Sunday, November 25, 2012

A Romp with Capote


While I greatly prefer In Cold Blood and Music for Chameleons to this unfinished novel, I will still read anything by Truman Capote because it is all a demonstration of sheer brilliance.  Answered Prayers is less plot driven than it is an over the top romp through the high society that Capote moved through once he was famous (the work seems largely autobiographical).  It wasn't particularly cohesive as a narrative nor are any of the characters particularly memorable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Here is an example of how Capote packs a punch in just a few sentences:

To all these people, the living among them, I must by now be the merest memory.  If that.  Of course, Boaty would have remembered me, but not with pleasure (I can well imagine what he might say: "P.B. Jones?  That tramp.  No doubt he's peddling his ass to elderly Arab buggers in the souks of Marrakech"); but Boaty is gone, beaten to death in his mahogany house by a heroin-crazed Puerto Rican hustler who left him with both eyeballs dangling down his cheeks.

No comments:

Post a Comment