A READING ON CAPOTE'S A CHRISTMAS MEMORY,
Organized by Francisco Vaz Brasil
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Historical Context
Growing up in the Depression
Capote's "A Christmas Memory" takes place in the South during the Depression. Though a larger historical framework is not apparent in the story, the traditions of the era are well represented by Buddy's adventures with his cousin. Living in a house with many relatives was common in times of great poverty, and Buddy was most likely there because his parents' economic situation prevented them from providing him with a stable life. In addition, the activities he pursues with his cousin—baking fruitcakes, cutting down a tree in the woods, making homemade decorations and Christmas presents together—not only evoke a nostalgia for a simpler time but also represent common amusements in a rural community when money was scarce. One of Buddy's favorite pastimes is going to the movies, which costs only a dime. During the Depression, millions attended the country's elaborate movie palaces every week; it was the cheapest, most common form of entertainment in a world not yet captivated by radio and television. That Buddy's cousin has never been to a movie herself may not seem so strange when one considers that she grew up in an era before the film industry had captured the public's attention.
An Intolerant Era
Less apparent in the writing of "A Christmas Memory" are the cultural attitudes that fostered what Thomas Dukes has called "the quintessential homosexual writing style1' of the 1950s. In an era of considerable sexual repression, addressing homosexual themes overtly in literature was uncommon. Instead, authors, especially Capote, created situations in a type of "code" that were often interpreted in a homosexual context. One aspect of this "code" in Capote's story is the sensitivity of the central male character, particularly his preference for emphasizing his feelings and emotions over action. Another aspect of this "code" is the emphasis on female characters and domestic concerns. Note also the joke that Mr. Haha Jones makes when he asks Buddy and his cousin, "Which of you is a drinking man?" That Haha finds this funny suggests that he equates Buddy's gender identity more with his female friend rather than with his status as a young male. Outside of his writing, Capote defined himself as homosexual in the often homophobic culture of the 1950s and 1960s through the way in which he chose to be photographed and the effeminate manner he assumed during television interviews.
--> A mirror of the story
The story’ narrator, (in this case, is the author, Truman Capote) tells to the reader to "imagine a morning in late November" more than twenty years ago. The scenary is a kitchen of a rambling house in a small rural town in the 1930s. An elderly woman stands at the kitchen window and says "it's fruitcake weather!". This is delightful news to her seven-year-old cousin and best friend, Buddy. "Fruitcake weather" signals the beginning of the holiday season for the unconventional cousins, who bake the loaves for the people in their lives who have been kind to them through the years. The two proceed with their tradition more or less oblivious to the other relatives who live in the house: "they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, [but] we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them."
They begin the routine by gathering pecans for the fruitcakes. The unnamed (Sook Faulk) woman and the little boy (“Buddy”, Capote), accompanied by their dog Queenie, spend three hours filling an old baby carriage with the nuts that have fallen on the ground in the neighbor's orchard. Then they return to the kitchen to shell the nuts by firelight and plan the next day's work— buying the other ingredients for the fruitcakes. Later, they go up to the woman's bedroom, where she keeps a change purse hidden under her bed. The purse is filled with the money they have accumulated all year from their various enterprises: selling fruit and flowers, and once even charging neighbors to see a deformed chicken. At this time the narrator, grown now and relating the story in flashback, reveals more facts about his cousin. She has never seen a movie or eaten in a restaurant, but she knows how to tame hummingbirds, tell chilling ghost stories, and create elixirs to cure a variety of ills.
The next day, they go on their shopping trip. During their most unusual errand they visit a man named Haha Jones, the local whiskey bootlegger. Jones is large and frightening-looking, but he is kind to the cousins, giving them a bottle of whiskey in exchange for the promise of a fruitcake. Over the next four days they bake thirty-one cakes, most of which they send to people they know only slightly or not at all; people who have passed through their town once, or famous people such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The woman, the narrator points out, “she is shy with everyone except strangers." After the cakes are baked and sent, they split the leftover whiskey and give a spoonful to the dog. A little drunk, they sing and dance around the kitchen, but soon two relatives come in and scold the woman for giving whiskey to the boy. Sobbing, she retreats to her room. Buddy comforts her by reminding her that they will cut down a Christmas tree the next day.
In the morning, they find the perfect Christmas tree, twice as tall as Buddy. They drag it home themselves along with other holiday greenery. They make decorations from colored paper and tinfoil to supplement the few store-bought ornaments they own and sprinkle the tree with shredded cotton. They finish their decorating tasks by creating holly wreaths for the house's front windows. Gifts are created for the rest of the family; Buddy makes his cousin a kite, and he suspects she is making him one as well. His suspicions are confirmed on Christmas Eve when they are too excited to sleep and they reveal their presents to one another. After they open their presents on Christmas Day, they go out to fly the kites. They have such a good time that the old woman feels as if she has seen God.
The narrator reveals that this is the last Christmas he shared with his cousin. Buddy is sent to military school, and spends his summers at camp. For a while, his cousin writes him and continues her holiday fruitcake tradition, sending him "the best of the batch." Eventually, though, she becomes mentally and physically frail, unable to keep up her routine. When she dies, Buddy knows before he is told: "A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received." The story closes with him walking over the grounds of his school and looking at the sky: "As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven."
Comments about the story
Truman Capote learns the true meaning of the Christmas season through his older cousin. He remembers times full of happiness, simple pleasures, and giving - despite how poor he was. His story takes the reader down Memory Lane to show how his cousin touched his life.
Truman remembers the friendship he had with his older distant cousin. The 60-year-old homely dressed old woman considers 7-year-old Truman her best friend. They spend time with each other because relatives ignore them and they have no other friends. The woman had a childhood best friend named Buddy, but he died long ago. She does not call Truman by his real name but by the name Buddy. The old woman doesn't get out much, cares nothing for her appearance, and lives by the bible she reads. She has the courage to kill snakes and also dips snuff secretly. Winter is an exciting time for both of them. At the beginning of the season the woman declares it is "fruitcake weather."
They take great care in gathering the ingredients to make the 30 fruitcakes they bake every year. First they pick pecans from trees in another person's yard with their rat terrier, Queenie. Next they must count how much money they have saved in their Fruitcake Fund to buy cake ingredients. Truman reflects on all of the ways they have raised money in past years. The pair enters every contest they hear about. They have won $5 in a contest, sold jellies and jams, picked flowers for funerals, and produced their own show called Fun and Freak. The show featured pictures of various cities and a three-legged chicken. They even killed flies for money from relatives. Relatives paid them a penny for every 25 flies they killed. In the woman's room they carefully count how much money they have in the fund. Truman thinks they have $13 saved, so they throw a penny out. The woman is superstitious, stays in bed on the 13th of every month, and thinks it bad luck if they have exactly $13.
The next morning the woman and Truman go to buy the cherries, pineapples, raisins, walnuts, and other ingredients. They also pay a visit to Mr. Haha Jones to buy the whiskey necessary for the fruitcakes. Buying alcohol is illegal where they live. The woman says the fruitcakes must have whiskey, so she buys some anyway. She takes Truman to the fish fry and dancing cafy that Mr. Haha owns. It is public knowledge that people have been murdered and cut up in Mr. Haha's cafy. Neither of them has met Mr. Haha. In the past they bought their whiskey from his wife. Truman and the woman are taken back when they see Mr. Haha's tall figure, scarred face, and cold demeanor. When the woman tells him she needs whiskey for her fruitcakes, he gives her the bottle for free and asks for only a fruitcake in return.
Truman and the woman make 31 cakes in four days. They send the cakes out to many people they don't know or have met one time and only a few neighbor friends. Every year they send a fruit cake to the president of the United States, which is Roosevelt at the time, and Baptist missionaries. They also sends fruitcakes to random people, like the truck driver that waves at them when he passes through and the couple that talked to them after their car broke down in front of the house. Truman comments that the woman is "shy around everyone but strangers." After mailing off the last cakes, Truman is exhausted and sad because they are broke again. The woman does not share his sadness. She wants to celebrate that they sent out all the cakes by drinking leftover whiskey.
Truman, the woman and Queenie drink the leftover whiskey. The pair sing and dance. Truman feels better after drinking the whiskey and dancing. He wants to be a tap dancer when he is older. Two relatives walk in on their celebration and yell at the woman. How could she let 7-year-old Truman drink whiskey? They bring up cousins and uncles who were involved in scandals and humiliated the family. The woman runs to her room and cries.
The woman continues to cry all night. Truman cheers her up when he reminds her that they have to go pick a Christmas tree the next day. The woman stops crying and says she know the perfect place to find a tree. Her father use to take her there when she was young. The next day they drive, wade through water and brush, and pick a very tall tree. On the way home the mill owner's wife offers to pay the woman a small price for the tree. The woman is usually soft spoken but manages to firmly tell the lady that her tree is worth more. The mill owner's wife laughs at her, but the woman tells her there is not another tree like hers. She is not willing to sell it.
By Christmas Eve the woman and Truman are broke. Truman draws paper ornaments. The woman cuts them out and hangs them on the tree. Once they finish decorating, the woman declares it is the most beautiful tree. They make presents for everyone. Women relatives get color scarves. Male relatives get syrup that can be used to clear a cough or heal ailments after hunting. Although they would love to get each other elaborate gifts, Truman and the woman secretly make kites to give each other for Christmas. For the past two years they have given each other kites, so it isn't a huge surprise. The woman is a little hurt at only being able to get Truman a kite.
Christmas morning the pair suffers through a huge breakfast with relatives. Both the woman and Truman are more excited about opening presents. Truman is angry when he sees his gifts from his family. He gets hand-me-downs, a church shirt, and a subscription to a religious magazine. The woman gets a few gifts. Truman and the woman go out to fly their kites. Truman forgets about how much he hates his other presents when he flies his kite. The woman has a revelation when she flies hers. She tells Truman that all her life she thought she would see the Lord when she was sick and dying. Flying the kite has made her realize that she already sees the Lord and his handiwork in the simple things.
Relatives send Truman off to military school. Truman and the woman miss each other. The woman sends him money for picture shows and asks him to write. She even sends him fruitcakes. Truman is never able to visit. One day the woman tells Truman that Queenie died. She was kicked hard by a horse. Eventually the woman begins to sleep more days than the 13th away. When Truman does not hear the woman's annual declaration at wintertime that it is "fruitcake weather," he knows something is terribly wrong. Now, 20 years later, Truman walks along the streets on his college campus during wintertime. He looks to the sky and remembers their two kites flying in the wind.
Analysing the story
It is odd that a 60-year-old and a 7-year-old share a friendship. They build a friendship based on the rejection they experience in life. Both are considered outsiders by family and other people. In a season that should be about spending time with family, they have n
o relationship with their family. Both are poor and don't have much. Although they live poor lives, they seem to be content. When they need money, they come up with creative ways to earn it, rather than complain about their situation. Since they make fruitcakes every year, their creative ideas work.
The description of the woman and her habits symbolizes her character. The woman is not materialistic. She is very religious and, although it may not look like it, she has strength. She is courageous enough to kill snakes, which is an animal many people fear. The woman may even still wish to be young. She has not gotten over the death of her friend because she continues to call Truman by the name of her friend, Buddy.
The woman's phrase "fruitcake weather" could mean that winter is the season for giving. After taking much care and putting in many hours to make the fruitcakes, the two give the fruitcakes away to strangers. Those who have been kind to them in even the smallest gesture of a wave get a fruitcake. Some of the people they send cakes to are often the people overlooked in society, like the bus driver and the knife grinder. Meeting with Mr. Haha shows that people cannot be judged on their appearance. Although Mr. Haha looked scary and owned a scary cafy in a dangerous part of town, he was still nice enough to give the woman good whiskey she needed for free.
The woman views Truman too highly. They are friends, but she finds it okay to take him with her when she buys whiskey and give him whiskey to drink. Giving a 7-year-old illegal alcohol is very irresponsible. Truman may be right when he says in the first part of the story that the woman is still a child. The two relatives who yell at her treat her like a child and compare her to other humiliating relatives. The woman's character is strong with morals and purity. She gives freely. She even celebrates giving when it has left her broke. The woman is happy with the rituals that come around Christmas time. Because Christmas time is usually thought of as a period of giving, the woman is genuine in her efforts. The woman's quiet strength also comes through. Although she is shy, she is strong when she needs to be.
Truman and the woman show that people don't need money to have a good Christmas. The gifts they give each other and family are heartfelt because they spent time making them. The gifts they receive from their relatives imply that the relatives don't care about them. Although Truman and the woman would like other things, they are happy with the kites they get from each other. The woman's excitement to open gifts shows how childlike she really acts. The woman realizes that simple pleasures can be a blessing. With not having much, she is able to see the Lord in her life more than she would have if she had money.
Queenie's death symbolizes the weak bond between the woman and Truman when he goes to school. Queenie was with them through everything. Her death symbolizes the fact that one day Truman and the woman will do nothing together again. The fact that the woman got to the point where she did not celebrate "fruitcake weather" reveals that she has died. Her excitement about winter coming had to do with spending the holidays with Truman. Truman's not being able to come home and Queenie's death was too much for her. Truman's memory of the woman, who has no name in the story, shows that he cared deeply for her. He thinks of the kites almost as their two souls flying freely in the wind. The kites could symbolize the freedom Truman and the woman have experienced all their lives. They are not confined to society or its rules. They pleased themselves, gave freely, and experienced more happiness with themselves.
Characters
Buddy
Reading the story of A Christmas Memory we perceive that the narrator refers to himself only in the first person (I, me, myself), but his friend calls him Buddy "in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend" and who had died when she was a child. Truman Capote said that Buddy is based on himself; as a boy, Capote indeed lived with an elderly, somewhat eccentric cousin in a country house full of relatives. At the time the story takes place Buddy is seven years old, and his age influences the way he perceives the events going on around him. Buddy is present in all adventurs and works in the life of his friend, his cousin, "She is still a child”. Every Saturday she gives him a dime and he goes to the movies, which influences his decision to be a tap dancer when he grows up. Because his friend never goes to movies, Buddy tells her about them, thus honing his storytelling skills. Later, when he recounts mat he has been sent to military school, the sensitive narrator breaks the nostalgic mood of the story and provides its bittersweet resolution: "home is where my friend is, and there I never go."
Mr. Haha Jones
Described as a "giant with razor scars across his cheeks," Haha Jones is proprietor of a "sinful" fish-fry and dancing cafe. The name "Haha" is man who never smiles. Buddy and his friend purchase whiskey for their fruitcakes from Haha, and when he gives them their money back he demonstrates that there is good in all people.
My friend
Although she remains unnamed throughout the story, this "sixty-something" distant cousin is the best friend of narrator. Capote said in interviews that he based this character on Miss Sook Faulk, an elderly cousin with whom he spent much of his childhood. Buddy's friend is described as "still a child," and it is her innocence which allows their friendship to occur. The narrator reveals her to be a very idiosyncratic person - one who possesses unusual characteristics - by stating the things she has never done: "eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except the funny papers and the Bible." She is also very wise, however, and it is she who teaches Buddy to value each individual object because "there are never two of anything." She also helps Buddy to appreciate nature as the place where God reveals Himself every day.
Queenie
Queenie is a dog, described as a "tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites." Her resilience symbolizes the mam characters' friendship, for though each is small and physically insignificant, their spirits are united by a strong bond. Queenie's death symbolizes the friends' forced separation and foreshadows the eventual death of the narrator's friend.
Two Relatives
Buddy never refers to the other people who live with him and his friend by name, and by doing so he demonstrates his emotional distance from them. The irony in the term "Those Who Know Best" signifies that he believes they really do not know what is best for him. The relatives are shown to be harsh and scolding. He admits that "they have power over us, and frequently make us cry." Buddy also does not think much of their pious religious attitudes. When he receives a subscription to a religious magazine for children as a Christmas present, he says, "It makes me boil. It really does."
Themes
"A Christmas Memory" is an evocation of an idealized early childhood, a memory clouded by the innocence of a seven-year-old. The narrator, who is now an adult, remembers making fruitcakes with his elderly cousin, an annual event which marked the coming of Christmas.
Memory and Reminiscence
From the beginning of the story, the narrator's memory is linked to the act of storytelling and creativity. "Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago." Though the narrator sets the scene, he depends on the reader's own experiences to bring it into focus so he can tell the story. This technique plays upon the questionable nature of memory, in which personal experience is combined with images from other stones, books, and pictures to form a mind's-eye view. Thus, the veracity, or truthfulness, of memory is cast into doubt.
The story also illustrates the power of specific objects to evoke a particular memory. Just as in the beginning of the story "a great black stove" is the object around which the remembered kitchen is constructed, so at the end does the image of kites help the narrator to remember his cousin and their friendship. Likewise, the "hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies" which comprises the bulk of the two friends' fortune recalls "the carnage of August" when they were paid one penny for every twenty-five flies they killed. This image exemplifies the nature of memory in which one sense (in this case the smell of the pennies) leads to the remembrance of another sensory experience (the sight of the dead flies).
Another trait of personal reminiscence is the listing of objects, such as what the narrator eats for dinner ("cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam"), the fruitcake ingredients ("Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple," etc.) and the Christmas tree decoration ("a shoe box of ermine tails..., coils of frazzled tinsel ..., one silver star," etc.). These lists not only aid the reader in conjuring an image of the scene being described, they also establish the authority of the narrator, as though he were saying, "I can prove that I was there because this is what I saw."
Memory also acts as a retreat from reality, as evidenced by the narrator's elderly friend calling him Buddy "in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend" and who died. Her later inability to distinguish him from "the other Buddy" signals the increasing confusion of her mind and also her death, when she herself becomes a memory of the narrator.
Friendship
Friendship among social outcasts is a common theme in Capote's work, and in "A Christmas Memory" the friendship between Buddy and his friend provide strength for the narrator. Buddy and his friend are outsiders within their household; the other members of the family "have power over [them], and frequently make [them] cry," but on the whole they "are not too much aware of them" because the friendship is then- refuge. This friendship is made possible because even though his cousin is "sixty-something," she is "still a child" and shares his innocent view of the world. The strength of their friendship is further underscored by the statement that the narrator's real name is not Buddy; it is the name his friend has given him, and it is the only name the reader learns. From his cousin, Buddy learns how the beauty of nature signifies God's presence and that money is not the only measure of value. When the "rich mill owner's lazy wife" tries to buy their Christmas tree, his friend exclaims "We wouldn't take a dollar," underscoring the intrinsic value of nature by stating: "There's never two of anything." The friendship helps the narrator survive once he is separated from her, though he recognizes the irreversible loss of his childhood innocence: "Home is where my friend is, and there I never go." Even twenty years later, he reminds and keeps with tenderness preserving their friendship to a "lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven."
Coming of Age
"A Christmas Memory" shows how children pass into adulthood not only by growing older, but also by learning the ways of the world. Two conflicting worldviews confront Buddy in the story, and it is his ability to synthesize the two that leads to his increased wisdom. His friend's childlike qualities exemplify her refusal to leave childhood and assume an adult role. The narrator states: "She is still a child." Though seven-year-old Buddy respects this quality, it is the basis for her ostracism from the rest of the family, who treat her as a subordinate. Her inability or refusal to properly distinguish between what is socially acceptable behavior and what is not is demonstrated in her allowing Buddy to become drunk on the leftover whiskey. She does understand that society might have good reason for refusing to allow children to drink alcohol. Told in flashback, the narrator relates the bittersweet nature of coming of age. Once removed from his best friend and sent to military school, he states that "Home is where my friend is, and there I never go." He recognizes the symbolic innocence of his younger days when he "[expects] to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven."
Style
"A Christmas Memory" is a personal reminiscence which depends on first-person narration and the nostalgia of a rural Southern setting to evoke its mood. Its realism is supported by its straightforward, linear structure, while its use of lyrical language evokes the idea of a mythical past.
Point of View
The story employs a first-person narrator who is called Buddy, though we are also told that this is not his real name, but a name given to him by his friend. By telling us this, the narrator suggests that the story is not his alone, but also belongs to his friend, the other major character in the story. The advantage of the first-person point of view lies in its allowing us to experience the story as Buddy himself did. The description of Mr. Haha is not an objective view; rather it is the view of a seven-year-old boy: "he is a giant; he does have scars; he doesn't smile." The italicized words demonstrate the amazement and fear felt by seven-year-old Buddy. Likewise, what the narrator thinks of the others in the household comes through in his references to them. "Other people inhabit the house," and his emotional distance is underscored by his using the generic term "people" and his refusal to give them personalities. His later reference to "those who Know Best" suggests his belief that they really do not know best. The fact that the narrator is an adult while he is telling the story is also significant, because it allows him to put his earlier memories into perspective and to understand events in ways which a seven-year-old boy could not: The adult narrator recognizes that his friend was "still a child." The main disadvantage of first-person narration is its limited ability to portray others. The reader must rely on Buddy's description of the woman, since her thoughts are never shown. Likewise, the reader cannot form valid judgments about the other family members because the point of view does not allow their perspective to be heard.
Scenary
"A Christmas Memory" is set in the rural South during the early 1930s. This can be deduced from the fact that the story first appeared in 1956, and the narrator tells us it took place during the winter "more than twenty years ago." This places the story during the Great Depression, a time of great poverty, which may explain why so many relatives reminiscence.
Structure
Partly because "A Christmas Memory" is a reminiscence, time is its dominant structural element. There are two time periods in the story: the present, in which the narrator relates the story, and the distant past, when the narrator was a boy. The narrator quickly moves the reader into the distant past by issuing a series of commands: "Imagine a morning in late November... .Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house." At the climax of the story, as Buddy and his cousin fly kites on Christmas day, die narrator brings the reader back to the present: "This is our last Christmas together." This sudden shift in time abruptly ends the story's nostalgic mood, and in the several subsequent paragraphs that recount events leading up to the narrator's present life, Capote quickly establishes a tone of bittersweet melancholy. By placing the main action of the story nearly twenty years before, that time is made to seem distant and remote. That Buddy's cousin is no longer living by the end of the story further serves to emphasize the passing of time and the inability for people to return to the past.
--> Critical Overview
A Christmas Memory is text full in emotion, sensibility, aesthetic beauty, produced in fine trace and sweet reminds. Everybody, each one of us, has your own A Christmas Memory. This is a wonderful work! The best text that I have read in the last times. And, by this reason, is the subject of my monograph.
A Christmas Memory was first published in Mademoiselle in 1956 and then reprinted in Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963, but it received little attention until it was reprinted as a gift-boxed set for Christmas in 1966. Reviews at the time were generally favorable, with a writer for Harper's calling it "an enchanting little book destined ... to become a classic." Nancy McKenzie noted in The New York Times that the story "seesaws slowly and nostalgically in time." However, other critics, including playwright Tennessee Williams, characterized the story as saccharine, overly sentimental, or even repulsive. Capote himself described the story as a catharsis which helped him to deal with his experiences as a child in the South: "The moment I wrote that short story I knew I would never write another word about the South. I am not going to be haunted by it any more, so I see no reason to deal with those people or those settings," he said in an interview with Roy Newquist in Counterpoint in 1964. About A Christmas Memory, the Saturday Review called it as “one of the most moving stories in the language”.
William Nance sees the story in The Worlds of Truman Capote as important for understanding Capote's work because of the character of Buddy's elderly friend. "Asexual admiration of a childlike dreamer heroine is the usual attitude of the Capote narrator," Nance explains, linking Buddy's friend to Dolly Talbo in The Grass Harp and Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Nance further notes that in "A Christmas Memory" Capote displays his typical "hostility toward those outside the magic circle," the magic circle being the closed environment manufactured by those who are alienated in some way from society.
Many critics have noted the similarity between Buddy himself and Capote's other male characters. Often lonely, thirsting for love, and in search of an identity, these characters represent Capote himself. In "A Christmas Memory," these emotional quests end on a sad note when the narrator says "Home is where my friend is, and there I never go." Other critics comment on Capote's presentation of male characters as forcing the reader to rethink gender roles. Buddy revises the traditional coming-of-age narrative, in which the male protagonist demonstrates his masculinity and self-worth by moving ever westward and exploring new frontiers. Instead, Buddy remembers with fondness baking fruitcakes on a cast-iron stove, thereby romanticizing the traditionally female sphere of domesticity. During the years in which he is supposed to "come of age," he rejects the traditionally masculinizing influence of military schools, which he characterizes as "a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons."
--> About A Christmas Memory, DANIEL MENDELSOHN wrote for The New York Times (www.nytimes.com), on December 5, 2004 the following words:
"Winter Woods
Morning. Frozen rime lusters the grass; the sun, round as an orange and orange as hot-weather moons, balances on the horizon, burnishes the silvered winter woods. A wild turkey calls. A renegade hog grunts in the undergrowth. Soon, by the edge of knee-deep, rapid-running water, we have to abandon the buggy. Queenie wades the stream first, paddles across barking complaints at the swiftness of the current, the pneumonia-making coldness of it. We follow, holding our shoes and equipment (a hatchet, a burlap sack) above our heads. A mile more: of chastising thorns, burs and briers that catch at our clothes; of rusty pine needles brilliant with gaudy fungus and molted feathers. Here, there, a flash, a flutter, an ecstasy of shrillings remind us that not all the birds have flown south. Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels. Another creek to cross: a disturbed armada of speckled trout froths the water round us, and frogs the size of plates practice belly flops; beaver workmen are building a dam. On the farther shore, Queenie shakes herself and trembles. My friend shivers, too: not with cold but enthusiasm. One of her hat's ragged roses sheds a petal as she lifts her head and inhales the pine-heavy air. ''We're almost there; can you smell it, Buddy?'' she says, as though we were approaching an ocean.
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Media Adaptations
"A Christmas Memory" was adapted for television in 1967 with Geraldine Page and Donnie Melvin; Truman Capote was the narrator. It is available on video under such titles as ABC Playhouse 67; A Christmas Memory or Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory"; the latter version was also released by Allied Artists in 1969 as part of Truman Capote's Trilogy.
The story has been adapted as part of Short Story Anthology, a sixteen-part series available from Children's Television International; "A Christmas Memory" comprises episodes 11 and 12 of the series.
An audio adaptation of the story read by Capote is available from Knopf Book & Cassette Classics; a version read by Celeste Holm which includes "The Thanksgiving Visitor" is available from Random House Audiobooks.
Holiday Memories is a musical stageplay adaptation by Malcolm Ruhl and Russell Vandenbroucke combining both "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor"; it was published by Berwyn Press in 1991.
A Christmas Memory is the classic memoir of Truman Capote's childhood in rural Alabama. Until he was ten years old, Capote lived with distant relatives. This book is an autobiographical story of those years and his frank and fond memories of one of his cousins, Miss Sook Faulk. The text is illustrated with full color illustrations that add greatly to the story without distracting from Capote's poignant prose.
From School Library Journal
Grade 3 Up-- This tiny gem of a holiday story, although a memory, is told in the present tense, which gives it a certain immediacy. Written by Capote as if a backward glance at his childhood while in college, the story traces a month of pre-Christmas doings in his parentless, poor household. The seven-year-old and his "friend," a distant, eccentric, and in those times elderly (mid-sixties), cousin prepare several dozen fruitcakes and mail them to people they admire. Gathering the pecans from those left behind in the harvest, buying illegally made whiskey for soaking the cakes, getting a little tipsy on the leftovers, cutting their own tree, and decorating it with homemade ornaments are some of the adventures the two share. The outside world barely intrudes on this portrayal of a loving friendship which wraps readers in coziness like the worn scrap quilt warms the old woman. Reminiscent of Lisbeth Zwerger, Peck's watercolor-and-ink full-page illustrations greatly enhance the text. Her use of lighter shades, tawny colors, and fine lines plus a background wash which suggests rather than delineates detail is perfect for this holiday memory of Christmas celebrated in rural Alabama in the early 1930s. --Susan Hepler, Arlington Public Library, VA
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
It begins in "fruitcake weather" ... ends with Christmas day. The classic American story has been delicately illustrated. --The New York Times Book Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
First published in 1956, this much sought-after autobiographical recollection of Truman Capote's rural Alabama boyhood has become a modern-day classic. We are proud to be reprinting this warm and delicately illustrated edition of A Christmas Memory--"a tiny gem of a holiday story" (School Library Journal, starred review). Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship between two innocent souls--one young and one old--and the memories they share of beloved holiday rituals.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Inside Flap
First published in 1956, this much sought-after autobiographical recollection of Truman Capote's rural Alabama boyhood has become a modern-day classic. We are proud to be reprinting this warm and delicately illustrated edition of A Christmas Memory--"a tiny gem of a holiday story" (School Library Journal, starred review). Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship between two innocent souls--one young and one old--and the memories they share of beloved holiday rituals.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Truman Capote (1924-1984). Based on his own boyhood in rural Alabama in the 1930s, A Christmas Memory was orginally published in Mademoiselle in 1956 and later was included in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
About the Author
Truman Capote (1924-1984). Based on his own boyhood in rural Alabama in the 1930s, A Christmas Memory was orginally published in Mademoiselle in 1956 and later was included in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable-not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "It's fruitcake weather!"
The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together--well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.
"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."
It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."
The hat is found, a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses out-of-doors has faded: it once belonged to a more fashionable relative. Together, we guide our buggy, a dilapidated baby carriage, out to the garden and into a grove of pecan trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard's legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek; it has its winter uses, too: as a truck for hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. Queenie is trotting beside it now.
Three hours later we are back in the kitchen hulling a heaping buggyload of windfall pecans. Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass. Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milkglass bowl. Queenie begs to taste, and now and again my friend sneaks her a mite, though insisting we deprive ourselves. "We mustn't, Buddy. If we start, we won't stop. And there's scarcely enough as there is. For thirty cakes." The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight. At last, when the moon is quite high, we toss the final hull into the fire and, with joined sighs, watch it catch flame. The buggy is empty, the bowl is brimful.
We eat our supper (cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam) and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we'll need a pony to pull the buggy home.
But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skinflint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of homemade jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers for funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know a fool thing about football. It's just that we enter any contest we hear about: at the moment our hopes are centered on the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize being offered to name a new brand of coffee (we suggested "A.M."; and, after some hesitation, for my friend thought it perhaps sacrilegious, the slogan "A.M.! Amen!"). To tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the Fun and Freak Museum we conducted in a back-yard woodshed two summers ago. The Fun was a stereopticon with slide views of Washington and New York lent us by a relative who had been to those places (she was furious when she discovered why we'd borrowed it); the Freak was a three-legged biddy chicken hatched by one of our own hens. Everybody hereabouts wanted to see that biddy: we charged grownups a nickel, kids two cents. And took in a good twenty dollars before the museum shut down due to the decease of the main attraction.
But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund. These moneys we keep hidden in an ancient bead purse under a loose board under the floor under a chamber pot under my friend's bed. The purse is seldom removed from this safe location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, a withdrawal; for on Saturdays I am allowed ten cents to go to the picture show. My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.
Now, with supper finished, we retire to the room in a faraway part of the house where my friend sleeps in a scrap-quilt-covered iron bed painted rose pink, her favorite color. Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt. Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man's eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies. Last summer others in the house contracted to pay us a penny for every twenty-five flies we killed. Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven! Yet it was not work in which we took pride. And, as we sit counting pennies, it is as though we were back tabulating dead flies. Neither of us had a head for figures; we count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations, we have $12.73. According to mine, exactly $13. I do hope you're wrong, Buddy. We can't mess around with thirteen. The cakes will fall. Or put somebody in the cemetery. Why, I wouldn't dream of getting out of bed on the thirteenth." This is true: she always spends thirteenths in bed. So, to be on the safe side, we subtract a penny and toss it out the window.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable-not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "It's fruitcake weather!"
The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together--well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.
"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."
It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."
The hat is found, a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses out-of-doors has faded: it once belonged to a more fashionable relative. Together, we guide our buggy, a dilapidated baby carriage, out to the garden and into a grove of pecan trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard's legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek; it has its winter uses, too: as a truck for hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. Queenie is trotting beside it now.
Three hours later we are back in the kitchen hulling a heaping buggyload of windfall pecans. Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass. Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milkglass bowl. Queenie begs to taste, and now and again my friend sneaks her a mite, though insisting we deprive ourselves. "We mustn't, Buddy. If we start, we won't stop. And there's scarcely enough as there is. For thirty cakes." The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight. At last, when the moon is quite high, we toss the final hull into the fire and, with joined sighs, watch it catch flame. The buggy is empty, the bowl is brimful.
We eat our supper (cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam) and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we'll need a pony to pull the buggy home.
But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skinflint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of homemade jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers for funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know a fool thing about football. It's just that we enter any contest we hear about: at the moment our hopes are centered on the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize being offered to name a new brand of coffee (we suggested "A.M."; and, after some hesitation, for my friend thought it perhaps sacrilegious, the slogan "A.M.! Amen!"). To tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the Fun and Freak Museum we conducted in a back-yard woodshed two summers ago. The Fun was a stereopticon with slide views of Washington and New York lent us by a relative who had been to those places (she was furious when she discovered why we'd borrowed it); the Freak was a three-legged biddy chicken hatched by one of our own hens. Everybody hereabouts wanted to see that biddy: we charged grownups a nickel, kids two cents. And took in a good twenty dollars before the museum shut down due to the decease of the main attraction.
But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund. These moneys we keep hidden in an ancient bead purse under a loose board under the floor under a chamber pot under my friend's bed. The purse is seldom removed from this safe location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, a withdrawal; for on Saturdays I am allowed ten cents to go to the picture show. My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.
Now, with supper finished, we retire to the room in a faraway part of the house where my friend sleeps in a scrap-quilt-covered iron bed painted rose pink, her favorite color. Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt. Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man's eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies. Last summer others in the house contracted to pay us a penny for every twenty-five flies we killed. Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven! Yet it was not work in which we took pride. And, as we sit counting pennies, it is as though we were back tabulating dead flies. Neither of us had a head for figures; we count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations, we have $12.73. According to mine, exactly $13. I do hope you're wrong, Buddy. We can't mess around with thirteen. The cakes will fall. Or put somebody in the cemetery. Why, I wouldn't dream of getting out of bed on the thirteenth." This is true: she always spends thirteenths in bed. So, to be on the safe side, we subtract a penny and toss it out the window.
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Welll done Francisco! Thanks so much for posting all of this.
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