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Another iconic American literary figure has officially entered the Feud<\/em> chat. On the fifth episode of Capote vs. The Swans,<\/em> airing Wednesday night, Truman Capote (Tom Hollander<\/strong>) falls deeper into the depths of alcoholic despair as he continues to be alienated from his beloved swans after the fallout from his Esquire<\/em> short story \u201cLa C\u00f4te Basque, 1965.\u201d Enter a well-timed visit from none other than legendary writer and activist James Baldwin<\/a>, portrayed by actor Chris Chalk,<\/strong> who both challenges and comforts the struggling author. In Capote vs. The Swans,<\/em> the two seminal writers trade barbs and words of encouragement, and it turns out their real-life relationship was similarly fraught. \u00a0<\/p>\n In the episode, \u201cThe Secret Inner Lives of Swans,\u201d Baldwin visits Capote, who is in the midst of an alcohol-induced slumber, right as Capote is on the brink of ending it all. Chalk\u2019s Baldwin is at once a sharpshooter and a relentless truth-teller, refusing to let Capote waste his gift. The pair bounces around New York, going from the restaurant La C\u00f4te Basque, where Capote accurately notes that his swans \u201cwould never do this\u2014have lunch alone with a Black man,\u201d to an underground gay bar where they commiserate about being queer writers in the mid-70s. They end up back at Capote\u2019s apartment, where Baldwin inspires Capote to, at least temporarily, put down the bottle and pick up the pen. \u201cYour book, it is the firing squad that killed the Romanovs,\u201d Baldwin says to Capote in Feud.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s your guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette.\u201d By the episode\u2019s end, Capote has regained his sense of self and dines on a swan stolen from Central Park, prepared by a La C\u00f4te Basque chef no less.<\/p>\n In reality, Baldwin would most likely not have been around New York to guide Capote on his journey of self-discovery. By the mid-1970s Baldwin, like Capote, was already a prolific and celebrated author, having rose to national prominence via his lauded works like 1953\u2019s Go Tell It On the Mountain,<\/em> 1955\u2019s essay collection Notes of a Native Son,<\/em> and his controversial and groundbreaking queer novel Giovanni\u2019s Room,<\/em> published in 1956. By the time those books were published, Baldwin had long since abandoned his native Harlem for Paris<\/a>, \u00a0in large part due to the unrelenting racism in America. Baldwin would die on December 1, 1987, a few years after Capote, of stomach cancer at his home in Saint-Paul de Vence, France.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.),\u201d wrote Baldwin in his essay The Discovery of What It Means to be an American<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> in 1959. \u201cI wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely<\/em> a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer\u2026Still, the breakthrough is important, and the point is that an American writer, in order to achieve it, very often has to leave this country.\u201d Abroad, Baldwin would continue churning out beloved work, including his 1962 novel Another Country,<\/em> his essay collection The Fire Next Time<\/em> in 1963, and the novel If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em> in 1974. (Nearly half a century later, in 2018, Barry Jenkins<\/strong> would adapt If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em> into a film by the same name, starring \u00a0KiKi Layne,<\/strong> Stephan James,<\/strong> and an Oscar-winning Regina King.<\/strong>) By the time Capote\u2019s imagined rendezvous with Baldwin occurred in the mid-1970s, Baldwin was already primarily living in Saint-Paul de Vence. Capote vs. The Swans<\/em> writer Jon Robin Baitz<\/strong> knew as much, framing episode five as \u201ca play, really\u2014an imagined encounter,\u201d Baitz told Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> \u201cThey knew each other, but there was no real love lost between them in actuality.\u201d<\/p>\n Baitz clearly did his research. Capote, it seems, was not too fond of Baldwin\u2019s writing, at least as far as his peer\u2019s fiction was concerned. \u201cI loathe Jimmy\u2019s fiction: it is crudely written and of a balls-aching boredom,\u201d wrote Capote to literature scholar and Smith college professor Newton Arvin in 1962<\/a>. While that was certainly less than complimentary, he had kinder things to say about Baldwin\u2019s non-fiction writing, although that too was caged in Capote\u2019s classic brand of caustic cattiness. \u201cI do sometimes think his essays are at least intelligent, although they almost invariably end on a fakely hopeful, hymn-singing note.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say Capote was the only one who had acerbic words for Baldwin. In the December 17, 1964 issue of the New York Review of Books,<\/em> American theatre critic Robert Brustein wrote a scathing review of Nothing Personal,<\/em> a collaboration between Baldwin and famed high fashion photographer Richard Avedon. In the review, called \u201cEverybody Knows My Name,\u201d<\/a> Brustein rips their collaboration to shreds, beginning, \u201cOf all the superfluous non-books being published this winter for the Christmas luxury trade, there is none more demoralizingly significant than a monster volume called Nothing Personal.\u201d<\/em> Avedon\u2019s photos were accompanied by occasional text from Baldwin, which Brustein also went out of his way to eviscerate in his review. Baldwin\u2019s contributions to Nothing Personal,<\/em> Brustein wrote, pop up \u201cinterrupting from time to time, like a punchy and pugnacious drunk awakening from a boozy doze during a stag movie, to introduce his garrulous, irrelevant, and by now predictable comments on how to live, how to love, and how to build Jerusalem.\u201d Harsh.\u00a0<\/p>\n