Storytelling

Melanie Benjamin’s The Swans of Fifth Avenue explores the act of storytelling as both a form of entertainment and as a form of ultimate deceit. Truman Capote’s enveloping charm and charisma are centered on his talents as a storyteller. This is how Truman earned his living and it is how he infiltrated the world of the social elite in Manhattan. Alternately, it is also Truman’s talent at storytelling that formulates his downfall from that society and his estrangement from the friends that he had become so close to.

Truman Capote is associated with a writing style called narrative journalism. Closely associated with creative nonfiction, narrative journalism is rooted in accurate fact but is also intended to entertain based on writing style or florid prose. There is an ethical dilemma in this style of writing which is made clear in the novel: in order...