1983 Truman Capote "Playboy" Manuscript
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GUEST:
I brought an original magazine manuscript by Truman Capote. And I think it may well have been the last thing he wrote. For many years, I was the articles editor of Playboy magazine.
APPRAISER:
Nice.
GUEST:
I used to call myself the rationale editor, because everybody says they buy it for the articles, but in fact, in that capacity, I edited a lot of great writers: Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut and E. L. Doctorow, who just died, and Capote, and many others. In the fall of 1983, I assigned Capote to write a memoir of his friendship with Tennessee Williams. We were anticipating this. This was going to be the lead story in Playboy's 30th anniversary issue in January of '84. The piece came in and Capote had called me and told me he writes in longhand, and he wanted me to have this manuscript for myself. Of course, when it came in, we had to retype it for the use of the magazine. The bad thing about it was, it was horrible.
APPRAISER:
Horrible?
GUEST:
Horrible, I mean, you know, and it's hard to...
APPRAISER:
That's the editor in you? (laughs)
GUEST:
That’s the editor- That was my job, being the editor, and yes, we needed his name for our cover line in the January issue. I worked up my courage to tell him I needed a rewrite, but we had a very sort of funny conversation. He always ended every conversation with me as "okey dokey, Mr. Morgan," so anyway.
APPRAISER:
That's a good Capote.
GUEST:
So, I asked him to revise it, and he said he was really sick. I didn't realize he was sick at this time.
APPRAISER:
Right.
GUEST:
Again, this is fall of '83, and so he asked me if I could revise it for him, and I said, well, I don't know what your relationship with Tennessee Williams was like. So, not going to reject this no matter what, I said, why don't we do this: We'll have some telephone conversations and I'll record them and you'll tell me stories, and he was much looser in his stories than he is when he sat down to write this.
APPRAISER:
Oh I bet.
GUEST:
So, that's what happened, we did about three nights running and he told me great stories and the magazine piece was published in the January issue.
APPRAISER:
Fantastic. And things like longhand manuscripts are becoming harder and harder to come by, from the great authors of the 20th century. They're all typing...
GUEST:
They just email them in now.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, and you said before, and it's true of Capote, he was a traditional writer in that he did write longhand, very distinctive handwriting.
GUEST:
Right. Right.
APPRAISER:
The minute I saw it, I was like, that's Capote, you could see it a block away.
GUEST:
So you knew it, yeah.
APPRAISER:
And right away, he's talking about the opening of Streetcar Named Desire, he's talking about Blanche.
GUEST:
Right, yeah.
APPRAISER:
For him to be writing about a great writer is content that, for us, is very exciting. So, first rounds mean a lot, first drafts mean a lot
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
As imperfect as they are. And in fact, they probably mean more if you scaled like a draft, the more perfect it would get from an editor's point of view, might be the least interesting from ours. So, in this case, and I compared with what we could find of other manuscript material that have come up from Capote, and it's not a lot
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
I would safely auction estimate the manuscript at $20,000 to $30,000.
GUEST:
Wow! Well, I'm glad I kept it in my lockbox all these years.
APPRAISER:
And it’s fantastic, I'm glad you did, too.
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