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It has been just over twenty years since Truman Capote --- the controversial and tiny, child-voiced man of a mega-writer who needs no introduction --- left this life, yet his work still resonates with the deadly Southern charm of making love to a sexy stranger during a sudden summer downpour.
A reader must make his or her own way in these lonely Alabama and Louisiana evenings, accompanied by diamond guitars, lost ladies, circus freaks, childhood bullies, soda shops, society types, emerging sexualities, bad parents, great Christmases, train rides, fearful hidings, fatal romances, poverty, big city scams, eccentric artists, identity issues, and the broken American dreams that populate the twenty eerie stories in this collection.
It is in the early autobiographical stories, published in ladies' magazines between 1943 and 1956, when Capote was first flexing his muscles as a fiction and journalistic talent, which offer an inspirational yet heartbreaking glance into the author's early years. From rural Mobile to spectacular New York, Capote repeatedly employs the devices of the weathered mink that must be sold, the beautiful guitar that calms the savages, the alluring yet dangerous stranger, and, most importantly, the creative prison every artist endures at the hands of a planet mismanaged by religion, accountants, gossip, brutes and thieves.
It is the realization of imprisonment without parole or escape --- a theme the author would lustfully follow until his greatest nonfiction success, IN COLD BLOOD, and his greatest failure, addiction to fame and drugs --- that Capote most poignantly explored in his pre-diva years. It was a hungry, optimistic young writer headed for New York who created "The Shape of Things," "Miriam," "My Side of the Matter," "Preacher's Legend," "The Headless Hawk," "Master Misery" and "A Diamond Guitar."
In "The Shape of Things," from 1944, two women and a soldier on a train are the polite captives of a second, disheveled, drunk-appearing soldier who is headed home after wartime experience and the unmentionable shellshock. Meanwhile, the title character of Miriam enters a widow's house and mind, and refuses to leave. In "My Side of the Matter," from 1945, a narrator resembling Capote himself becomes a prisoner to a wife and her family. "Master Misery" steals and imprisons the dreams of fragile New York émigrés. Preacher, an old Southern black man, becomes a prisoner in his own home at the mercy of two hunters appearing as saints. The diamond guitar is the showpiece of a man in prison.
In addition to the savagely bared souls of each character, it is the richness of the musical writing that seduces and even teaches: "In the country, spring is a time of small happenings happening quietly, hyacinth shoots thrusting in the garden, willows burning with a sudden frosty fire of green, lengthening afternoons of long flowing dusk, and midnight rain opening lilac; but in the city there is the fanfare of organ-grinders, and odors, undiluted by winter wind, clog the air; windows long closed go up, and conversation, drifting beyond a room, collides with the jangle of a peddler's bell."
Up to the final story from 1982, the invisible prison theme is carried through most tales in the collection, yet is untouched by Reynolds Price, the respected Southern author who provides an all-too-brief introduction (just six pages [with one that includes Price's half-page biography], which fail to mention several of the most important stories) to this volume. Price irresponsibly laments, "America has never been a land of readers," a trite complaint embraced by a publishing world that always forgets the country has more readers, libraries, bookstores, and Internet book sales than nearly any other on earth.
Also, much to the chagrin of any dedicated bibliophile, missing is a list of where these stories first appeared; instead there is a useless list of copyright dates. To remedy the problems, readers are advised to seek OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS, Capote's first novel, as well as CAPOTE by Gerald Clarke and TRUMAN CAPOTE by George Plimpton, both fine and revealing biographies of the writer.
While later editions of this startling and romantic must-have collection could be smartly pared of Price's seemingly dashed-off-at-the-last-minute introduction (he actually compares Hemingway's fame to Capote's), and enhanced by proper publishing credits, this book serves as, to today's literary marketplace, the unseen Capote --- a number of beautiful stories published decades before Capote was at his best, an exciting introduction to a career unmatched in talent and literary impact.
--- Reviewed by Brandon M. Stickney
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