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A wide-ranging collection of Gothic tales, semi-autobiographical pieces, and satirical adventures, The Complete Stories of Truman Capote spotlights the writer’s versatile range of talent. Whether examining a young traveler’s close encounter with a strange couple or exploring a queer child’s relationship to his prodigal father, Capote consistently incorporated elements of the grotesque, lavish, and bizarre in his short fiction; his prose is as elaborate as his characterization is nuanced, and man...
I've read a lot of Truman Capote, and have always liked his writing, and even his strange personality and flamboyant lifestyle, but I never realized what a genius he was til I read these early stories of his. The first one in this collection was written when he was 19. 19!!! The early ones are very gothic and eerie; the later stories are more professional and polished; but all of them were enjoyable little gems.
What is it about Truman Capote? Despite the fact that he was unquestionably a minor writer, with an uncommonly thin portfolio of published work considering his forty-year career, he remains a figure of fascination. There have been books about him, movies, a Broadway play—and most of his own writing is still in print, still celebrated nearly thirty years after his death. And, even if I’m not always sure quite why, I’ve loved his work above that of virtually any other American writer for more than...
I lowered my initial rating from 4.5 to 3.5 stars upon going through my annotations. Truman Capote wrote 20 short stories – 8 of which I highly enjoyed, 5 I appreciate and 7 I didn't enjoy and/or didn't remember at all. This is quite a good score as I am usually struggling with short stories. The thing that stood out the most to me is the fact that Truman managed to take the most simple and true-to-life situations – like a train ride home, the holiday season, suburban life – and spin them in a w...
I figured I had better hurry up and read my copy of The Complete Stories of Truman Capote while it’s still what it claims to be. In less than a month Random House will be releasing The Early Stories of Truman Capote, a collection of 14 previously unpublished stories written during Truman’s teens and twenties. I’m looking forward to seeing how they compare to the collection I jut finished.This was a great collection of stories, one of the best by a single author that I have read. Even the least i...
Contains two of PB's All Time Greats :"Miriam" (1945)TC can write about kids really well, and as we know, he is suspected of having more than a hand in the writing of "To Kill a Mockingbird" which is all about kids. In "Miriam" we have an original character, a violent ghost girl. I have a list of people right here who I'd love to get Miriam to visit. "Children on their Birthdays" (1948)He gives away the punchline in the first sentence, then in the lyrical delirium of the prose which follows he m...
Some of the stories were 3 star for me, like "Miriam"- which is too Poe-like gimmicky. But overall, and I am an impossible audience for short stories on the whole, I did like these. There is, for me with Capote- an often felt mood that belies some of the jolly words or situations of mirth. Rather partially that of an "outsider looking in" or nervous energy angst toward eventual rejection to the norms? Or a sense of bizarre meanness that's too easily understood? It parses out in the end to connot...
All of Capote's short stories in one book? Yes, please! This man is a masterful story teller. I am not one who usually likes short stories, but Capote wins my vote in the category! I'm a big fan. The end.
I was not a fan of In Cold Blood which I felt glorified murder and also am not a short story fan. Capote was a pretty eclectic guy and this collection is proof of that. Didn't like them all, no surprise there, the surprise was that I really enjoyed some of them : Jug of Silver, The Thanksgiving Visitor, A Christmas Memory, and One Christmas. After reading the intro I believe these stories were certainly influenced by many of his own adventures as a young boy being raised in Alabama by extended f...
I just liked it you see. I especially like all the stories with Southern settings. Not so much for the urban settings. Knowing this is my preference, I plan to read The Grass Harp.
Back when I was a morbid little teenager, I had a slight obsession with In Cold Blood. I don’t know exactly why I loved that book so much, but I think I appreciated how hard Capote tried to get inside the minds of murderers. During college, I read a few of Capote’s short stories, and I really liked them, so I decided to read all of his short stories.Truman Capote was a talented writer. It sucks that he squandered his talent by drinking himself to death in his 50s. The stories in this book are hi...
"...of all things this was saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't." (171)I was already familiar with a couple of these stories (they were included in an edition of Breakfast at Tiffany's that I read earlier), but I've long wanted to read the complete c...
Truman Capote's writing is perfect. Not the least bit pretentious. He brings out the disappointments people and situations can bring, but he does so with such a quick and clever wit that you don't feel awful after reading. I would have been one of his fag hags.
ENGLISH BELOWTruman Capote is een van de grondleggers van New Journalism, een vorm van journalistiek waarbij literair schrijven en het vertellen van een non-fictie verhaal door elkaar lopen. Tijdens mijn studie journalistiek was In Cold Blood dan ook verplichte kost, en bovendien onderwerp van discussie. Want is het boek nou journalistiek, of niet? Is het meer Peter R de Vries, of toch meer Thomas Ross? Ik vond In Cold Blood heel interessant; het staat voor een nieuw soort non-fictie verhalen en...
In Cold Blood was the first Capote work I read, and this the second. I remain struck by how skillfully he builds scenes and atmosphere and just sucks you in. It happened 100 times faster in these short stories than it did in the book—no small feat considering I read while commuting on public transportation. The real world just disappeared and I found myself in Capote's characters' worlds, watching and feeling as the stories unfolded. I'm not necessarily from any of the characters' worlds, but th...
Capote's short stories are well worth the read. I had already read "In Cold Blood" but never any of his fictional work, but he is excellent at both. They are not as ambiguous as J.D. Salinger's short stories and that is why I preferred them - they have a beginning, middle and an end, and they are just as well-written. He conveys the feel of New York through many of his stories, which is why they remind me of Salinger sometimes, but he also has many stories which take place in the south and thos
Truman Capote was one of the great American writers of the 20th Century. It's a shame he didn't better utilize his talent.This is a fine collection of Capote's short stories. Most have a glossy magazine feel to them, but they are well-crafted and interesting to read. The holiday stories are masterpieces.
4+. All the stories were not great, some were uncomfortably creepy, but the great ones were truly great. The closer he stayed to his roots, the better they were, I think. The ones where he was remaking himself in NYC were more surface and shine, a bit like a foreshadowing of his becoming one of the people more famous for being famous in his later years than for producing great work.
Monroeville, AL has this mural with a big mockingbird on it that says, "The Home of Harper Lee". Where's the mural for Truman Capote?
just dandy
I adore and admire Capote's nonfiction, so it’s little surprise that his short fiction that affected me the most was autobiographical. But most of the stories here gravitated towards the gothic. Their weight was on the eerie, the mysterious, and sometimes on the surprise at the end. The details were beautiful, the characterisation – sometimes great. But because the centre, the heart, of the tales relied more on genre than on particular experiences, they didn’t work for me. Most of them felt 'unf...
I don't know whether to give this more stars for the quality of writing, but it brings into focus such unpleasant things, it is hard to say I "really LIKED it." Which of course is part of the brilliance of his writing. Really fun as a book club pick...lots of short stories, each one of them giving you something to talk about. Wasn't particularly taken with the first half of the book, but fell in love with some of the later stories, and found all of the stories a nice complement to each other whe...
haunting. many of these stories are whimsical, with a sense of foreboding that makes them incredibly beautiful and sad at the same time. the characters are often interesting in a creepy way: one of his favourite types seems to be young girls aged beyond their physical years, sometimes indecently knowing. other than this, of the works of Truman Capote i've only ever read Breakfast At Tiffany's, which is beautiful.
Terse, gothic, flamboyant, and surprising, with some beautiful passages: "In the country, spring is a time of small happenings happening quietly, hyacinth shoots thrusting in a garden...and midnight rain opening lilac." It seems from these stories that The South never leaves southerners, no matter how many identities they take on, even in New York.
There is Truman Capote looking impish and floral as he leans against a trellis of roses somewhere in the Deep South. He is best known for his character-driven novel "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and an embellished non-fiction book, "In Cold Blood." Having liked the former novel, I was excited to read Capote's short stories. The same attention to detail and character generation found in "Breakfast Tiffany's" was evident in the many tales he wrote before its publication.Southern Accents - Check!Flawed
These stories show a great capacity for capturing time, place and character. Highly evocative. On the whole I think I prefered the Depression era Alabama childhood stories to the more recently set ones, but the one set in a cemetary was great. This volume has made me take a wider interest in Capote's work.
If all the stories had been of the same calibre as ‘A Christmas Memory’ this would have been 5 stars. As it is the early pieces are too slight with dialogue as thick as molasses; later stories like ‘Mojave’ are hateful.
Overall, I was really impressed and surprised by this collection. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I did and want to now check out more of Truman’s more well-known novels. Truman is a great writer who can write about a variety of topics.The Walls are Cold (3 stars?):I’m not sure how to feel about this story, it was shorter than I expected it to be, so I didn’t feel as if I got to know the characters well or that there was sufficient time for a strong plot to develop. I was left wanting mor...
A great collection of stories. Observational, character driven, brilliant in style and tone. But I am a fan so I would probably be thrilled to read his grocery list had he written one. I re-read this collection once a year if for nothing else than the one of the best Christmas short stories, A Christmas Memory.
4.5 stars