When Truman Capote died on 25 August 1984, a month short of his sixtieth birthday, he had few mourners. In a letter to Helen S. Garson after the 1986 publication of Answered Prayers, Capote's longtime editor, Joe Fox, stated he was happy not to have to work with Capote anymore. Various reviewers, critics, enemies, and former friends were happy to flay the dead writer in print and on television. Obituaries described bizarre and unattractive aspects of Capote's personality, and pundits predicted that the public had not only seen but also had heard the last of him. Time has proved them wrong. The writer--described mockingly by lifetime enemy Gore Vidal in his 1996 memoir Palimpsest as someone for whom "an interview is his principal art form"--is gone but not forgotten.

Capote's literary reputation and influence have expanded over the years, with more and more literary figures tipping their hats to him. A...