AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--MARCH 2024--TRUMAN CAPOTE

Truman Capote (née Truman Streckfus Persons)
September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984)

September 30th, 2024 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the author we know as Truman Capote. His parents lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, when he was born, and divorced when he was just two years old. His mother effectively abandoned him to the care of various relatives until the mid-1930s, when she and her wealthy second husband sent for him to live with them in New York City. Adopted by his stepfather, Jose Garcia Capote, young Truman Persons became Truman Capote. Some of his best short fiction is autobiographical, based on his early childhood in Monroeville, Alabama, where he became friends with Harper Lee--a friendship that would continue into their adulthood, and would include professional collaboration on Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (a form he took credit for inventing), In Cold Blood. His first full-length book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, both a coming-of-age and a coming-out novel, was published by Random House in 1948. It was an instant sensation for both the right and the wrong reasons.
Turning from the alternately lyrical and Southern gothic style of his early fiction, Capote took a more journalistic approach to writing after the success of the movie version of his Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He rose to celebrity heights, and took to the L.A. lifestyle with great enthusiasm. Despite asserting that he wanted to be “great, not just popular” he spent much of his time partying and socializing with society’s “upper crust”, to the detriment of serious writing. Wealthy women, particularly, seemed to adore him and didn’t mind his camping in their guest cottages for long periods of time, eating and drinking at their expense. It was a small price to pay for his witty presence at their parties. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Capote’s “swans” failed to realize he was gathering material for what would turn into unflattering, barely fictionalized accounts of their personal lives. Capote sank into a near-constant haze of alcohol and drugs, and the long anticipated novel, Answered Prayers, which he had been claiming to be working on for years, was never finished. A few initial chapters were published in Esquire magazine, and they were inflammatory. As gossip columnist Liz Smith explained, “He wrote what he knew, which is what people always tell writers to do, but he just didn’t wait till {his subjects} were dead to do it.” Capote was seen as unloyal, ungrateful, and unprincipled by the people who had taken him for a pet. (Are you hearing Al Wilson singing “Take me in, tender woman” right now?) He died at the age of 59, leaving a limited legacy of masterful work behind.

I have read Capote's In Cold Blood several times now, so I am opting for something completely different by him for this month's reading: A Christmas Memory, which I have never read.

I have never read In Cold Blood, so this is my excuse to do it!

>2 alcottacre: Oh, you are in for a treat! A Christmas Memory is one of my favorite reads.

>3 cbl_tn: Good choice. You and Stasia will have very different experiences!

I'm joining this group this month.

In searching, I was surprised to find five books I haven't read. I don't own any of them, so I'll check the library on Monday. I thinki I'll start with Breakfast at Tiffany's. Though I watched The Swans on TV last week, I am also tempted to read Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal and a Swan Song for an Era. Has anyone read these and if so, can you recommend which one to start?

I agree with Linda, Christmas Memory is a gem of a book!

I will read Other Voices, Other Rooms this month, all being well.

I've read In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's. I've read Christmas Memory and enjoyed it. I plan to read Other Voices, Other Rooms and/or Grass Harp this month.

>5 Whisper1: I did read Capote's Women a couple years ago, Linda. I enjoyed it; it wasn't "gossipy", exactly, and I think it did what Capote said he meant to do with his unfinished novel...show how empty the lives of the filthy rich can be. I have also read Breakfast at Tiffany's---it's very good as well.

>6 PaulCranswick:, >7 Kristelh: I plan to read Other Voices, Other Rooms this month as well. I had forgotten that I have an old paperback copy of that, and if I ever read it, it was long long ago.

In cold Blood was such a horror story that I swore off Capote except for now a re-read of A Christmas Memory...what a great "Grandmother" cousin friend!

Seven works by Capote are in my collection. Two have been read by me: In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's. On my shelves (unread): The Muses Are Heard, Answered Prayers, and Summer Crossing. The Grass Harp, a collection of stories, is in Box #13. A Christmas Memory is hiding in an obscure corner (and I'm not inclined to look for it).

The Muses Are Heard and Answered Prayers could be very easily read.

>9 m.belljackson: A world of difference between ICB and most everything else he wrote.

>10 weird_O: From my review of Summer Crossing: The manuscript for Summer Crossing was discovered in a lot of Capote memorabilia presented to an auction house to be sold off in 2004 (Capote died in 1984). It had been known that Capote had worked on such a novel and never been satisfied with it, but as his literary executors had never found the manuscript they assumed he had given up on it and destroyed it. Indeed, he apparently had abandoned it along with other possessions when he moved out of an apartment in Brooklyn in 1950. Rather than "put it all out at the curb for the garbage men" as Capote had instructed, a friend held on to a few boxes of documents, manuscripts and other memorabilia for nearly 50 years. The story of the manuscript's survival and ultimate publication, told in an afterword by a trustee of the Truman Capote Literary Trust, is nearly as engaging as the novel itself.

>4 laytonwoman3rd: Yeah, Carrie and I will have vastly different reading experiences, I daresay. I finished A Christmas Memory (I had no idea it was so short) and loved it.

The Hulu documentary The Swans, did an excellent job of showing how once it was felt he betrayed the rich women, they snubbed him. Perhaps, he never took into account how hurtful laying bare the secrets he knew would have such repurcussions, certainly impacted on him for the rest of his life.

Linda, many thanks for your work in sponsoring this group. Your information to Bill in message >10 weird_O: was fascinating. I had no idea that there was a manuscript title Summer Crossing.. I appreciate this information.

>12 alcottacre: A Christmas Memory is a Christmas tradition at our house.

>13 Whisper1: Thank you, Linda! I'm glad you found that interesting. I enjoyed Summer Crossing, and I think you might as well.

I suspect I won’t get to Truman until later in the year, but I read quite a bit of his work in my 20s and 30s.

I finished Other Voices, Other Rooms yesterday. It is filled with exquisite prose. Blighted characters haunted by the past, struggling with the present and dubious of the future populate the gothic Southern landscape familiar to readers of Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor et al. Someday maybe I'll sort out why this type of thing appeals so strongly to me. I didn't really LIKE living in the South, but I've loved these authors both before and after I encountered the 20th century realities.

I picked up Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories, which included additional stories including House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory. Overall I was a bit disappointed, with the exception of A Christmas Memory. Oh my that's a great story! It'll stay with me for sure.

>17 Kyler_Marie: Very hard to forget "A Christmas Memory". As soon as a chilly gray November day settles on us, someone in my family is sure to look out the window and announce "It's fruitcake weather!". Not than any of us care a bit for fruitcake...

>17 Kyler_Marie: I also very much enjoyed A Christmas Memory when I read it for this challenge. I had not read it previously, but I am pretty sure I will be reading it again in the next holiday season.

>18 laytonwoman3rd: That's so cute! I love it.

>19 alcottacre: Me too! It looks like This American Life aired an original recording of Truman Capote reading it too: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/255/our-holiday-gift-giving-guide/act-two-2

>20 Kyler_Marie: I hesitate to recommend listening to Capote reading anything...

>20 Kyler_Marie: While I appreciate you sharing the link, I find Capote's voice irritating in the extreme, lol.

>21 laytonwoman3rd: I hear you, Linda!

Other Voices, Other Rooms by truman capote

I wanted to like this book. I tried to understand it and get through the writing which at times was so heavy I felt as though I was living in the deep south with Capote's characters -- sweltering, steamy, humid, heavy and mind numbing.

This is filled with southern Gothic themes of a raggedy plantation, a crazy step mother, an Uncle that is more than bizarre, conversations that float and go no where, snakes, tom boys, dusty antiques, rambling back water roads and, of course black help who are rendered spiritualistic and much to my chagrin, are portrayed derogatorily.

This is his first novel and it starts with the theme that runs through all Capote's books, a person disenfranchised and unloved, searching for love in all the wrong places, longing to belong.

When twelve year old Joel receives a communication from a father he never knew, calling him home, he follows. Abandoned at birth, now that his mother dies, the child has no other option.

When he arrives in the deep south, he does not meet his father. Instead, he finds a crazy step mother and a host of others who are just too eccentric to be real. And, that is my quarrel with the book. The writing is much too composed for a twelve year old.

Capote gives too much intelligence to Joel. While there are beautiful phrases and vivid images, overall the characters were over developed, and in the end, nothing happened.

The reader is left with a is that all there is feeling of disappointment.

No stars for this one!

>23 Whisper1: Sorry you didn't care for Other Voices, Linda. Southern Gothic is not to everyone's taste, that's for sure. I actually felt a bit of hope for Joel at the end of the book, but of course knowing he was really "little Truman", and how his life turned out, made it bittersweet for me.

>21 laytonwoman3rd:
>22 alcottacre:

Thank you both for the warning! I haven't heard his voice before so I had no idea.

I finished The Grass Harp. It is the story of two elderly sisters caring for their orphan nephew. They have a disagreement. One lady marches off to reside in a tree. It’s about disagreements, family, and community. I gave it a so so rating. I never really engaged with the story.

>26 Kristelh: I LOVE your description! Old ladies can return to their childhoods so easily....I can understand the urge to run away to the tree house myself at times.

>17 Kyler_Marie: I agree with your assessment of Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories. Maybe I simply wasn't in the mood for this book when I read it, but I know I liked the movie better than the story. I truly felt Capote rambled to the point of annoyance.

I'm going to locate a copy of The Muses Are Heard: An Account. Any comments about this book?

I'd read Breakfast at Tiffany's years ago, but it was before I was on LibraryThing (so, the Dark Ages), and Capote is the chosen AAC author for March, and I figured it was time for a reread anyway. I'd just finished watching the recent "Feud: Capote vs. the Swans."

I really like Capote's writing. He's not afraid of the seamier side of life, and his prose is so polished and clear. Beside the main novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's, there are three short stories: "House of Flowers." "A Diamond Guitar," and "A Christmas Memory." Those stories are good, especially the last.

I really enjoyed "Breakfast at Tiffany's," this time around. Not all of the characters are likable, and there is some serious racist language that made me cringe, but the novella is a classic. Here's one passage that grabbed my "mind's eye":

...it was a grim cat with a pirate's cutthroat face; one eye was gluey-blind, the other sparkled with dark deeds.

Great image of a cat!

Karen O

I finished In Cold Blood yesterday. It wasn't what I expected. The absence of sources/footnotes/endnotes is troubling, and Capote doesn't come across as an unbiased investigator. His portrayal of one of the killers seems too sympathetic. The more I think about it, the more it seems like I've read a novel with an unreliable narrator.

>31 cbl_tn: Carrie. Capote fell in love with one of the murderers. Perhaps that's why you picked up that his portrayal seemed to sympathetic.

Was Truman Capote attracted to Perry?
Crucially, Capote's relationship with murderer Perry Smith is depicted in all its self-serving strangeness, with the writer first falling in love with his subject and promising to show his human side to the world, then later abandoning him and longing for his execution in order that he may finish his wretched book.Jan 14, 2006

Truman Capote, you've got a lot to answer for - The Guardian

The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › jan › features.review
Search for: Was Truman Capote attracted to Perry?

Another fact about the book, is that he asked his childhood friend, Harper Lee, to accompany him. She truly was the one who opened doors when they met the small-town detective.

Personally, I never liked Capote. He really was a slimy, insecure snake. When Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill and Mockingbird, he claimed credit for helping write the book, when in fact, as mentioned above, she was the one who helped write his book. Her character Dill in her incredible book, was based on Truman, who as a child was indeed insecure and over pompous. Rather than rewarding Harper for her excellent book, he did just the opposite.
He turned on her, just as he did with the high society ladies when he garnered their secrets and then exposed them. Hulu has an excellent movie reagarding The Swans.

>32 Whisper1: Thank you for that newspaper reference! laytonwoman3rd made a similar comment on my thread after I posted my review yesterday. I can't imagine that I haven't seen this mentioned before given how widely known this book is, but if I did, it didn't stick with me because I hadn't read the book. My impression of Capote was formed by pop culture in my childhood. I think my first exposure to him was his role in the film Murder by Death.

I read Answered Prayers for this month's challenge. It came as something of an anticlimax. All the breathless attention, the gossiping, the dramatization of the socializing. Empty lives.

I had originally planned to read In Cold Blood for the challenge this month, but I chickened out. (It's been on my list for yonks, but true crime gives me the shudders, so I keep avoiding it. Alas. (?)) So at LW3's gentle suggestion (I mean that genuinely, Mims!), I picked up Other Voices, Other Rooms. While I was a little bit done with Capote's rolling around in his setting before he was, I am glad I read it. Previous to this, I'd read Breakfast at Tiffany's (pretty good--movie more to my liking), "A Christmas Memory" (a full-on delight and wonder), and maybe something else short lost to my recollection. I thought Capote captured some of the weirdnesses of youth and the particular delights and traps of queer youth nicely. The Southern gothic elements were bang on. It felt Faulknerian but nicely short. (Stop *hitting* me, Mother!) Somehow he made me believe fully in all his very strange characters. Chalk one up for the AAC here, in that it got me to read something I almost certainly wouldn't have otherwise, which is always what I hope to get out of it.

>33 cbl_tn: I think an impression of him from Murder By Death is probably pretty accurate. I don't think he was acting.

A recent NYer had an article about the new Capote film that was interesting and a bit damning. sorry cant remember which date

>35 lycomayflower: "Stop *hitting* me, Mother!" Imagine the face I'm making...

>38 laytonwoman3rd: Is it the face you make when you want to smack your only offspring upside?

>36 lycomayflower: I'm not sure whether to be relieved or troubled by that! I am glad for the nudge to finally read something by Capote, but I don't know that I'm in a hurry to read anything else by him, except maybe the Christmas story that seems to be nearly universally loved.

>31 cbl_tn: >32 Whisper1: His portrayal of one of the killers seems too sympathetic. My basic problem with In Cold Blood has always been that the sympathy is wasted on the perpetrators and not the victims. I did not realize that Capote had fallen in love with one of the murderers so that makes sense.

>41 alcottacre: My basic problem with In Cold Blood has always been that the sympathy is wasted on the perpetrators and not the victims.

I completely agree! I had the impression that he found the victims uninteresting. I wonder if Capote was aware of how much he was revealing about himself in the way that he wrote about the perpetrators and victims?

>42 cbl_tn: I really do not know much about the man at all, but what little I do know makes him sound like a self-absorbed man. It would not surprise me if he knew how much he was revealing of himself and simply did not care.