A missing piece from Truman Capote’s novel “Answered Prayers” was discovered by Vanity Fair contributing editor, Sam Kashner, during a recent research. The newly found story called “Yachts and Things” will be published in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

Sam Kashner spent a lot of time studying Truman Capote’s unfinished autobiographical novel “Answered Prayers” and she, thus, managed to discover a lost manuscript of the chapter “Yachts and Things”. The papers were held by the New York Public Library after his death in 1984.

The story is very short, but it will, nevertheless, be included in the December issue of the Vanity Fair magazine. Only a few chapters of the novel “Answered Prayers” survived throughout the years as Capote’s work was most of the times criticized for dishing on the tumultuous and often embarrassing lives of the high-society people. The fact that the Vanity Fair contributing editor has managed to retrace the six pages could help shed light on the meaning of the entire novel.

As the name of the small chapter indicates it, “Yachts and Things” tells the story of a three-week Mediterranean cruise that takes place at the board of one of Capote’s yacht. Although there are no clear proofs indicating this, it is believed that Gianni Agnelli, the then-head of Italy’s Fiat SpA, was the host of the cruise. He was unable to join Truman and his girlfriend “Mrs. Williams” because he had to attend a funeral.

Capote biographer Gerald Clarke took a closer look at the novel and reassured reporters that the six-page manuscript it’s truly his work. “It’s vintage Truman,” he stated. He further stated that the author intended on naming one of his chapters in the book “Yachts and Things”, so the story could be really his. There is, however, one aspect that seems to bother Clarke: Capote wanted his chapter to be a lot longer than six pages. The biographer concluded by advancing the supposition that Capote refused to introduce the manuscript in the novel because he thought it was too short.