Truman Capote Sups on the Flesh of the Famous 

By James Wolcott The Village Voice September 6, 1976 Has any writer since Boswell possessed a shrewder sense of careermanship than Truman Capote? Gore Vidal expertly packages his arch, marcelled aphorisms for television consumption, Norman Mailer at his most combative...

The Purple Decades

By James Wolcott The New York Review of Books November 4, 1982 The Purple Decades: A Reader   by Tom Wolfe Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 396 pp., $17.50 Not since Garry Wills uncorked his rather fanciful notions on the origins of the cold war in the opening pages of...

French Fries and Sympathy

By James Wolcott Texas Review May 1982 Coffee and Coca-Cola, the crackling hiss of food on the fry, the ring of laughter in a bustling room—Diner, written and directed by Barry Levinson, is a bittersweet reverie about the pleasures of noshing and chumming about until...