You may think you know Truman Capote if you know In Cold Blood. But you would be wrong. The surgical precision with which Capote tells the story of the Clutter murder--with no words wasted, with all words combining to create an echoey effect of layered bleakness, of the emptiness not only of the flat Kansas landscape where the murders occurred, but also of the lives of the men who committed them--is only one of Capote's modes. When he writes about childhood, he is elegiac, poetic, given to lingering metaphor-laden descriptions and patient evocations of moments that matter simply because they are moments. Whatever his mode, he is consummately controlled, and the thing that keeps the prose of In Cold Blood from becoming gratuitously grisly is the same thing that keeps the prose of works like The Grass Harp from caving in to sentimentality: Capote's instinctive understanding of when less is more, of when the most expressive thing he can do as an artist is exercise restraint.

Here's a passage from The Grass Harp, taken from a scene in which several lonely outcasts spend the night together in an old treehouse on the edge of town:

The caught-up uneasiness that I associated with Riley swamped his face. "I'm not in trouble: I'm nothing--or would you call that my trouble? I lie awake thinking what do I know how to do? hunt, drive a car, fool around; and I get scared when I think maybe that's all it will ever come to. Another thing, I've got no feelings--except for my sisters, which is different. Take for instance, I've been going with this girl from Rock City nearly a year, the longest time I've stayed with one girl. I guess it was a week ago she flared up and said where's your heart? said if I didn't love her she'd as soon die. So I stopped the car on the railroad track; well, I said, let's just sit here, the Crescent's due in about twenty minutes. We didn't take our eyes off each other, and I thought, isn't it mean that I'm looking at you and I dont feel anything except..."

"Except vanity?" said the Judge.

Riley did not deny it. "And if my sisters were old enough to take care of themselves, I'd have been willing to wait for the Crescent to come down on us."

It made my stomach hurt to hear him talk like that; I longed to tell him he was all I wanted to be.

"You said before about the one person in the world. Why couldn't I think of her like that? It's what I want, I'm no good by myself. Maybe, if I could care for somebody that way, I'd make plans and carry them out: buy that stretch of land past Parson's Place and build houses on it--I could do it if I got quiet."

Wind surprised, pealed the leaves, parted night clouds; showers of starlight were let loose: our candle, as though intimidated by the incandescence of the opening, star-stabbed sky, toppled, and we could see, unwrapped above us, a late wayaway wintery moon: it was like a slice of snow, near and far creatures called to it, hunched moon-eyed frogs, a claw-voiced wildcat. Catherine hauled out the rose scrapquilt, insisting Dolly wrap it around herself; then she tucked her arms around me and scratched my head until I let it relax on her bosom--You cold? she said, and I wiggled closer: she was good and warm as the old kitchen.

"Son, I'd say you were going at it the wrong end first," said the Judge, turning up his coat-collar. "How could you care about one girl? Have you ever cared about one leaf?"

Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look, snatched at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in Riley's. Pressing it mildly against his cheek, he distantly said, "We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed--begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it--I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."

Beautiful! Heart-achingly beautiful! The Grass Harp, to me when I first read it at 12 years old, had something to say about how to live life. Even though I couldn't really grasp it. It was really about: look around you, see, soak it up, life is so short and so precious ... Also, it said something like: It is never too late to change your life. Half the characters in The Grass Harp are elderly - but they too have the same needs, desires ... for a meaningful life.

But - it's HOW Capote says this ... It just made me ache all over. And the last paragraph of the story is haunting.

Thanks for this beautiful post.

One of Caopte's quotes is memorable - I don't remember the context, but he was talking about another writer's writing.

"That's not writing. That's typing."

Thanks, Sheila. You gave me the nudge I needed to finish up Castle Richmond-- a strange, strange novel that maybe I will post about someday--and get going on The Grass Harp. I would say I can't put it down, except that I keep having to: the prose is too exquisite to take in more than a little bit at a time.

Mike -- He said that about Jack Kerouac. Another favorite: "Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it." And, more to the point where The Grass Harp is concerned: "To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make."

"...the inner music that words make."

I like that.

Thank you all for opening my eyes to something I've overlooked for too long. Thing is, I *knew* that Capote writes beautiful, moving, poetic prose - remember the short story about his grandmother making Christmas fruitcake for FDR? I've loved that since first reading it in junior high. A trip to the bookstore is in order for the weekend!

His critique of Jack Kerouac reminds me of something a writer friend said when asked to evaluate a new writer's first manuscript. She tried desperately to find something positive about the work but in the end her only comment was, "Nice margins."