SOME WORDS ON TRUMAN CAPOTE’S WORKS, organized by Francisco Vaz Brasil

SOME WORDS ON TRUMAN CAPOTE’S WORKS

Organized by Francisco Vaz Brasil

     Truman Capote was a native of New Orleans, where he was born on September 30, 1924. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was an international literary success when first published in 1948, and according the author a prominent place among the writers of America's postwar generation. He sustained this position subsequently with short-story collections (A Tree of Night, among others), novels and novellas (The Grass Harp and Breakfast at Tiffany's), some of the best travel writing of our time (Local Color), profiles and reportage that appeared originally in The New Yorker (The Duke in His Domain and The Muses Are Heard), a true-crime masterpiece (In Cold Blood), several short memories about his childhood in the South (A Christmas Memory, The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas), two plays (The Grass Harp and House of Flowers and two films (Beat the devil and The Innocents).

     Mr. Capote twice won the O.Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and he was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in August 25, 1984, shortly before his sixtieth birthday.

Books by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood

     On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter’s family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

     Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged from the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas.

     In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people. It has already been hailed as a masterpiece, a non-fictional work and became a important piece of a new American  journalism.

Other Voices, Other Rooms

     Truman Capote's novel "Other Voices, Other Rooms" opens with the main character, 13-year old Joel Harrison Knox, traveling to the home of his long-estranged father. As the book progresses, Joel becomes more intimately involved with the people of his father's household and of the larger community; there is a stress on oral history as Joel learns their stories. Overall, plot struck me as secondary to character revelation.

     The people of Joel's new world are colorful, often pathetic, and sometimes grotesque; at times it really feels like Capote is putting on a human freak show for the thrill-seeking reader. He leads us through a world of decaying old buildings and broken spirits. But Capote always respects the essential humanity of his troubled characters.

     There is a pronounced theme of alternative sexuality and/or gender identity throughout the book. Capote establishes this theme early on in his description of the main character. Joel is described as not looking like a "'real' boy": "He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned." "Other Voices" thus has a lot to offer readers with an interest in gender issues as they have been explored in American literature. Capote also does an interesting job of portraying a mixed-race household where the African-American servants are as vividly drawn as the Caucasian family members.

     Throughout the book there is some richly descriptive language, as well as intriguing representations of American vernacular English. Although at times "Other Voices" seems more an exercise in style than a fully satisfying narrative, it is for me quite a remarkable coming-of-age story.

Music for Chameleons

   In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real people and renders then with the stylistic brio we expect from great fiction. Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise; and a proper Connecticut householder with a ruinous obsession for a twelve-year-old girl he has never met. And we meet Capote himself, who, whether he is smoking with his cleaning lady or trading sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe, reminds one of the most elegant, malicious, yet compassionate writers to train his eye on the social fauna of our time.

The Complete Stories by Truman Capote

     The common perception of Capote (who died in 1984) is that he had a brilliant early beginning to a career that eventually fizzled out in drug use and soured celebrity. His "new nonfiction" book, In Cold Blood (1966), the true story of a Kansas murder told with great fictional technique and elan, is generally regarded as his finest achievement.

     But now, for the first time, all of Capote's short stories are being published together, an event that signifies a renewed appreciation of his overall contribution to literature, for evidence is presented in this one volume that he should be ranked as a major American short story writer.

     By instinct, he produced the amalgam of fact and fiction that became In Cold Blood; similarly but contrarily, by instinct he wrote short stories always intent on maintaining the form's integrity as distinct from the novel.

     Most of Capote's short story work was concentrated in the early years of his career, the 1940s, but his capacity for writing deeply thought-out, deeply felt stories continued into the 1980s, from the first story in the collection, "The Walls Are Cold," a short, entertaining piece about a young, flirtatious socialite, to the last story, "One Christmas," set in the Alabama and New Orleans of his boyhood, a story conjured from the heart--but free of overripe sentiment - about learning the differences in how people love. Both a broadening of theme and deepening in treatment are observable when the stories in the collection are read in order; all of them are linked by a shimmering, but never showy, eloquence and sensitive observation of the personal environments his characters inhabit, both psychological and physical.

Answered Prayers

    "A gift from an unbridled genius. Exciting...irresistible...should be cherished as top-flight work from a master." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review.

     Although Truman Capote's last novel was unfinished at the time of his death, its surviving portions offer a devastating group portrait of the high and low society of his time.

     As it follows the career of a writer of uncertain parentage and omnivorous erotic tastes, Answered Prayers careens from a louche bar in Tangiers to a banquette at La Cote Basque, from literary salons to high-priced whorehouses. It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently funny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.

The grass harp

     Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."

    This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."

Portraits and Observations – The Essays of Truman Capote

     This volume of collected essays, many out of print since their original publication, is both a long overdue and welcome addition to the Capote revival. It's arranged chronologically—from a short 1946 piece on New Orleans, written when Capote was 22, to a brief appreciation of Willa Cather he wrote the day before he died in 1984.

     The 42 pieces range from one-page portraits of public figures such as Ezra Pound and Coco Chanel to the 104-page 1956 The Muses Are Heard, a masterful journalistic account, first printed in the New Yorker, of an American opera company's tour of Porgy and Bess in the U.S.S.R.

     The collection contains some great writing—his 1970s Handcarved Coffins, an account of a Midwestern murder that recalls In Cold Blood and can be savored for its beautifully nuanced balance of empathy and emotional horror. Many of the pieces, however, such as a 1974 sketch of Elizabeth Taylor written for Ladies' Home Journal, feel occasional and off-the-cuff.

     While integral to Capote and his evolution as a writer, these pieces do not constitute his best work. Still, the volume's completeness will recommend it to fans as well as anyone seriously interested in mid–20th-century American literature.

A House on the Heights

     The tranquil life Truman Capote led in the quiet enclave of Brooklyn Heights in the 1950s and 1960s stood in sharp contrast to the glittering scene he adored in Manhattan. Intimate and wry, A House on the Heights vividly evokes the neighborhood that Capote came to know well and described as one of Brooklyn’s “splendid contradictions.” Its denizens, including a celebrated Russian spy, a globe-trotting antiquarian, and a cat-rescuing dowager with a pointed social agenda bring to life the Brooklyn that cast its spell over Capote. In A House on the Heights he meanders through a special time and place still recognizable today.

Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote

     Considering Truman Capote's fabled social life, one would think that his private letters would be dripping with juicy gossip. Indeed, with correspondents and friends that included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Cecil Beaton, Christopher Isherwood, David O. Selznick, Tennessee Williams, Audrey Hepburn and Richard Avedon, these bright, energetic missives do include an occasional tasty tidbit.

     But as candid as Capote can be, one ultimately gets the sense that the author always knew his letters would be read by a wider audience some day, and rarely does Capote express less than bubbling enthusiasm and childlike devotion to his correspondents.

     It's up to Clarke, Capote's biographer, to fill in the occasionally sordid blanks, which he does in chapter intros and extensive footnotes. Much more profound than any gossip is the humor, sensitivity and ambition with which Capote seems to have approached every experience in his life. and his incredible discipline and passion for writing, spending hours sequestered in some of the world's most glamorous locations, composing the stories and books.

     This entertaining collection gives us a firsthand account of Capote's journey as he comes into his own as an artist, charting his gradual but inevitable transformation into a literary and society superstar.

     Readers who want to know more about the real Capote will pick up the author's books (which include In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's) and continue to revel in his wise and whimsical prose.

Summer Crossing: A Novel

     Capote's novel shows the promise of a future master; Campbell's interpretation shows the promise of a good reader. Campbell is better at narration than dialogue as her efforts to differentiate characters, especially males, are forced, and much of her reading is flat or breathy. But she handles some of Capote's best writing with a range and flare that bode well for future audios.

     Capote told everyone he'd destroyed his earliest effort (produced at age 19), but it recently turned up at Sotheby's, handwritten in four ruled school notebooks. The plot is thin and the characters weak. With her Fifth Avenue Protestant parents off in Europe, 17-year-old Grady rebels by intensifying an affair with and quickly marrying a parking lot attendant from a dysfunctional Brooklyn Jewish family. She soon finds herself pregnant and wallows in regret.

     But there are glimpses of Capote's signature style that emerged only four years later in Other Voices, Other Rooms, and a hint of Breakfast at Tiffany's' Holly Golightly in the character of Grady McNeil. For Capote mavens—or those whose interest has been piqued by the movie—Summer Crossing is worth a listen.

Some Quotes

"Truman Capote is the most perfect writer of my generation." - Norman Mailer

“A must-have treasure for Capote fans . . . These are delicious, dramatic, and tender nonfiction portraits and tales.” – NPR’s Morning Edition

“A wonderful volume . . . Nearly every page can be read with real pleasure. . . . No matter what his subject, [Capote’s] canny, careful art gives it warm and breathing life”  – The Washington Post Book World

“Every piece is a treasure. . . . Pages and pages of remarkably evocative, careful and well-observed prose [delineate,] in a measured and elegant manner, one of the most remarkable American literary lives of the twentieth century.”  – Jane Smiley, Los Angeles Times Book Review.

I am a Truman Capote works fan. I hope you sometime read one of his books and if possible watch one of the movies based in his works, like A Christmas Memory, Breakfast at Tiffany's (Above Audrey Hepburn, main character), In Cold Blood and Infamous. Let's go?!