LOST FRIENDSHIPS: A Memoir of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams & Others <i> by Donald Windham (Paragon House: $10.95, illustrated) </i>

This self-serving collection of anecdotes reads like an apologia for the author’s quarrels with Williams, Capote et al. Although Donald Windham insists he wants to tell about people he knew and loved, he invariably shows them in the worst possible light--in contrast to his own unflagging honesty, sobriety and probity. Some of these stories are unintentionally revealing: Windham glosses over the young Capote’s casual attitude toward the truth, but the budding writer who invented meetings with Gide and Cocteau is the obvious predecessor of the gossipy caricature who haunted television talk shows during his later years. A minor writer’s bitter homage to his more gifted peers.