Very, very immersive, filled with gossipy details...however, it was impossible to fully enjoy this book with the knowledge hovering in the back of my mind that Capote's ball was only made possible because of the murders of the Clutter family. ( )

Very entertaining tale of Truman Capote's Black and White Ball which he threw to celebrate the success of his smash hit book "In Cold Blood." I remember reading about, and seeing pictures of, the socialite people who attended his "party of the century" in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar when I was in my teens, and it brought back some good memories of an era that is long-gone but fondly remembered. ( )

Picked this one up thanks to Melanie Benjamin's awesome fictionalized version of these events! Very fun read. ( )

Just as much trashy fun as her other book, though about an entirely different topic. This was in fact a book that deserved to use the word fabulous in the title. ( )

It was a good quick read, it touched on the party, Capote's early life, his writing, and his friends. It also chronicled a time that has passed and the start of the modern era that we are still living in (the media frenzy and the voyeuristic public appetite that feeds it).

After the party it talked about those who thought it was a bad thing (too flighty and foolish, bad timing - Vietnam), and it talked about how it and the success of In Cold Blood was built on the murders of the family of four, and the eventual deaths of the two killers. It then goes on to sketch Capote's decline and fall from being a productive writer, and a society darling, to a self-parody, riddled with drugs, and alcohol; Who could only turn out shorts that bit the hands that fed him.

The book touched on the horror of his rise (money, fame, social power) built on the deaths in Kansas, including the killers, with whom he became close.

One place in the book a person talks about how Capote, early in his career, seemed flighty and fluffy, but that he also had a strong practical streak, and organized plans that he developed and followed, regarding his writing. I suspect that side of him churned the Clutter family and their killers as grist for his career, and eventually the more humane and artistic side couldn't deal with it and he came to hate himself. Which is of course only my lay armchair opinion. ( )