Profession: writer

After a precocious start as a writer, Capote’s talent for self-publicity overshadowed his gifts as a stylist. Lee, a childhood friend, accompanied him researching murders in Kansas. Warhol was a starry-eyed admirer; Chaplin ‘adopted’ him in Hollywood. Capote travelled to Haiti with Greene, met Gide in Sicily, feuded with Mailer, and wrote dialogue for Huston. Allen cast him as winner of a Capote look-alike competition. Vidal and Capote perennially tried to upstage each other, Vidal calling his death a wise career-move. He found Faulkner unaccountably crying in his cold bath, and collapsed in Vonnegut’s house a week before he died.

The shock-value attached to Nabokov’s best-known novel has distracted from his status as one of his century’s most notable stylists, in both Russian and English. Rachmaninoff helped him get to the US, where Wilson and McCarthy were among early friends and supporters, summering together. He met Joyce in Paris in 1937, Tsvetaeva in Prague, and sat back to back with Bely in Berlin. He spent an evening with Stravinsky, Auden and Balanchine, admired Queneau and Robbe-Grillet, and having rented Frost’s chilly house, thinly disguised a character after him. Geisel (Dr Seuss), a friend, named an eagle Vlad Vladikoff in his honour.

Gibson is known for novels and short stories that presciently explored the worlds of cyberspace and virtual reality, and coined some of their now-familiar terminology. He and his friend Coupland (adoptive Canadian and native-born) have appeared on discussion platforms together, and in a short film. Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ appeared while he was still working on ‘Neuromancer’, causing him to fear Scott had beaten him to it, and that he wouldn’t be able to do justice to his intentions; meeting and chatting years later, they discovered a shared set of influences. Gibson’s characteristic stance may be anti-utopian, but never dystopian.

Styron’s modest output was in inverse proportion to the ripples his books made. Gary and Baldwin (who encouraged him to write from a black perspective) were among friends made in Paris in the 1950’s; he was generous to both. Bernstein played piano at his parties, Mailer and he feuded for 25 years but made up, and Capote urged him to marry. His glittering array of friends included literature-loving presidents: Marquez, a good friend, brought Fuentes to lunch with Clinton, while Mitterand had him by his side at his inauguration. Faulkner slipped away when Styron went to the toilet at their only meeting.

It may be easy to dismiss Cummings as a precocious modernist who failed to develop much; but he was influential, and Copland (a friend), Cage and Berio all set his words to music. In his childhood, James was a family friend and neighbour, as he himself was later to the young Wolff. Dos Passos was a trusty friend through university and after. Crane, Pound, Stein, MacLeish, Aragon, Thomson and Evans were all met in Paris. Brik tried to indoctrinate him, Tailleferre shared a ride to the south of France and back, Powys was a New York neighbour, and Campos (his translator) was among his many correspondents.

Along with Ginsberg and Burroughs, Kerouac remains the most significant and influential of the Beat writers; meeting in New York, the lives of all three were heavily intertwined. Following Ginsberg to Californa, he became close friends with Snyder (they climbed together), fictionalised Ferlinghetti, and became acquainted with Rexroth and Duncan. Kerouac admired Corso and Pollock (whom Kerouac had to be pulled off during a drink-fuelled punch-up), had a one-night stand with Vidal, and was given his first marijuana by Young. He told Berrigan he persuaded Ginsberg not to change his name to ‘Allen Renard’