Q. “Bill, don’t laugh, but what will my mother think if I write about sex?” (Or my friends, if I write about them?) At the height of his fame, Truman Capote became the darling of New York money, dinners with the Paleys, and a weekend on the Vanderbilt yacht. Then he wrote “Answered Prayers,” describing scenes not entirely remote from the actual lives of these glossy friends, and his phone stopped ringing. One of my own friends, Billy Barnes, was an ICM agent whose client list included people like Tennessee Williams and Raquel Welch. (“Billy,” Raquel phoned one night from Rio, “which shoes should I wear for my personal appearance tonight, the emerald green flats, or the high heeled red Maude Trigonnes? “) An ICM client myself, I was not surprised to find Truman Capote at one of the big parties Billy was always giving at his E. 55th St. penthouse for one movie star or another just in from the Coast. “Who did those people think they were inviting to the Oak Bar for lunch?” Capote was bitterly complaining. “They knew I was a writer. What made them think I would not write about them?” The price of being a pro football player is living with pain, a ballet dancer spends years learning to dance on her toes. Amy Tan drew heat because she wrote about people spitting on the streets in China, and Alice Walker was vilified because of her unflattering portraits of African-American men. Philip Roth has been accused of anti-Semitism. I’ve known writers whose descriptions of childhood caused their families to stop speaking to them. So be it. If you are not willing to pay that price, take up (as Truman Capote once said) the piano.

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