I don’t know how many of you watched the American Masters episode about Harper Lee this past week, but I am deeply bothered by its snide rendering of Truman Capote — to my mind a far smarter and better writer than Lee — and the all-too-common portrayal of the “sad last years” of his life, as if they in any way expunged his literary achievement.

To my mind, Capote is simply one of this country’s finest novelists and essayists, at a time of many first-class writers. He was a keen, comical observer and a meticulous craftsman who produced a lengthy shelf of literary masterpieces: Other Voices, Other Rooms, The Grass Harp, “The Diamond Guitar,” “House of Flowers,” In Cold Blood, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” to say nothing of his sparkling travel essays, interviews, and letters.

When Lee’s older sister trots out the odorous canard that Capote broke with Lee because she won a Pulitzer and he didn’t, I wretched. As if grand old age has now canonized the slight. From all accounts, including his own, Truman’s childhood was a fairly wretched affair, salvaged only by his cousin, Souk Faulk. He rose to literary esteem quickly and was undoubtedly seduced by its accompanying fame, but in no way should that fact be confused with or diminish the beauty and insight of his broad and long bibliography.

It’s almost as if American Masters — and its Capote-belittling commentators — want us to make a choice between Lee and Capote as exemplars, respectively, of “job well done” and “sad decline.” Fine. To Kill a Mockingbird is a good book, but I would sacrifice it in an instant, no question, to keep Capote’s voice in my ears and his books on my shelf.