Teacher Told Me- James W. Loewen

Erasing History- Jason Stanley

A People's History to the United States- Howard Zinn

Child of God- Cormac McCarthy

Everything is Tuberculosis- John Green

The Witch of Colchis- Rosie Hewlett

Clytemnestra- Costanza Casati

Medusa's Sisters- Lauren J. A. Bear

Circe- Madeline Miller

Graveyard Shift- M.L. Rio

Ocean's Godori- Elaine U. Cho

Your Utopia- Bora Chung

Snowglobe- Soyoung Park

An Academy for Liars- Alexis Henderson

An Education in Malice- S.T. Gibson

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue- V.E. Schwab

The God of Endings- Jacqueline Holland

If I Ran the Zoo- Dr. Seuss

American Prometheus- Kai Bird, Martin J

Ella Enchanted- Gail Carson Levine

Kafka on the Shore- Haruki Murakami

The Courage to be Disliked- Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

Cloud Cuckoo Land- Anthony Doerr

The Way of Kings- Brandon Sanderson

A Father's Story- Lionel Dahmer

I'm Going to Get Better- Olivia Mark

Cujo- Stephen King

I Can't Date Jesus- Michael Arceneaux

All My Friends Are Dead- Avery Monsen, Jory John

Invitation to a Beheading: Vladmir Nabokov

Children of the Corn- Stephen King

Interview with a Vampire- Anne Rice

Autobiography of Bed- Anne Carson

The Wasp Factory- Iain Banks

Cursed Bunny- Bora Huang

Girl Interrupted- Susanna Kaysen

Madonna in a Fur Coat- Saba

Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

David Copperfield- Charles Dickens

Go Set a Watchman- Harper Lee

A Christmas Carol- Charles Dickens

Garfield: His 9 Lives- Jim Davis

Why We Love Baseball- Joe Posnanski

Dear Hades- Alyssa Roat, Hope Bolinger

Kama Sutra- Vātsyāyana

Nicholas Nickleby- Charles Dickenson

Eye of the Dragon- Stephen King

The Devil in the White City- Erik Larson

Lés Miserables- Victor Hugo

Art of War- Sun Tzu

Aspects of the Theory of Clitics- Stephen Anderson

I'm Glad My Mom Died- Jennette McCurdy

The Giving Tree- Shel Silverstein

Red Rose- Stephen King

Be More Chill- Ned Vizzini

The Once and Future King- T.H. White

For Whom the Bell Tolls- Ernest Hemmingway

#books #reading #reading list #updating constantly

2 notes · View notes

filthy-reckless-rp · 3 months ago

Text

MONTH UPDATE: JANUARY 2025

Birthdays

Jesse Walker - 26th January (turning 21)

Well, we've made it Gossipers! New year, new me... new drama. December saw the return of the Fairchild Ball, now rebranded to the 'Winter Ball' and Ella Fairchild did everything she could to make it a success. And it was, for a while. Everyone was invited and we saw the iconic appearance of many Upper East Side parents. Even Anne Arch- Vanderbilt was in attendance! Things hit a snag when the lights went out (gasp!) and a scene was caused. Everyone's phones were buzzing off the hook but this was one gift no one wanted. Howard Archibald had made himself known and that he's here for #revenge. With his announcement, there was a major hack on many Upper East Siders' companies, secrets leaked and money stolen. And yet again, The Captain was at the centre of it. What were we to do? The night ended with a bang! From there, it was all hands on deck for damage control. What a way to spend the holidays, right? Even so, many of our Upper East Siders fled for sunnier pastures and saw the New Year come in style. Whoever kissed or clinked glasses, only time will tell. With a new-old threat back in town, are we all distracted from Gossip Girl's return? Is she involved somehow? Will more secrets be spilled? Let's find out. XOXO

Ages from December birthdays are now updated!:

Sapphire Vandervort - 7th December (turning 21)

Ruby Reyes - 8th December (turning 20)

Layla Vandervort - 11th December (turning 22)

OOC Info:

Happy IC new year, friends! You can, of course, finish any Winter Ball and parent threads, and can now make new starters in January.

Things to think about are what did your characters do over the holidays? Were there any shake ups, make ups or break ups? Any holiday hook ups? Scandals? How is everyone's CEO parents doing in the way of Howard Archibald?

If you'd like your character or their parents to be #targeted by Howard or Gossip Girl this month, shoot me a message!

(please like this post once you've read it)

#tfrmod #tfrupdates #tfrevent #/on we gooooooo!!!

2 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 year ago

Text

FIRST SOCIALITE (HUSBAND): “I can’t read this thing!” (Tossing aside Truman Capote’s magazine excerpt from his forthcoming novel Answered Prayers.)

SECOND SOCIALITE (WIFE): “But darling, you must read all of it. If you don’t, we won’t have anything to talk to anybody about.”

The above exchange actually occurred, but as often happens with popular hot controversies, the principals prefer not to be identified, even after telling the tale on themselves. The social stakes are too high. Being on the wrong side in one of these tempests in a teabag could be fatal. What if Kitty Miller never invites you again … or “Swifty” Lazar hangs up on you … or the Bill Paleys hear you didn’t step over the line at what has now become the Smart Set’s own Alamo? Or what if Truman Capote prevails and comes out on top? What if he writes a sequel that tells even more?

Staying alive and well in society means never zigging when you should zag.

“Whoever gossips to you will gossip of you,” goes the old Spanish proverb, and this one came home to roost for the International Set’s crème de la crème with the publication in the November Esquire of Capote’s “La Côte Basque 1965” — the “tail” of the long-awaited “kite” called Answered Prayers that is the writer’s next major work of fiction.

Society’s sacred monsters at the top have been in a state of shock ever since. Never have you heard such gnashing of teeth, such cries for revenge, such shouts of betrayal and screams of outrage. Well, anyway, not since Marcel Proust flattered his way into the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain and then retired to a cork-lined room to create a masterpiece, recalling the details of the Baron de Montesquiou’s “preciosities” and rendering him into the “Baron de Charlus,” setting down the vivid details of a world of le gratin where the rich see only one another.

What did Capote write that so enraged so many? Oh, just everything he ever heard whispered, shouted, or bruited about — the same kind of stories that have been wafting among the fine French furniture crowd since Maury Paul first saw the Blue Book dining out on Thursday and coined the phrase “Cafe Society.”

“La Côte Basque 1965” is a 13,000-word story about a luncheon between “Lady Ina Coolbirth,” a 40-ish multiple divorcée on the rebound from an affair with a Rothschild, and the innocent narrator, “Jonesy,” at Henri Soule’s exclusive Manhattan restaurant. While drinking Champagne and eating a soufflé Furstenberg, “Lady Ina” gossips about the International Set, telling one “no-no” after another on one and all, including herself. Capote has peopled his story with real persons, using their real names as well as with a number of other real persons, using fake names. The most shocking of “Lady Ina’s” send-ups are the stories about Cole Porter putting the make on an Italian waiter called “Dixie,” the one about “the governor’s wife” and her sordid sexual put-down of the climbing Jewish tycoon “Sidney Dillon,” and the histoire of trashy “Ann Hopkins,” who tricked a blue blood into marriage, then murdered him after he got the goods on her and threatened divorce.

Other naughty things in the story are the opening dirty joke … the bad breath of Arturo (Lopez Wilshaw) … the duchess of Windsor never picking up a check … Maureen Stapleton’s nervous collapse … Carol Matthau’s dirty mouth … Princess Margaret’s dislike of “poufs” … Gloria Vanderbilt’s failure to recognize her first husband … Oona O’Neill fluffing off the boyish J.D. Salinger … Joe Kennedy having his way with an 18-year-old school chum of his daughter’s … “Sidney Dillon” and his womanizing and social climbing .. . “Cleo Dillon” loving only herself .. how the famous TV comic “Bobby Baxter” goes off with a hooker and his pushy wife, “Jane,” has the last laugh … the weird young movie cutie who marries the son, then the father, only to find herself divorced because of a German shepherd … Lee Radziwill coming off better looking than Jackie Kennedy, who resembles “a female impersonator” … the love affairs of “Lady Ina,” how much she needs a man, and her envy of the domestic bliss of two attractive lesbians who reside in Santa Fe, “the dyke capital of the United States.”

Capote insists that the gossipmongering central character, “Lady Ina Coolbirth,” is strictly an invention — but friends of Lady (“Slim”) Keith, Pamela Harriman, Carol Portago, and Fleur Cowles are all nevertheless incensed. “Well,” sniffs Truman, “let them all martyr and identify themselves if they like … let them hang from the cross claiming they’re hurt … those who want to say they are models, that’s up to them!”

Other characters in “LCB ’65” are so thinly disguised as to be seen through tissue paper clearly — among them “Ann Hopkins,” undoubtedly representing Mrs. William Woodward Jr., who killed herself on October 10, seven days before Esquire hit the stands, and “the governor’s wife,” said to be the late Marie Harriman.

Many other names were dropped, some in passing, some to devastating effect. John Hersey has said that “the final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.” But try telling that to the friends of the late Cole Porter, or Maureen Stapleton, Elsie Woodward, Josh and Nedda Logan, Johnny Carson, “Babe” Paley and her powerful husband, Bill. (I remarked to Truman that I didn’t know that his now ex-friend Mr. Paley had ever been an “adviser to presidents,” as “Sidney Dillon” is described in the piece. Truman just grinned and said, “I didn’t either.”)

Everybody written about in “LCB ‘65” has been guessed and second-guessed at with little or no concession to Capote’s own thesis — that this is a fictionalized version of a world he knows very well.

For years Capote has been society’s adored and adorable resident intellect and court jester. In a world where parties are still often “given against someone” … where bitchery, snobbery, and hauteur are still prized right along with poise, manners, and money … where the merits of plastic surgeons are argued in the same way the religious used to argue theology — gossip has always been the great staple, the glue holding beleaguered life-styles and sinking social values together. But it’s one thing to tell the nastiest story in the world to all your 50 best friends; it’s another to see it set down in cold Century Expanded type.

Capote has always been the gossip’s gossip nonpareil. He has been leaving them laughing and quaffing blanc de blanc with the best of them, ever since he came of age as an enfant terrible pet of the rich after Other Voices, Other Rooms catapulted him to fame in 1948. He has sailed on their yachts, masterminded their love affairs, and been such a focal insider that his Black and White Ball for publisher Kay Graham is still remembered as one of society’s best parties.

When the gorgeous women of the world’s tycoons and power brokers sat down to spoon up soufflé with Capote, or when Truman tickled the risibilities of the powerful tycoons themselves with his outrageous tidbits and fascinating possibilities, he was always the brightest, most entertaining little imp imaginable. Oh yes, of course, he was — well, everyone knew, “queer.” But in such an amusing classy way — in the manner of the great Italian count who remonstrated with an English lord for snobbery, saying, “My dear fellow, when your ancestors were still painting themselves blue, mine were already homosexual!” You know, that sort of thing. And then, of course, didn’t that more or less make dear “Tru” all the more manageable and “safe”?

Society always thought it had something on Capote, in the same way the French le gratin had Proust’s desperate desire to belong, his suspected inversion, and his Jewishness on him. What’s more, society believed Truman to be a lightweight climber who aspired to stay in its good graces. (Snorts Truman, “Yes, they have always made that mistake about me! Why, if anybody was ever at the center of that world, it was me, so who is rejecting whom in this?” Summoning up an echo of Beau Brummell’s “In society stay for just as long as it takes to make an impression. After that — go!,” Truman continues: “I mean I can create any kind of social world I want, anywhere I want!”)

It seems simply never to have occurred to many people that the writer’s goddess might turn out to be not “Babe” Paley, but Truman’s own muse. He was, after all, so seductive, so naughty, so charming. He knew everything about everybody and — what’s more — had total recall. But now, the same people who listened so delightedly and told tales out of school find themselves hoist by their own windiness. There they are, splashed through the pages of Esquire like hollandaise that has missed the asparagus. God! And that ain’t all — there’s more to come. It is all going to be bound between hard covers into a book. A book!

Capote, meanwhile, is also a literary name. The almost universal acclaim for In Cold Blood lifted his reputation from that of a poetic mannerist into the pantheon of American belles lettres. So the Establishment world that reads and writes has also joined the hue and cry. The question whether Capote has indeed ruined his reputation by stooping to writing gossip, as opposed to whether he is only doing the same kind of work attempted by ether famous writers in the past, will be argued for a long time. There seems to be no such thing as an indifferent opinion of “LCB ’65.”

Feuds and furors flash and die in these media-mad days, but the roar over Capote’s roman á clef vignettes, observed and recorded in explicit detail, rages on. “LCB ’65” was a one-shot last November, but its reverberating ripples still lash both coasts.

(Capote yelps: “When I was in New York a few weeks ago everybody was falling all over themselves being nice to me. The machinations going on behind the back of the people who are in the book you wouldn’t believe. Most of the attackers are just pilot fish, trying to outdo one another in being vicious in their sycophancy. They all want to stay in my favor but maintain a great front of animosity.”)

Capote rushed back to California from New York to finish up another 30,000-word installment for May publication. The reaction to “LCB ‘65” inspired him to crank that up to 40,000 words, and now, he says the literary Establishment can sit around waiting for their turn. They are “on” next, and then there’ll be four more magazine assaults before Answered Prayers appears in hardcover.

Dissenters to what one social Don Quixote calls “Capote’s character assassination in the guise of art” have been pellucidly vocal: “Disgusting! It’s disgusting!” says society’s favorite extra man, real-estate investor Jerome Zipkin, shooting his immaculate French cuffs. “Truman is ruined. He will no longer be received socially anywhere. What’s more — those who receive him will no longer be received.”

Patrick O’Higgins, a writer and pal of Elsie Woodward — the mother-in-law of the late suicide, Ann Woodward — is himself one of the more exquisite tale-tellers of this same world, but he says: “Truman’s gone downhill. People think, ‘What a shame that a great talent should be reduced to writing gossip.’ Some people are really hurt because they��ve been kind to him. The Paleys were always so fond of him. But Elsie hasn’t been hurt. She didn’t even read the piece. She couldn’t care less. All she’ll say is ‘Je ne le connais pas!’ — isn’t that perfect?”

Columnist Jack O’Brian: “He knows what will sell in this market … he’s Jackie Susann with an education.”

Writer Wyatt Cooper, husband of Gloria Vanderbilt: “I hate talking when my feelings are negative. It isn’t constructive. I’m very fond of Truman. We used to have lunch, gossip, and it was fun. But lately it wasn’t. His viciousness ceased to make it fun. I even talked to him about it two years ago and he thanked me later for caring. I think this destroys all the things he has built up. He can’t really pretend to sneer at these people in the Jet Set. He worked too hard to be ‘in’ himself. Of course Gloria is offended! He made Carol Matthau come out tough and bright, but has Gloria looking vapid and dumb, in a very unfair way.”

Wyatt, who collaborated with Truman on a television project and has known him for years, continues in his “more in sorrow than in anger” vein: “I had always wanted Truman to write a truthful, non-idealized version of his painful and strange childhood as an outsider. It could have been great. But, you know, he has always had a love-hate for all these beautiful women he has been close to. His mother was an alcoholic and killed herself, and children of alcoholic mothers often end up attacking women. Truman would like to be glamorous and beautiful. He has often acted out fantasies of his own by telling his women friends how to act, who to have love affairs with, by manipulating them. Now he has his ultimate revenge, by making them ridiculous in print.”

Gloria Vanderbilt: “I have never seen it and have heard enough about it to know I don’t want to.”

Director Peter Glenville: “Ignoble, utterly ignoble!”

Esquire’s own media critic, Nora Ephron, who didn’t even like the mild version of reminiscence and revelation dished out by Brendan Gill in Here at The New Yorker: “There has always been a disparity between Capote’s fiction and the public personality, and now finally the two have come together and the public personality has won.”

William and “Babe” Paley are said to have now instructed their distinguished relatives to the effect that longtime pal Capote is persona non grata. And society’s favorite current story is of how Truman phoned Paley to ask what he thought of “LCB ’65.” Paley reportedly said, “Well, I started it and dropped off to sleep and when I woke up, they’d thrown it out.” (Zing!) When Capote protested that it was important that Paley read it, his old friend said wearily, “Truman, my wife [get that — “my wife,” not “your friend Babe”] is ill. I really haven’t time for it.” (Zowie!)

Truman found Wyatt Cooper unable to lunch with him when he was in New York over the holidays. (Cooper: “How could I — out of loyalty to Gloria. She says she’ll spit at him if she sees him.”) And Capote tells of being “cut” in Quo-Vadis by “a pitiful old society woman I often took about in Paris because I felt so sorry for her. No, don’t mention her name — it’s too sad.”

Mrs. Josh Logan was said to be so incensed she rushed across a crowded room to call Dotson Rader a “traitor” just because he also writes for Esquire. Nedda Logan informed Dotson that “that dirty little toad is never coming to my parties again.” (Some dialogue in “LCB ’65” refers to a Logan soirée: “‘How was it?’ — ‘Marvelous. If you have never been to a party before.’”)

Then there are the artful diplomats, like those two brilliants who’ve won fame straddling the fine line between practicing journalism and personal social acceptance among the Upper Crust — yes, fashion’s elegant Diana Vreeland, as well as that friend-of-the-“400” (sometimes now referred to derisively as “the 4,000”) Aileen (“Suzy”) Mehle. Told that Truman wanted to know why she had never written so much as a word in her syndicated society column about the only subject consuming “her crowd” since November, Suzy says: “Why? Why, there’s nothing for me to write. Truman’s done it all himself!”

And Mrs. Vreeland (rising high above the smoke of controversy just as a perfect hostess ignores a cigarette in the butter) dismisses the gaudy gossip, the sex scandals, the barely concealed identities, the homosexual revelations, the obscenity, the accusations of murder, and the matter of whether or not Capote has been “antisemitic,” “anti-gay,” and/or “disloyal” to friends and playmates, by putting one unerring finger on just what she considers important. “Yes — yes! The paragraph on the fresh vegetables and their size is really unique in the article. It’s a ravishing statement on the rich!”

Then there are the happy cynics like Emlyn Williams, distinguished Welsh actor-writer: “It was terrible, just awful, but it was so funny-riveting. I couldn’t help laughing.”

Then there are the defenders of Art. Rust Hills, a former fiction editor: “Fascinating stuff. Yes, of course, it’s okay he published it all. I think the artist does have a supreme right to use any material. Remember, life is short but art is long” … Painter David Gibbs: “Oh, don’t be absurd — all art is revolution! Why can’t people get that through their heads? This is brilliant stuff!” … Dotson Rader: “Marvelous, beautiful writing. It’s unimportant whether it’s true or not, since it is presented as fiction. Truman was always treated by these people as a kind of curiosity, expected to do his act. That was humiliation coming from people who had no qualifications other than being rich and social. Everybody in the world has been telling Truman their deepest confidences for years and he never said he wouldn’t use them.” … Geraldine Stutz, a woman of fastidious opinions: “It’s only a scandal to a small insular world; most people won’t know, and couldn’t care less about who might be who. What counts is that it is a wonderful piece of writing and an extraordinary re-creation of the tone and texture of those days in that world” … C. Z. Guest: “Everyone knows the man’s a professional and they told him those things anyway. He’s a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn’t discuss very private matters with him. I don’t even know who those fictional people are.”

Screenwriter Joel Schumacher, himself one of the Beautiful People: “If Truman had written a glittering vision of society, he’d have been termed an ass-kisser and his work a piece of crap by these same people. They always want some candy-ass lie written about themselves. This same world thinks it supports art and artists, but never understands that all a writer has is his experience. These people feel a good press is owed them. Why? In the fame-and-fortune game, whether it’s society, show business, big business, or politics, everybody lives on a plane of incomparable elitism, more money, more privilege than others. So why are they so shocked when somebody tells even a slightly unattractive truth about them?”

So, speaking of Beautiful People, the night before flying to Los Angeles to interview Capote I’m at Pearl’s with seven of them (or what I call semi-B.P.s, in that most of these work hard yet are still “social” enough to be written about and invited everywhere). After the lemon chicken has been served and Pearl has stopped clucking over us, the question goes: “What’s the one thing each of you would like to know from Capote?” They told me.

In this gathering, these youthful realists were amused and entertained by Capote’s daring. Most of them thought the writing was important. Only one of the seven Beauties completely disapproved of the piece. This Frito-colored hair and the women with was the most “social” — by whatever terms — person there; also the richest: a person who found “LCB ’65” “disgusting, unnecessary, mean, bitchy, Truman, like some Napoleon on spiteful, disloyal, and not even very well written.”

General laughter and the retort: “We’re sorry you can’t express yourself more definitely.” But such dissenting opinions were in the majority in the weeks to come. And always, the final clincher by Capote’s detractors was that this hideous, disloyal, tasteless thing the writer had done was bad enough in all its aspects, but its chief minuses were that it was “boring” and “wasn’t even well written.”

A society that habitually enfolds ennui and stinging cultural criticism around its shoulders like a familiar sable wrap could make such pronouncements and still not talk about anything else for two solid months.

Beverly Hills: La Côte Basque 1965 may have been a place, as Esquire noted, “where the plat du jour is seated somewhere in sight,” but La Scala, late 1975, is a place where Henri Soule probably wouldn’t have sent his enemy Harry Cohn. La Scala’s food is indifferent and its service based on benign neglect, yet it offers a carelessly cultivated charm and ambience of New York–in–California. Once inside, out of the relentless 73-degree sunshine, away from the gas-fed fire burning in the Beverly Hills Hotel lobby, away from the denim-tailored suntanned men with Frito-colored hair and the women with smart-looking Mark Cross–type bags that read “Bullshit,” a person can almost imagine being in New York.

Truman, like some Napoleon on Elba yearning for the East (I fancy), suggests we meet here. He has a day off from his acting role as the portly eccentric who lures facsimiles of the world’s most famous detectives to his mansion for sinister purposes in Neil Simon’s movie Murder by Death.

Enter reporter, tape recorder cocked, to find Truman talking with the departing screenwriter Peter Viertel. We slide into a booth and Truman, looking more and more like a diabolical version of the character actor Victor Moore, says nix to the recorder. “I’ll have more to say if you don’t use it.” I protest that I haven’t his fabled total recall. “Oh, you’ll do all right. You’ll see, you’ll get a better story this way.”

Already the interview is out of my hands into the subtle control of Capote. Only around Truman do I ever feel a real kinship with those glamorous women like C-Z, Jackie, Lee, Gloria, Carol, Slim, Babe, Kay, Fleur, Pamela, etc. He inspires a compelling intimacy. I begin to tell him everything. I spurt confidences, betray my instincts, and allow myself to be drawn out. For each question I ask, Truman asks two. “Seductive” is how one longtime friend described Capote, and she is right. I cling to the edge of the table to keep it from turning completely.

Then he orders a double Russian vodka with no ice and a tall orange juice on the side. Oh well, that makes me feel better. If he’s going to drink like that, I’ll be okay. (When the interview ends, two double vodkas, a half-bottle of red wine, and four J&Bs on the rocks later, Truman is as fit as ever and I am still in his power.)

Truman answers the questions put by Pearl’s diners. He punctuates his softly drawled, easily imitated, and widely recognized vocal mannerism with bursts of irrepressible laughter. And some amazed and genuine outrage. He begins most of his sentences with a drawn-out “W-e-e-e-l-l-l…”

WHY DID HE DO IT? WHY GO QUITE SO FAR? asked the retailer.

“Why did I do it? Why? I have lived a life of observation. I’ve been working on this book for years, collecting. Anybody who mixes with a certain kind of writer ought to realize they’re in danger. [Chuckle.] I don’t feel I betrayed anybody. This is a mere nothing, a drop in the bucket. To think what I could have done in that chapter. My whole point was to prove gossip can be literature. I’ve been seriously writing this for three and a half years. I told everybody what I was doing. I discussed it on TV. Why has it come as such a great big surprise?”

IS THERE REALLY MORE COMING, OR IS THIS ALL? THEY SAY YOU CAN’T FINISH THE BOOK, asked the fashion arbiter.

“This thing was only a chapter. My God, what will happen when ‘Unspoiled Monsters’ comes out? [Don’t you like that title?] I’ve never before heard it suggested that this wasn’t part of a whole book. Even my ‘Mojave,’ published in Esquire before this, was part of Answered Prayers, though we didn’t publicize it as such. ‘La Côte Basque 1965’ is certainly no short story. Of course it’s a book! [Exasperation.] Lord, I have a lot to say, baby! I haven’t even begun to say it, though the book is 80 percent written.”

IS IT TRUE YOU ARE DYING OF CANCER? asked the art dealer.

“Irving Mansfield likes to go around telling everybody I’m dying of cancer, but I’m well now. Oh, that reminds me of a story.”

Truman cocks his platinum head so I get a good view of his flat baby-pink ears, which seem to have come in a child’s size and never grown.

“When Jackie Susann died, the Times called me for a quote. I was reminded of a judge who once ruled against Father Divine in some property dispute. Later the judge dropped dead of a heart attack and when they asked Father Divine to comment, he said, ‘I hated to do it, but …’ “

Capote explodes with roars of laughter that rumble up out of his ample belly into a series of hah-hah-hahs. “So I just told the Times, ‘I hated to do it, but …’”

DID YOU WRITE THIS JUST TO MAKE MONEY AND TO SOCK AWAY SOMETHING FOR A LOVER, AS THEY SAY? asked the producer’s wife.

“I have never in my life done anything just for money. I’ve never had any reason to. Why would I need money? My God, I made over $3 million from In Cold Blood and I haven’t spent it. I sure haven’t made any money out of ‘La Côte Basque 1965.’ That’s absolutely cracky! You know you don’t make money from magazines.

“As for my personal life, I don’t care what anyone says or writes about me personally. I have been a public exhibit all my life. So let them go ahead and make me a monster. I was a beautiful little boy, you know, and everybody had me — men, women, dogs, and fire hydrants. I did it with everybody. I didn’t slow down until I was 19, and then I became very circumspect. But everybody knows where everybody else is sexually. There are no secrets, and that’s why I don’t understand the shocked response to ‘La Côte Basque 1965.’ What is all this business? Are these people living in some other medieval century? I’d never sue anyone for anything, but I’ve been lied about my whole life. I’m just surprised they don’t hire a hit man.”

We stop to order. Truman has steak sliced thin as prosciutto, special mayonnaise, fettuccine Alfredo, and Brie. He is emphatic that he won’t be driven out of New York or sell his U.N. Plaza apartment. (“No, no. that’s not so.”) Nor has he bought a house in Topanga Canyon. (“I guess they think that because that’s where the Manson family lived and I’m a monster, too.”) I notice a slight tremor to Truman’s tiny hands as he lifts his glass and feel a pang for his strain.

WERE YOU TAKING REVENGE FOR ALL THOSE YEARS IN SOCIETY, LIKE A PET DWARF KICKING THE ROYALS IN THE SHIN AT LAST? asked the WWD biggie.

“I didn’t mean anything vengeful, not even remotely. And I’m disappointed in these people, with all their pretensions for reading, art, theater, and culture that they’re so stupid and can’t see it as a work of art. This book is a serious work of art — if you don’t see it as that, then you don’t see it as anything. I’ve always done good things. Would I actually sit down and write about something like that as a joke, as revenge?”

I ask, “But didn’t it really occur to you that you’d be called a traitor and disloyal for publishing this specific kind of work, using people’s names?”

Truman sighs: “Well, it is true nobody likes what you write about them. Even those I was sympathetic to in In Cold Blood didn’t like themselves in print. Loyalty wasn’t the question, but on the other hand, I don’t care. I really don’t. If that’s the mentality — tant pis … I haven’t lost a single friend I’d want to keep in any event. These people saying these things weren’t friends of mine to begin with. Nedda Logan has always hated me, ever since I published that Brando piece in The New Yorker. What do the Logans have to do with anything, just because they once gave a party for Princess Margaret, who everyone knows is a terrible bore!”

IS IT TRUE ESQUIRE LAWYERS SHOWED THE “ANN HOPKINS” PART TO ANN WOODWARD FOR LEGAL CLEARANCE AND, RECOGNIZING HERSELF, SHE KILLED HERSELF? asked the designer.

“The most vicious thing about all this is that story! It’s absolutely untrue that Esquire showed her the copy. That’s ridiculous. Of course nobody showed it to her, as it would have been tantamount to admitting it was about her. I never let anybody read it in toto, and that’s why it was impossible for her to have seen or heard of it. The manuscript was kept in a bank vault. I was very careful with it; sometimes I let a few people read part of it with me sitting there. The new portion, ‘Unspoiled Monsters,’ I’ve never shown to anybody. This book wanders in all directions. It’s not just about the ‘Côte Basque’ people, and my God, of course I’m not taking out after Babe Paley in the next part. She isn’t even mentioned. How do these things get started? The book is really about ‘Kate McCloud.’ And nobody but me knows who she is, and nobody is going to know.”

I tell Truman that Elsie Woodward herself does not feel Ann committed suicide for any reason having to do with him. He says, “You see …. “

DON’T YOU CARE THAT ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO CLOSE THEIR DOORS TO YOU? asked the play producer.

“Well, in the first place, I don’t think all these people will. I maintain the people who are really mad are the ones left out. Jean vanden Heuvel said, ‘I hope it isn’t true I’m not going to be in by name. “La Côte Basque” was delicious and I hereby propose myself for another section.’

“Look, I’m not using Proust as a model because what I’m doing is in the latter half of the 20th century as an American. But if someone like Proust were here now and an American, he’d be writing about this world. People say the language is filthy. I think that’s the way people talk and think now — exactly. I think it’s beautifully written. This thing about me never being invited again just shows such an ignorance of human nature that I can’t believe it. People don’t understand how their own minds work. No matter what happens, you have to respect somebody because he is an artist, if you have any pretensions to culture. There’s a fantastic ingratitude in America toward its artists. I mean, you do marvelous things and they just …

“Well, France is loyal to its artists, England to its artists, even Russia to its artists [chuckle], when they are dead. No other country treats its creative people like we do. Here they wait for you to fail. They love it. If people think I’m just a bitch, then I surely am 100 percent misunderstood. I consider myself a fine artist. I drove down here from working in British Columbia to start work on the movie and found the world had exploded. This place has been in the same uproar as New York.”

I say that maybe people in Hollywood are afraid they’ll be next.

Truman laughs. “Oh, they’ll get theirs!”

He turns serious: “Look, my life has been dominated by my own levels of taste in art, especially the art of narrative prose writing, wherein my particular art lies. I have never compromised that. I may have compromised other things in my life, personally, emotionally, or whatnot, but never that. This book, this whole thing, has been the ultimate of my art. You have to be true to your work. I’ve always said there’s no such thing as writing down. Writers always do the best they can.”

We go out into the sunshine. I take a good look at Truman and am infected perhaps by his own line describing Henri Soulé as “pink and glazed as a marzipan pig.” We walk toward the Beverly Wilshire while I think only in food clichés. I note Truman’s new butter-colored moccasins … his apricot-yogurt sweater … his Champagne lick of hair … the strawberry-colored heels of his tiny French carroty hands … his pale raspberry-tinted sunglasses … his soft Cardin hat with its gingerbread texture. l’m relieved to see that he is wearing an ordinary unappetizing pair of trousers that make him look as if he has been hit in the ass with a shovel.

Truman carries his current overweight bulge before him like some defrocked Santa Claus. He gives several autographs en route. He tries to buy a denim vest covered with pockets, discovers that an expensive camera comes with it, and shrugs, “They should give it to me.” At the hotel we fall into the El Padrino bar and Truman asks for a telephone. Disturbed by reports of Diana Vreeland’s displeasure, he dials her direct.

He calls her “darling,” “angel,” “precious one,” and tells her twice that he loves her. He hangs up triumphant and exclaims: “She says it’s the only important and interesting thing she has ever read about the rich!”

Burbank, Stage 15: I am watching Truman “act.” He stands on a step ladder reading Murder by Death lines in a singularly hideous dining-room set. Peter Sellers, Elsa Lanchester, and Timmy Coco play the scene with him. As far as one can see, Capote makes no effort to “act” but simply plays himself. When the heavy chandelier falls, smashing the table and almost causing serious injuries, Capote quips: “The ghosts of Gore Vidal and of Jackie Susann, no doubt.”

In his mobile dressing room, I ask about this acting bit: “Oh, I just thought it would be fun to do something different and I really liked the script. It’s going to be a good movie. I probably won’t act again. It was just for a change from working on the book, and I knew I didn’t have time to take a vacation. How am I as an actor? [Chuckles.] Let’s see, just say, ‘What Billie Holiday is to jazz … what Mae West is to tits … what Gucci is to loafers … what Schlumberger is to enamel bracelets … what Cartier is to tank watches … what Guerlain is to perfume … what Roederer is to Champagne … what Chekhov is to the short story … what Seconal is to sleeping pills … what King Kong is to penises, Truman Capote is to the great god Thespis!”

Truman is suddenly struck by an idea. “My agent Mr. Irving Lazar has given several parties of late and didn’t invite me. So maybe you’re right. Maybe I am a social outcast. Tell you what — call him up and ask about it!”

I’m reluctant, but Truman pays no attention to me. He gets Lazar’s phone number, he dials, and hands me the telephone. I give my message to the secretary, who says “Swifty” will call back. When I hang up, Truman is exasperated. “No, that’s not what I want you to say.” He re-coaches me in my lines. Before Lazar can return the call, Truman is called to the set. When the call comes through I tell Lazar that his client is now a social outcast and ask if this applies in Hollywood, since Truman has not been invited to Lazar’s parties.

Lazar says, grimly, “I wouldn’t have any comment about that.”

Floundering, I say, “You wouldn’t have any comment?”

Lazar: “No.”

I stumble, “Okay, well, I’ll tell Mr. Capote what you said.”

Lazar’s voice rises. “I didn’t tell you to tell Mr. Capote anything.”

“Yes, I know,” I reply, weakly, “and I will tell him that you say you have no comment.”

Lazar screams: “I don’t want you to tell Mr. Capote I said anything. Dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have taken this call!” (Slam.)

Truman loves it. He roars over having discomfited the agent of Richard M. Nixon. Two weeks later he calls New York to ask what people are saying now. I sense that he is anxious. He speaks bitterly of what he calls “the ‘walkers’ … my vociferous critics … what do they have to do with me … with my work?”

Soon it comes out that now the Paleys, the Whitneys, Gloria Vanderbilt, Mike and Jan Cowles, others who were indeed real friends, have drawn the line against Truman. Unlike the Baron de Montesquiou writing to Proust for reassurance that he is not the model for “Baron de Charlus,” Lady Keith does not get in touch with Capote at all. No, she has gone on a trip to the South Pacific with — the Irving Lazars.

Where does all this leave our hero? “Well, I won’t retire to my cork-lined room yet,” says Truman. “I’m just going to a Palm Springs spa to take off 20 pounds before a college lecture tour. Then I’ll drop the other shoe.”

I remind him that nobody can really judge a literary work for 50 years. “This won’t even be dated in 50 years!” says Truman with a bulldog tenacity.

Then I tell him the story of how Gertrude Stein, with all her artistic pretensions, didn’t like the portrait Picasso painted of her and made the classic hick comment: “But it doesn’t look like me!”

Picasso then said, “But it will!”

Truman applauds. He says, “You know. I’m beginning to think what’s happening now is better than the book!”

19 notes · View notes