Truman Capote: Conversations

Truman Capote once said that he loved talking more than anything else. Inge's book is a collection of interviews with the great talker himself, covering the period from 1948, when Capote burst on the literary scene with his first novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms," to a 1980 self-interview from "Music for Chameleons."

It includes the complete texts of George Plimpton's important "New York Times Book Review" interview upon the publication of Capote's masterpiece "In Cold Blood" and Eric Norden's lengthy 1968 "Playboy" interview, both involving Capote's claim to have invented a new literary form, the "nonfiction novel."

These interviews make clear why we must sometimes take Capote with a grain of salt, and why we must take his work as seriously as he took it himself.