Truman Capote is one of the more fascinating figures on the American literary landscape, being one of the country's few writers to cross the border between celebrity and literary acclaim. His wit and media presence made for a colorful melange that evoked criticism and praise within the same breath. For many, what drew them to him was, for lack of a better word, his "attitude." Capote relished deflating fellow writers in public fora. In a televised appearance with Norman Mailer, he said of Jack Kerouac's work, "That's not writing. That's typewriting." In his unpublished exposé, Answered Prayers, his description of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Pony Royal Bar in Paris could hardly have been less flattering: "Walleyed, pipe-sucking, pasty-hued Sartre and his spinsterish moll, de Beauvoir, were usually propped in a corner like an abandoned pair of ventriloquist's dolls." And when...