Truman Capote's Thoughts About Stories.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

 

[SusanJillParker]

Oranges, Apples, and Moby Prick

Hmm, interesting concept. Only, you say oranges and I say...apples.

I always admired Truman Capote. I can't imagine how horrid a childhood he must have had with him being, um, different. And then to chum around with Harper Lee. Wow! The energy must have been electric in the same way that Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville hung around the corner of School Street and Washington Street in Boston.

Only, unless they were down by the fruit market by Faneuil Hall, I seriously doubt if those three were discussing oranges or apples.

"What should we write about?" Emerson looked from Hawthorne to Melville.

"Apples," said Melville.

"No, I'd much rather write about oranges. Where's Franklin? We can ask him what we should compose," said Emerson.

"He's out flying a kite," said Melville.

"I know," said Hawthorne. "Let's ask Thoreau. He'll know. When it comes to produce, he knows everything."

"If you can find him," said Emerson. "He's out in the woods howling at the moon somewhere by Walden Pond.

"Fuck it," said Melville. "I'm going to write about a whale, a big, white whale, a killer whale, called Moby Cock."

"Moby Cock?" Emerson looked at Melville as if he was nuts. "Why would you name you killer whale after a rooster? That's dumb."

Melville thought long and hard.

"How about Moby Prick?"

Melville looked his two friends with pride that he had found the perfect name for his whale.

"Nah," said Hawthone. "If you're going to create a massive, killer whale I'd call him Moby Dick."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Capote lived with his mother and her 2nd husband. His father was a wealthy playboy of New Orleans. Mom shipped Truman to grandma a lot. Grandma lived across the street from Harper Lee.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I can't grasp whether any of Vidal or Lee or Capote really were the ACTUAL writers behind each and every one of their works - with the possible exception of Vidal because as soon as HE starts carryin' on you can tell.

But... If I just go by whoever is on the cover as the author, then, for me Truman Capote is the only American literary writer EVER, who can actually write a s-hot modern story, except that he can't end one, ever, and he gets totally lost as soon as he has performed the miracle of taking you to page 100 or near there and probably gets this surge of 'fucking hey, I can really write(!)' and then that thought overtakes his ego or consciousness or something and he just plain turns into dribble and a screaming heaping wreck of turgidity struggling to reach a quick end.

If you leave out the hard-boiled and noir fiction and even the western novella writers, and the sci-fi and horror people - which admittedly, is leaving out a lot, but even so, for the so-called literary ficition group, well to me they're just a bunch of wankers. Except for Capote. Who really does have the art and the skill, and I also am charmed by the way he goes to water because he's that fucking, POTENTIALLY, good.

No, for me, Truman Capote is the real deal. Flawed though his published works all are. I kind of think he never had a good agent or a caring editor or something; because he really really REALLY had the ability. A lot of American authors study him, and copy him. Which is fair enough as far as I'm concerned. They could do a lot worse, and regularly do.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Remember Jerzy Kosinsky? He was another one of these identities that wrote a start like a fucking blitzkrieg from hell and then suddenly, it was like someone had stolen a genius's half-done manuscript from their dead or dying hands and then pretended to be the author in order to finish it for a New York publisher that was his first cousin whose ethnicity shall not be mentioned.