Capote and Me

This week we finally rented and viewed Capote, since both girls were out of the house and we didn't think it was something they would particularly enjoy. We've been on a real movie-watching binge around here. The night before we watched Transamerica, which I thought was fantastic. And the girls rented Aquamarine, which I thought was going to be totally stupid and I didn't want to watch, but they talked me into it anyway, and I laughed my head off. It was cute.

Anyway, back to Capote. I was completely and totally engrossed, as I usually am when I'm watching movies about writers. I hadn't ever read In Cold Blood, and didn't really know much about him at all, although I love To Kill A Mockingbird and I was intrigued and impressed by the Harper Lee character.

The Capote figure was both endearing and repulsive, which I guess is supposed to be the point. I stared at the screen while he was typing away, and I thought, I really need to get a typewriter, or at least a computer that does not have Internet access. Would he really have been able to write that book on a Powerbook with links to New York gossip and restaurant reviews and discussion boards and blogs and god knows what else pulls me away from Microsoft Word every five seconds? It takes a strong person. But I was seduced by the image of him and that manual typewriter and the two piles of typing paper; the overturned finished pages, and the clean, blank ones that he slid into the roller. It all looked so neat, and so straightforward: writing.

One of the final shots, with the epigraph from his last, unpublished and unfinished book, brought tears to my eyes.

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.

And after the movie scrolled into darkness, J turned to me and said, "I saw a lot of you in him." I hated to admit that I felt a lot of him in me, too, and I've been trying to sort that out all week. Am I really that neurotic? Vulnerable? Messed up? Are all writers? I don't know. I just feel like I've been walking around with the shadow of Truman Capote trailing me all week.