49 pages • 1-hour read
Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Everything”
By 1961, Lee (now using the title Princess Radziwill) has grown tired of her husband, Stas. When her sister Jackie becomes First Lady of the United States, Lee’s own celebrity skyrockets, but she remains jealous, feeling stuck in her sister’s shadow. Lee begins an affair with Aristotle Onassis, a Greek shipping magnate. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. in October 1963, Lee invites Jackie to spend time with her on Onassis’s yacht. Onassis quickly falls for Jackie, devastating Lee. In 1964, Lee returns to the United States with Stas and tries to build an acting career, but receives negative reviews on stage and television. A few years later, Lee is furious to hear that her sister Jackie has agreed to marry Aristotle Onassis; Lee describes the marriage as a business deal.
Lee begins an affair with photographer Peter Beard and invites Truman to accompany them on tour with the Rolling Stones and write an article for the magazine Rolling Stone. Truman clashes with the band and never completes the piece. Lee begins to write a memoir of her own but never finishes it. As Lee’s reliance on alcohol grows, her teenage daughter Tina decides to live in a nearby apartment with the now-widowed Jackie Onassis instead. Truman writes a piece for Vogue celebrating Lee in which he claims to prefer her to Jackie.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Naaaah, They’re Too Dumb”
Truman prepares for the publication of “La Côte Basque 1965,” an 11,000-word chapter from Answered Prayers, in Esquire magazine, despite the warnings of those closest to him. In the opening pages of the story, a thinly-veiled stand-in for Slim Keith named Lady Ina Coolbirth gossips about her friends. She refers to both real women, such as Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona Chaplin, and thinly fictionalized versions of real women, such as “Cleo Dillon,” a stand-in for Babe Paley. “Ina” describes how “Cleo”’s husband had an affair with the wife of the governor of New York with explicit, embarrassing details.
Slim and Babe are outraged at their depiction in the story. Slim is insulted that she is depicted as a vain and untrustworthy person and by the public revelation that she had been assaulted as a teenager. Babe feels especially betrayed, given her generosity to Truman and the fact that she introduced him to an elite social circle. She never speaks to Truman again. Unbeknownst to Truman, she has been diagnosed with lung cancer. As the swans continue their lives without Truman, Truman himself struggles with the loss of his social status.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Good Pocket”
Truman moves away from the café society of his former life into a new, younger crowd centered on Studio 54, a trendy disco in midtown Manhattan. As he spends more time in the club scene, Truman becomes increasingly reliant on cocaine and alcohol. He gives a rambling interview to the New York Times Magazine in which he describes plans for an elaborate party to rival his Black and White Ball. C.Z. and her husband arrange for Truman to go to rehab, but he continues drinking and using drugs when he returns. Truman’s addiction problems are exacerbated when he is sued by the writer Gore Vidal after telling a story about Vidal being kicked out of the White House. When Lee Radziwill refuses to testify on his behalf, he shares embarrassing stories about her and the Kennedy family on live television. During a drunken fight, Truman is assaulted by one of his lovers, and is hospitalized for two weeks. He attends a number of rehab facilities, but continues drinking and using drugs. Meanwhile, Lee Radziwill joins Alcoholics Anonymous but cannot escape her insecurities about her sister.
In 1984, Truman buys a one-way ticket to California and stays with his friend Joanne Carson, who cares for him in his final days. He dies in Bel Air on August 25, 1984.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Afterword Summary”
After Truman’s death, Joanne Carson has him cremated and placed into two urns, telling the mortuary that Truman wanted half of his ashes to remain in Los Angeles. She sends one urn to Truman’s long-time partner Jack Dunphy, but does not tell him that she has kept half of the remains. When Dunphy learns the truth, he never speaks to her again. Joanne turns her home into a shrine to Truman, keeping the bedroom where he died exactly as it was. She claims to have a key to a safety deposit box containing the completed manuscript for Answered Prayers, but does not know where the box is located. In 1988, she gives a Black and White Ball in honor of Truman, but none of the invited celebrities appear. In order to appease the photographer she invited, she claims that one of the guests stole Truman’s ashes. A few weeks later, the ashes are found outside Joanne’s home.
In 1988, Joanne arranges for Truman’s remains to be interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park. Unable to part with him, she removes half of the remains and replaces it with dog remains, keeping one-quarter of Truman’s ashes for herself. After Joanne’s death in 2015, her estate auctions off this one-quarter for $45,000. Leamer speculates that Truman would have loved the excitement caused by the auction.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Swans”
The final chapters detail the final years of the swans’ lives. Babe Paley dies in 1978 of lung cancer. She leaves gifts to C.Z., Gloria, Slim, and Marcella. Truman is not invited to her funeral. Gloria dies in 1980 of a heart attack, but her friends suspect that it is a carefully disguised suicide. Slim marries Lord Kenneth Keith in 1962, but divorces him in 1972. She dies in 1990 of lung cancer months before the publication of her memoir, Slim. After the death of her husband Averell Harriman, Pamela is made Ambassador to France. She remains in France for the rest of her life, dying in Paris in 1997. After a lengthy battle with cancer, C.Z. Guest dies in 2003. Lee Radziwill marries director Herbert Ross in 1988; they divorce in 2001. Lee dies in 2019 at her home in Manhattan. A few days later, Marella dies at her home in Turin. Shortly before her death, she publishes a memoir entitled The Last Swan.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
In this final section, Leamer breaks from his previous nonchronological structure in which he weaves anecdotes from the women’s lives with their biographies, excerpts from Truman’s writings, and details from his life. In contrast, the final chapters progress in chronological order as the individual threads of the narrative come together and “Le Côte Basque 1965” is published for the women and the world at large to read. As the book draws to a close, Leamer depicts the women’s reactions to the piece, Truman’s attempts to mend the friendships, and his subsequent collapse into drug and alcohol addiction. Leamer’s structural shift emphasizes the importance of these women and “Le Côte Basque 1965” in Truman’s final years. For Leamer, the piece and the swans’ reaction to it represents the defining event of this time in Truman’s life, and sets him on his trajectory to an early death. The final chapter of the novel, titled “The Swans,” reads as a series of obituaries—brief paragraphs describing the last years of each of the central women. Because these paragraphs are ordered by the date of death, they do not reflect the order in which the women are introduced in the book itself. This disruption reinforces the novel’s depiction of the women as unique individuals grouped by Truman and contemporary media into an anonymous group, the swans. The structure of these final chapters reflects both the importance of the women in Truman’s life and his inability to see them as individuals.
The book’s resolution presents Truman as a man both obsessed with and disdainful of artifice. Leamer suggests that the tragedy of Truman’s life is that he treats his friends like commodities rather than human beings, which prevents him from experiencing true connection with them. As Chapter 17 indicates, Truman sees these relationships as an opportunity to “return him once again into the most talked-about author in America” (283). He’s willing to expose secrets “that had been told to him in the deepest confidence” despite repeated warnings that “this public airing of their dirty lingerie was nothing less than a betrayal” (282). Leamer repeats the word “betrayal” four times in this chapter (282, 284, 289, 291), emphasizing how deeply Truman wounded and alienated the women who trusted him with their secrets, treating them not as friends but as fodder for “his brilliant work” (287).
Leamer uses dramatic irony to emphasize this point in the novel’s epilogue in which Truman himself is posthumously commodified. Two days before his death, Truman describes his flight from New York to California as “on a one-way ticket,” suggesting that he knows he’s close to death (306). During his stay with Joanne, she’s “endlessly solicitous and caring” towards him, but after his death, Joanne attempts to exploit Truman’s memory for profit. She secretly keeps half of his ashes for herself, infuriating his long-time partner Jack Dunphy, who “never talk[s] to her again” after learning the truth (308). Later, she stages the theft of Truman’s ashes, “desperate to be featured in People [magazine]” (310). Leamer positions this relationship as an echo of the dynamic between Truman and the swans: Truman trusts Joanne, who later betrays his memory because of her desire for fame. Leamer’s focus on Truman’s afterlife through Joanne reflects the tragedy of Truman’s closest friendships.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs