extraordinary small jewels

books:


	• The Complete Stories of Truman Capote Truman Capote Vintage, 2005 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It's Great to Remember

I forgot how wonderful Capote writes. His short stories make me laugh, cry, and think.

It was the best weekend spent reading that I have had in years.

Not His Best, But. . .

These stories are not the best examples of Truman Capote's writing, but they are a good resource for tracking his development as a writer, leading up to the mastery of his "In Cold Blood" which, in my opinion, is one of the best books published in the latter part of the 20th century.

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Terminally brilliant

Because it is so well known and almost universally regarded as a masterpiece, Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" is the work with which most people are familiar. To judge the man's literary talents by that single book would leave him in great company, but tragically diminish his rare and spectacular ability to write in virtually any style with remarkable elegance. His collected short stories draw from the Gothic Southern tradition favored by Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, with minimalist descriptions capable of evoking distinctive character voices, tactile sensations, and even smells. Anyone interested in writing should explore this collection, which will especially appeal to those of us who lament the decline of quality writing since home theaters replaced front porches as neighborhood gathering places. Capote is among the finest in a generation of great writers.

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extraordinary small jewels

Truman Capote was a brilliant, eccentric novelist and author of a shocking at the time of its publication, documentary fiction book "In Cold Blood". And although he is famous for these works, his short stories are equally captivating and original. They are small masterpieces, weird and magnetizing.

The protagonists are usually strange children (in his other works, Capote did not pay much attention to children), fascinating and different than adults, with their own world, dreams and agendas, or alienated, nerdish, unhappy adults, losers, who also have much of a child in them. Some of the protagonists are said to be modeled on the real people the author met during the course of his life, but some can be only attributed to his imagination...

The world in the stories is only semi-realistic, like a dream, everything is wrapped in a fog of uncertainty. My favorite stories are " Children On Their Birthdays" (the longest of the stories, I think, and very well structured) where the life of a certain Miss Bobbitt, a girl of extraordinary discipline and set life goals, is abruptly ended by the afternoon bus; "Miriam" (which won The O'Henry Prize), where an elderly lady enters into a nightmare, after meeting at the cinema an angelic-looking little girl-demon, not to be able to get rid of her again (actually cost me some sleepless nights...); "Master Misery" about a mysterious New York City man, who buys people's dreams and a girl who gets addicted to dream-selling; and "A Tree of Night", about a dreary encounter on the train. The stories are spooky, but if analyzed, the events recalled may not have anything strange in them to the outside observer; yet the interpretation and way in which they are told suggest otherwise.

These short stories show the other side of Capote's fiction and are a great round-up for anyone who wants to know his works thoroughly.

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Capote the Limited

Capote is bad when he writes about poor people. He's alright when he writes about rich people. He's extraordinary when he writes about himself. His "complete short stories" attempt all three. However good his style is, sentence for sentence, avoid the stories that suck. Because they suck. Read Capote when he's himself, and avoid him when he's masquerading.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

A landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote?s life?s work in the form he called his ?great love,? The Complete Stories confirms Capote?s status as a master of the the short story. This first-ever compendium features a never-before-published 1950 story, ?The Bargain,? as well as an introduction by Reynolds Price. Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote?s oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate. Reading them reminds us of the miraculous gifts of a beloved American original.

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