The fallout was swift: Keith and Babe Paley shortly dropped Capote as a good friend, with Keith even consulting with a lawyer about whether or not she may sue Capote for libel. Others, like Gloria Vanderbilt, adopted go well with: “I feel Truman actually harm my mom,” CNN journalist and newscaster Anderson Cooper informed Sam Kashner in 2012.

Gossip columnist Liz Smith chronicled Capote’s sensational social ousting in a 1976 difficulty of New York journal. “Society’s sacred monsters on the high have been in a state of shock,” she wrote. “By no means have you ever heard such gnashing of tooth, such cries for revenge, such shouts of betrayal and screams of shock.”

Capote, for one, felt the response was unfair. “What do they anticipate?” he informed the Chicago Every day Information a number of months later. “A author writes about what he is aware of. I used to be the one one who may write this ebook.” (All the identical, because the reporter astutely puzzled, hadn’t Capote “introduced these characters in a imply, gossipy method? And shouldn’t he anticipate to lose buddies that method?”) By July 1976, lower than a yr after “La Côte Basque” had gone to press, Capote had landed in rehab for alcohol abuse. Smith printed his admission within the papers.

In April 1978, he opened up concerning the standing of his friendships with the Swans to Newsday journal. Of Slim Keith, he stated merely that she was “one of many three individuals who was once a good friend however is not—her resolution, not mine.” But he appeared usually saddened by the lack of Babe’s companionship: “I’ve seen her a number of occasions en passant, and she or he’s been cordial, however you have to keep in mind we had been virtually finest buddies earlier than,” he informed the interviewer. “She’s an important magnificence, she has nice style, and she or he’s one of the vital beneficiant folks to her buddies. I love her sort of magnificence—anybody can look good at 30, however whenever you’re getting on to 60, trying lovely is an actual accomplishment. She’s very well-read.” When Babe died in 1978 from most cancers, Capote was not invited to her funeral.

Nonetheless, in December 1979, he doubled down on his resolution to publish “La Côte Basque” in an essay for Vogue. The story, he admitted, “aroused anger in sure circles, the place it was felt I used to be betraying confidences, mistreating buddies and/or foes. I don’t intend to debate this; this difficulty includes social politics, not inventive benefit,” he wrote. “I’ll say solely this: all a author has to work with is the fabric he has gathered as the results of his personal endeavor and observations, and you can not deny him the fitting to make use of it. Condemn however not deny.”