On September 30th, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Truman Capote’s birth. By rights, this should be a national celebration with the announcement of a Capote stamp, and a ceremony in the White House.
Capote published 18 books, in several genres, not counting the volumes of collected stories, letters, magazine pieces and posthumously published fiction. With “In Cold Blood,” perhaps, Capote invented the nonfiction novel. Even if this is not literally true, it certainly started the discussion of this hybrid.
In the ’50s Capote was the most celebrated short story writer in the country and was arguably the only writer celebrity, other than Hemingway, recognized wherever he went. It seems appropriate then to take a look at the little novel that started it all, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” published in January 1948 when Capote was 23 years old. This book made him famous and mildly rich.
Fired from his job at the “New Yorker,” Capote had been staying with family in Monroeville, writing on “Summer Crossing” – a novel not be published until recently. He was walking near Hatter’s Mill in early winter when he was struck with nostalgia and inspiration and began writing “Other Voices.” The book came easily.
It’s a truly odd novel. One is struck first by the language which is very poetic or, if you are not a fan, purple prose. But the whole novel is purple: the characters, the setting, the plot—it is all gothic and over the top. Young Joel Harrison Knox, 13, living with an aunt in New Orleans, is invited to join his father, whom he has never met, in a decaying mansion at Skully’s Landing outside Noon City, Alabama. Noon City is of course Monroeville.
The father search is a recurring theme for Truman whose father, Arch Persons, was emotionally distant. For some time Joel is prevented from meeting his father, and when taken to him sees he is bedridden, paralyzed except for the one arm he uses to toss a red tennis ball down the stairs to get attention.
There is a large collection of characters, wildly eccentric. Joel’s cousin Randolph is an effeminate, surely gay, sometimes cross-dresser who lives in pajamas and a seersucker robe. A neighbor girl, Idabel, is a tomboy who declares “I want so much to be a boy.” Idabel is partly based on Harper Lee as a girl. She will use Truman as Dill in “Mockingbird.” He meets a black hermit named Little Sunshine who makes magic amulets, and Zoo, a black servant who has been raped and had her throat cut.
Joel attempts and fails to leave. Finally realizing he is in fact a “sissy britches,” he goes back into the decaying house to live with Randolph.
Orville Prescott declared Capote “gifted, dangerously gifted.”
“Library Journal” said “not for libraries.”
“Time Magazine” said the novel makes the “flesh crawl.”
There is nothing else quite like “Other Voices, Other Rooms.”
