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Title: Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote ISBN: 0-679-74566-1 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 March, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This must be Capote at his best
Comment: From each country I visit, I buy a book as a souvenir. While on interrail this summer, I stumbled over the "Music for Chameleons" in Prague. I have not read a lot of Capote, but nevertheless, this must be Capote at his best.
His writing is simple and direct, yet beautiful and elegant. In a way, his economic writing style reminds me of Hemingway. Eloquent, with not one word out of place. "Music for Chameleons" had my attention from the preface to the very last page. The author has this amazing ability to grab the reader's attention and hold on to it. When reading this book, I was a part of it. I was there; I could feel the emotions of each of the characters in the different stories.
The book contains several short stories and one non-fiction novel. I don't normally like short stories, but after reading this book, I am now a great fan of short stories. At least Capote's short stories. They are extraordinary! My favorite among these stories is the story of his dope-smoking cleaning lady. A truly wicked story. The longer piece in this book, the novel, "Handcarved Coffins", is about his investigation of a murder case in Kansas. Great mystery, many details, and I read the whole story in one sitting.
"Music for Chameleons" is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read and I read it in 50 page gulps. A compelling read. Highly recommended!
Rating: 2
Summary: Not Even A Good Liar
Comment: In one of these "essays," Capote describes his encounter with a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald, four years before Dallas. Since--as he's quick to note--he also knew JFK (and RFK, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray...the names go thud thud thud), this is quite a coup. Talk about connected! He remembers the meeting vividly, right down to the musty potted palm under which Oswald sulked, in Moscow's Metropole Hotel. Only problem is, Capote made his short visit in the spring of '59, and Oswald wasn't there until the following October.
Want more vivid reminiscences like that one? You can have my copy of "Music for Chameleons." Maybe "chameleons" refers to Capote's memories, since they're always changing. Also maybe because their colors are rather dull. Most of the pieces here originally ran as "journalism," but they're all of the Stephen Glass stripe. As always with Capote, it's not the lying itself that offends so much as the cynicism and desperation. At some point he stopped believing in the power of language to show us anything true or memorable.
Capote wrote one excellent book early on ("In Cold Blood"), which effectively ended his career. It was a bestseller, and critics heaped it with panegyrics ("the boy dreamer has discovered death"), feeding speculation that he had finally matured and was ready to mate his sharp prose style w/ a new sagacity. There was much talk of his Proustian work-in-progress, "Answered Prayers," tho most of it was from Capote himself--and as a result he could never bring himself to write it. Instead he squandered all his money--and creative energy--on his infamous Black and White Ball, a lavish suck-up fest for "all the best people" (i.e., wealthy socialites and celebrity leeches), and pretty soon that famous high-domed head was little more than a receptacle for drugs, drink, grudges, cocktail gossip, and slanderous crackpot harangues--delivered nightly at drunken talk-show gigs--which he hoped might gain credence from his "connections" and keep his name in the news. Like the vacuous celebrities he idolized, he tried to build a marketable persona by way of extreme behavior and the talk show circuit. Meanwhile his work coarsened beyond recognition.
I know this is the standard line about Capote. But it also seems to be the truth. As false and absurd as his later "journalism" is when taken straight, it reads even worse as fiction. Nothing resonates, not a word rings true. "Hello Stranger" pretends to be an actual dialogue w/ a former classmate, a WASP golden boy aged ungracefully into a (possible) pedophile. But the story is a rehash (Capote loved to recycle). His 1951 novella "The Grass Harp" told it better in a short vignette. The new version is very pat and the details don't convince. If you're going to write phony nonfiction, it's best not to slather on the picturesqueness, but Capote can't resist.
"Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime" is a crime all right--against real murder victims (used as props in a foolish melodrama); against its own pompous subtitle.
"Then It All Came Down," a fictionalized dialogue with Manson zombie Robert Beausoleil, is primarily a piece of self-puffery; occasionally the "subject" is allowed to interject some words, which sound remarkably like expository, bad TV. Capote, who couldn't get an audience w/ Manson, wildly exaggerates Beausoleil's culpability (and thus his "glamour"), claiming he was the *true* leader of the Manson cult and the real father of the Tate-Lo Bianco slayings... And so on and so forth.
"I like having the truth be the truth so I can't change it," Capote says somewhere, announcing his literary breakthrough: "faction," a new kind of novel, "every word true." In the end, of course, he even defiled his own virgin ("In Cold Blood") with a concocted final chapter. His betrayal of this sacred self-trust set the pattern for all that followed. And lest you think this is all academic: at least one human being died (of suicide) as a result of his snarky gossip. Two, if you count Jack Kerouac... Three, if you count Capote himself.
And for what? He wasn't even a decent liar. Oscar Wilde once wrote about "the art of lying," anticipating artists like Capote. "The Kitsch of Lying" would be a truer title for this sad little book.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of his best works
Comment: I'm torn between chosing this book or Capote's "Other Voices, Other Rooms," as his best work. Okay, it's a toss-up.
"Music for Chameleons" is like a collection of minature jewels, something akin to the Chopin "Preludes." These are brilliant, dazzling, and well-crafted pieces, each one complete and with its own theme. It's Capote at his best
Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
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Title: Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679745645 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Grass Harp by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679745572 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679745580 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Answered Prayers : The Unfinished Novel by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679751823 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679745653 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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