Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel

I really wanted to enjoy this book but I ended up just feeling like I was at the wrong end of an inside joke. I love the way Capote crafts a sentence and his powers of description and characterization. This book is no exception. He has painted people and locales in the biting, edgey way that only he can. However, he drops so many names and places that I'm only vaguely familiar with, that I found myself spending more time reading Wikipedia than reading the book. I think if I had read this book back in the 1970's (and, maybe, not have been a teenager at the time) I would have gotten a lot more from it.