By Michael Downs (Baltimore Magazine, 2/2/2024)
For decades John W. Ruark has told the story at cocktail parties: how on a November night in 1977, as a student at what was then Towson State University, he took Truman Capote’s arm and led the inebriated, incoherent, profanity-spewing writer off stage.
“Mr. Capote,” he told him, “It’s time to go.”
A crowd of about 1,800 people had come to the university’s Towson Center to hear Capote read from his work, according to a report that week in The Towerlight, the school newspaper. Capote’s appearance–rambling and spiced with F-bombs–lasted only 10 minutes. The abrupt ending made for sensational headlines nationwide.
Read the story at Baltimore Magazine.
