The Grass Harp, Including A Tree Of Night And Other Stories (1993) - Plot & Excerpts
The Grass Harp: Truman Capote on the Sunny Side of the Street"Gonna take a Sentimental Journey,Gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna make a Sentimental Journey,to renew old memories...Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why did I decide to roam? Gotta take that Sentimental Journey, Sentimental Journey home. Sentimental Journey." Random House, New York, New YorkScene One--The office of Bob Linscott,Editor for Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, among others Random House, New York, NYLinscott: Truman, you're a wonderful writer...Capote: Oh, that's so true. There's only one TC! (Truman takes a languorous puff from his cigarette and stares dreamily at the ceiling, then looks at Bob, giving him a sultry look.)Linscott: Don't pull that pouty baby face look on me. It won't work.Capote: Why, Bob, I don't know what you mean! (In a whining tone)Linscott: Look. Bennett's getting nervous. It's been two years since Other Voices, Other Rooms came out. That jacket photo just about made us all laughing stocks.Capote: Now, that was perfectly innocent, Bob. And, Foxy, you had final approval on that picture. Now, didn't you?Linscott: You caught me at a weak moment.Capote: (Waving his cigarette delicately) Well, there you have it, Bobby.Linscott: We've kept you in front of the public, Truman. We published your short fiction inA Tree of Night: And Other Stories. But you've been promising...Capote: And it was a ROUSING success. You were at the reading down at the Poetry Center. I was practically BLASTED off that high stool Malcolm had me sit on by the applause. How many times have you heard Bravo and Encore shouted outside of an opera house? Hmmmm???Linscott: And you hopped off that stool and were bowing and blowing kisses with both hands. Have you absolutely no shame, Truman?Capote: What's that, Bob? Shame? (giggling)Linscott: Truman, you SKIPPED off the damned stage like a school boy! HUZZAH!Capote: Well, Foxy, I FELT like a school boy. Why, I DID!Linscott: And don't tell me you're still working on Summer Crossing.Capote: But, Bob, I am. I really, really am. It's just that the progress is slow.Linscott: Really, Truman. What do you not understand? A rich New York girl falls in love with a cab stand attendant?Capote: Love comes in many places. Wherever you find it, is natural.Linscott: I'm sure you would know, Truman. But it's THIN, Truman, THIN! Any author could write it. It doesn't have your unique artistic stamp. Capote: Well, actually, Jack doesn't like it either. Truman and Jack Dunphy, long time companionsLinscott: You're not helping that gad about with his novel are you, Truman?Capote: NO! Bob! I wouldn't do that. Why would I lie? (eyes dart left and right)Linscott: For any of the same reasons you always do, Truman. So what am I going to tell Bennett?Capote: Alright. I tore it up. I didn't like it either.Linscott: You tore it up! Truman!Capote: Well you said you didn't like it. I tore it up. It's finished. Gone. Never to see the light of day. Happy? I'm working on something else. Something from back in Alabama. About growing up with Callie, Sook, and Annie.Linscott: Is this true? I want to see the first two chapters.Capote: Oh, Bob! You won't believe it. It's about the lovely years I spent with my cousins. I know how dark and gloomy Other Voices, Other Rooms was. But this is the HAPPY TC. It's very real to me, more real than anything I've ever written, probably ever will.Linscott: That's what you've said about EVERYTHING you've ever written.Capote: (sulking) I cry. I have no control over myself or what I'm doing. Memories are always breaking my heart, Bob. You know, it's not easy writing a beautiful book.SCENE TWO--Truman on the terrace of the Fontana Vecchia in Taormina, on the phone. Linscott in his office at Random House, also on phone.Linscott: Truman, Truman, Truman. This is absolutely wonderful. So, Dolly, that'd be Sook, right? She's got a patent medicine for Dropsy that Verena...Capote: Ye-e-e-s, that would be Cousin Callie. She could be so mean--Linscott: And Verena is going to steal Dolly's recipe to make the money off it--Capote: (Yawning. Jack is rubbing his shoulders) That's right. Callie always was the richest, meanest woman in town.Linscott: So, they run off from home and find a treehouse between two China Berry trees and live there, and Verena sends the law to bring them back, and there's this retired Judge--Capote--Charlie Cool who falls in love with Dolly, and Catherine Creek, Dolly's helper, and Riley, an older boy I looked up to all living up in this tree. And Judge Cool stands between Verena, the law and the townspeople who are trying to get Dolly to go back home and live with Verena.Linscott: My boy, my boy--This is simply marvelous stuff. How are you going to get them down out of the tree? ARE you going to get them out of the tree?Capote: Bob, you'll just have to wait and see. I'm mailing out the last sections June 4.Linscott: I hope you mean June 4, 1951, and not 52 or 53.Capote: Really Bob. You need to loosen up a little. First you drink, then you have sex, and then you smoke. You should try it sometime.Linscott: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wonderful stuff. Simply marvelous. Now this is the TC I know and love that we ALL know and love here at Random House.Capote: Give my regards to Bennett, Foxy. (hanging up) A little lower Jack, honey.SCENE THREE: Scenes of train travelling through the Italian countryside. A map flashes Florence, Rome, and finally Venice. Truman is on the phone looking out his hotel room overlooking the Canal.CAPOTE: Uhm, Bob, TrumanLinscott: How could I ever mistake that voice, my boy.Capote: Oh, Bob. I do hope you are pleased with the book.Linscott: Uhm, how can I say this, Truman. I didn't like the ending. Nobody hear at Random House liked the ending. And if Bennett Cerf isn't happy, ain't nobody happy at Random HouseCapote: But, Bob, WHY? I just don't understand! (plaintively, turning into a pouty face)Linscott: Well, Truman, the first half was absolutely divine! I was expecting a continuing miracle! I don't think we got that. Not at all. Capote: But, but, but...Linscott: Not, you understand, that it isn't a good as a story and as superb as a piece of righting. There's no specific criticism to be made; just that we all had a slight feeling of letdown, tapering off a little, with the ending coming to soon. It's so short, we don't think people will buy it as a novel.Capote: I cannot endure it (stamping feet) that all of you think my book a failure. I am simply striken by such overpowering opinion!Linscott: "We'll pray that the critics won't have the same feeling of vague letdown in the last half that effected us.SCENE FOUR: Review pages swirl coming to rest on headlines as a back drop to Truman Capote sitting in a comfortable chair. Capote holds an Atlantic Magazine. Newspapers and magazines are scattered around his chair. First Edition, The Grass HarpNEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE--THE GRASS HARP SHOWS THE MATURING AND MELLOWING OF ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST YOUNG WRITERSNEW YORK TIMES--A VAST IMPROVEMENT OVER OTHER VOICES OTHER ROOMSTHE COMMONWEAL--WITHIN THE SLIM COMPASS OF THIS WORK, TRUMAN CAPOTE HAS ACHIEVED A MASTERPIECE OF PASSIONATE SIMPLICITY(Lights begin to fade)Capote: (reading aloud) "The Atlantic Monthly commented that 'The Grass Harp charms you into sharing the author's feeling that there is a special poetry - a spontaneity and wonder and delight - in lives untarnished by conformity and common sense.'"Capote: (reading reviews with satisfied smile) All books are far too long. MY theory is that a book should be like a seed you plant, and that the reader should make his own flower. Now, Bob, Honey--Bennett--What was it you were saying? Actually, I'm thinking about an extraordinary young woman that loves to shop at Tiffany's.Stage lights fade to black.FINIS
Добрая притча с грустным концом вполне в духе "Завтрака у Тиффани".Вот вроде бы всё есть, но чего-то не хватает. Стержень повести - главная героиня Долли (которая мне невесть почему напоминает Сонечку Мармеладову) - её центральная ось, утекает из рук как дым и теряется где-то среди тех самых голосов травы, а ты так и не понял среди всех этих многослойных шёпотов и напевов, что же они всё-таки поведали. Может быть - я не поняла.Книга напоминает нарезку из "лучших моментов" литературной жизни, своего рода самокомпиляцию, но такая лоскутность не придаёт ей ни очарования "потока сознания", ни абстрактной мечтательной яркости. Вместо этого есть ощущение туманных последышей какой-то прекрасной, но несбывшейся и уже слишком далёкой мечты.Однако, судя по всему, надо признать, it's just me, и дело всё в том, что мои собственные чувства наложились на чувство книги - это и сообщило чтению какой-то вязкий, тяжёлый и тенденциозный оттенок; такой уж у меня сейчас период в жизни (К.)Несмотря на это, есть в повести один чёткий, резкий, поворотный момент, ключевой. Эпизод на дереве. Вокруг него и для него происходит всё остальное. Чтобы это заметить, много читательского таланта не нужно. Тем не менее в нём есть необозримая глубина, скрывающаяся под непритязательными словами и непритязательными, по большему счёту, персонажами. Глубина момента, который автор сумел ухватить (впрочем, вслепую).В этом и заключается моя главная претензия к Капоте, которому во время написания книги было 28 лет (а разом и к манере, в которой она выдержана). Меня не оставляет чувство, что он всколыхнул нечто нежное, хрупкое и вместе с тем фундаментальное, но рассмотреть это как следует, очистить от патины загадочный тайны не смог, не захотел. И не то чтобы предоставил читателю самому разбираться, нет; скорее, наказал добавить морали по личному вкусу, а сам я умываю руки. И тем осенил всё сочинение какой-то пустотой, в которую не нырнуть и из которой не выбраться. Он затронул проблему, которая куда многограннее тезиса "пташки в клетке". Он будто случайно поворачивает её и так и этак; и как будто сам "не ведает, что творит".Конечно, рецензия получилась крайне невнятной. Когда на душе будет поспокойнее, надо бы снова вернуться к "Голосам травы" - глядишь, откроются новые сокровища, подоспеют новые алмазы.
What do You think about The Grass Harp, Including A Tree Of Night And Other Stories (1993)?
I chose to read Capote because the only long piece I had read of his was Answered Prayers, which the magazine Esquire serialized in the 1970s. I didn't much care for his expose of the jet-set but admired his stylish description. I had seen films based on his work and liked them a lot: Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. His shorter work for the New Yorker Mag. appealed to me, also.In The Grass Harp and Other Stories, Capote demonstrates an astonishing flexibility and range of motion. Harp, a novella, concerns an orphaned boy and two Southern ladies who live off the land in a tree house. The small town folks near them do not cotton to their existence and try to disrupt their lives. Just when you peg Capote as a Southern writer, a different story takes place in New York City about a self-absorbed advertising worker. Indeed, he keeps switching back and forth from NYC to small-town South. Jug of Silver even has generalized characters that made me laugh at them; they are Little Abnerish without being insulting. Then there is a masterful horror short story titled Miriam. Capote seems to delight in showing off his facility with words and variety of experience.
—John Tipper
Perhaps the favorite southern fiction book I've read so far. So beautifully descriptive. Everything - the pacing, the characters, the style. It's just such a vivid book. One of those in which you experience sensory images long after turning the last page. Capote understood the child trying to adjust to living with and understanding two single bewildering aunts he's been thrust upon. And he wrote that child's viewpoint of those aunts and their house so well. Recommended as a summer read - with the windows open & the insects singing.
—Mmars
This is an utterly charming novella with all the qualities of a good fairy tale. I've always thought that Truman Capote is the bastard child of Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. This book is definitely on the Eudora Welty side of the equation, although it also reminds me in moments of We Have Always Lived at the Castle.This is a tale of misfits, of the freedom of refusing to fit in, and of what it takes to make yourself and your family. The language is elegiac and the relationships are sweet, heartfelt, and complex. Everyone in this book is looking for love, for a place to be - the treehouse at the top of the china tree brings them all together and holds them peaceful in its arms.There is, of course, the town and its folk who stand in opposition to the people of the tree and who, ultimately, bring the idyll to an end leaving only the shadows of voices on the wind.What remains for me is the image of the kitchen with its smells of sweet and savory things baking, the sound of conversation on a hot day, and the bowl of goldfish swimming lazily in their bowl.
—Caitlin
