Truman Capote Books

From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), In Cold Blood, and The Complete Stories Perhaps no twentieth-century writer was so observant and graceful a chronicler of his times as Truman Capote. Portraits and Observations is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by this most beloved of writers. Included are such masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as “The Muses Are Heard” and the short nonfiction novel “Handcarved Coffins,” as well as many long-out-of-print essays, including portraits of Mae West, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Hollywood, written when he was twenty-two, to the author’s last written words, “Remembering Willa Cather,” composed the day before his death in 1984, Portraits and Observations puts on display the full spectrum of Truman Capote’s brilliance. Certainly Capote was, as Somerset Maugham famously called him, “a stylist of the first quality.” But as the pieces gathered here remind us, he was also an artist of remarkable substance.

A reminiscence of a Christmas shared by a seven-year-old boy and a sixtyish childlike woman, with enormous love and friendship between them.

She is a beautiful child. I don't think she's an actress at all, not in any traditional sense. What she has - this presence, this luminosity, this flickering intelligence - could never surface on the stage. It's so fragile and subtle, it can only be caught by the camera. It's like a hummingbird in flight : only a camera can freeze the poetry of it.

Truman Capote began writing when he was eight and became one of America's most versatile and gifted authors. This reader contains much of his published work: his fiction, including Breakfast at Tiffany's, as well as his prolific output of short stories, travel sketches in which he evokes places from Tangiers to Brooklyn, portraits of his contempories such as Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Cecil Beaton, and his brilliant reportage and essays. His piece entitled The Muses are Heard, which recounts a trip to Communist Europe with the cast of Porgy and Bess, shows the chameleon-like talents of a literary legend.

Selected from across Capote's writing life, the stories range from nostalgic portraits of childhood to more unsettling works that reveal the darkness beneath the festive glitter. In the Deep South of Capote's youth, a young boy, Buddy, and his beloved maiden 'aunt' Sook forage for pecans and whisky to bake into fruitcakes, make kites - too broke to buy gifts - and rise before dawn to prepare feasts for a ragged assembly of guests; it is Sook who teaches Buddy the true meaning of goodwill. In other stories, an unlikely festive miracle, of sorts, occurs at a local drugstore; an eccentric young girl dreams of Hollywood; and a lonely woman has a troubling encounter in wintry New York. Brimming with feeling, these sparkling tales convey both the wonder and the chill of Christmas time.

Gathers two novels, interviews, and nonfiction accounts of murder written by the controversial, New Orleans-born author

"Collection of essays, profiles, travel pieces and observations ..."--book jacket

Passionate, perceptive and eloquent, the short stories of Truman Capote are among the greatest works of twentieth century American fiction. This new collection gathers them all together for the first time: from early, eerie Southern Gothic tales such as 'Miriam' and 'The Headless Hawk', to the brilliantly evocative 'Children On Their Birthdays' and the tenderly autobiographical 'A Christmas Memory' - an affectionate portrayal of Capote's own Alabama upbringing. Whether describing the Deep South of his childhood, or considering city life with the penetrating gaze of an outsider - as in 'Among the Paths to Eden' and the hitherto unpublished 'The Bargain' these stories rank among Capote's finest work: acutely observed tales from a unique and brilliant mind.

In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human

The celebrated author of In Cold Blood returns to the short story in a collection which shows both continuity with Capote's past concerns and perspectives and new turns in style and approach