Πέρυσι τον Αύγουστο ήταν που διάβασα για πρώτη φορά βιβλίο του Τρούμαν Καπότε: Το κλασικό "Εν ψυχρώ", που τόσο πολύ μου άρεσε. Εδώ έχουμε να κάνουμε με κάτι εντελώς διαφορετικό, όμως: Όχι με ένα μυθιστορηματικό χρονικό μιας αληθινής υπόθεσης, αλλά με μια γλυκόπικρη ιστορία ενηλικίωσης, που διαδραματίζεται στον μαγευτικό και συνάμα εφιαλτικό αμερικάνικο Νότο.

Πρωταγωνιστής της ιστορίας είναι ο δωδεκάχρονος Τζόελ Νοξ, που μετά τον θάνατο της μητέρας του, ταξιδεύει από την Νέα Ορλεάνη όπου γεννήθηκε και μεγάλωσε, σε κάποια μικρή πόλη του αμερικάνικου Νότου, με σκοπό να ξανασμίξει με τον πατέρα του που τον είχε εγκαταλείψει. Ο Τζόελ θα φτάσει σ'ένα ξεπεσμένο αρχοντικό, αλλά αντί για τον πατέρα του, θα τον υποδεχτούν η βλοσυρή μητριά του, ένας παράξενος ξάδερφος ονόματι Ράντολφ, καθώς και μια μαύρη υπηρέτρια. Ο Τζόελ θα πρέπει να αρχίσει να συνηθίζει την νέα του ζωή, θα καταλάβει πολλά πράγματα για τον κόσμο γύρω του, ενώ κάποια στιγμή θα γνωρίσει και ένα τρελό αγοροκόριτσο, την Άινταμπελ.

Αυτό είναι το πρώτο βιβλίο που έγραψε ο Τρούμαν Καπότε σε ηλικία εικοσιτεσσάρων ετών και κατά κάποιον τρόπο λειτουργεί και σαν μια αυτοβιογραφία για τα παιδικά του χρόνια. Ο μικρός Τζόελ είναι alter ego του ίδιου του Καπότε, ενώ η Άινταμπελ ίσως να μοιάζει πάρα πολύ με την στενή φίλη του Καπότε, την συγγραφέα Χάρπερ Λι. Όπως και να'χει, η ιστορία είναι πολύ ωραία, μαγευτική, ευχάριστη σε πολλά σημεία και λιγάκι στενάχωρη σε κάποια άλλα, σίγουρα καλογραμμένη και ευκολοδιάβαστη, με έντονη ποιητική διάθεση. Προσωπικά με ταξίδεψε πολλά χρόνια πριν στον αμερικάνικο Νότο και μ'έκανε να νοσταλγήσω ως ένα σημείο τα δικά μου παιδικά χρόνια.

Σίγουρα σαν μυθιστόρημα μπορεί να έχει τα θέματά του και να μην ταιριάζει με τα γούστα όλων, όμως δεν μπορεί να πει κανείς ότι δεν έχει κάτι το ιδιαίτερο και ότι δεν είναι φοβερά καλογραμμένο. Μ'αυτό το βιβλίο ο Καπότε βγήκε στο προσκήνιο των αμερικάνικων γραμμάτων και έδειξε το ξεχωριστό του ταλέντο...

Capote's short debut novel chronicles the sometimes painful growing up of Joel, a 13-year-old delicate boy sent away from the charms of his aunt's New Orleans home after his mother dies to live in the Alabama backwoods with his long-unseen father, Edward. Joel sees the trip as an adventure but after he arrives nothing seems to happen as he had envisioned or wanted. This is some of the richest, most ornately woven writing in English -- highly alliterative, exactingly described, deeply felt. Capote often captures perfectly the awkward inner confusions of adolescence and the mystery and magic of the world from that POV. Even so, I have to admit, that I found the piece difficult to like, reluctantly turning the pages rather than willingly and enthusiastically doing so. Through much of the elaborate writing, I wanted Capote to get on with the story. For half the book, Capote frustrates the expectations of his protagonist and reader by deliberately keeping the fate of the boy's father a secret. When the secret is revealed, I found it hard to understand why it was necessary to have kept it a secret, other than possibly due to fragile Southern manners and sensibilities. In any case, this slow-moving approach allows Capote some latitude to explore some of the then-unspoken issues of manly identity and repressed gay and bi-sexual desire, in his own autobiographical doppelganger, Joel, and in the guise of a queenly uncle, Randolph, and in Joel's attraction to a neighborhood swamp-rat tomboy, Idabel, who is probably, along with the black housekeeper, Zoo, the most delightfully realized character in the book. The book takes place in a half destroyed, decaying mansion that seems to harbor echoes and ghosts of a livelier past and in a swampy back country rife with legends and freaky shopworn characters. The story often takes odd, surrealistic sidetrips akin to magical realism.
All in all, this is a solid homecoming/coming-of-age/autobiographical work with ample helpings of Southern gothic quirkiness. I can see why it is admired and beloved my many, but there's something about Southern lit and its flighty characters that makes my skin crawl; the region is awash in ignorance and superstition (as reflected by this book's characters) and seems hellbent on continually impeding the progress of the nation. The reason I liked Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood so much is that she cleverly mocks all of that. When all is said and done, it makes me wish that Lincoln and Grant had had nuclear weapons in the Civil War, quite frankly. At least Capote managed to get out of there.

3.5

I really enjoyed Capote's poetic prose and interesting characters, but this book felt unfinished. Towards the end, the story seemed too rushed and things started to make less and less sense. Perhaps that part was written earlier or later than the rest of the book, because it did seem detached from the rest of the story.

Since this is considered Capote's first novel and my first Capote, this is definitely not the last book of his that I will read.

This is my first Truman Capote book read. Although it was almost 2 years ago I remember the book like it was yesterday. The fact that this was his first (actually second 'Summer Crossing') book shocks me because of the maturity and clarvoyence that comes through his writing, his words are a seperate art form that feels as though it's only meant for a select few. Luckily I feel like one of those few because I was automatically drawn to his style of prose and his effectivness in word usage. He can make a sentance feel like a paragraph, yet he can spend a paragraph desperatley explaining a sentance, it is truly a gift few authors have. This specific novel shifts from the bussle of New Orleans to the decay of Louisianna and the decay that is his 'other life' or 'new life' depending on how you look at it. It is easy to say that this book directly reflects Capote's upbringing and it truly is an imaginitive coming to age story. However after getting to know Capote as an author I sometimes wonder if the book isnt a metaphor for other reflections he has made on life, both his and others. The Mystery surrounding his father, the old man in the woods and Randolph in his infinite sadness are all truley unforgettable characters that are fully fleshed out. This is truly one of my favorite novels and the descriptive way he goes about writing is beautiful, like a composer or a musician Capote is a perfectionist at his art. He is a wordsmith in the most literate sense and by far one of the best authors of our time. Other Voices, Other Rooms will always hold a spot in my heart as my introduction to Truman Capote, a magician of an author.

After his mother's death Joel Knox is summoned to the decaying Mississippi mansion Skully's Landing to meet the father who abandoned him and runs smack dab into a menagerie of odd characters namely an addled stepmother Amy, silk kimono dressed Uncle Randolph, barely alive bedridden father Mr. Samson, and the wild girl child Idabel who all exist in some kind of dreamlike narrative.
I've read ICB and BAT so Capote is not a new author for me. I understand this is supposed to be semi-autobiographical and that the character Idabel is supposedly based roughly on his childhood friend Harper Lee, but even those facts couldn't interest me in (or help me understand ) this story. A GR friend Doug called this one Southern Gothic on steroids or mushrooms. I'm going with mushrooms , lol, and giving myself extra credit (big time) for finishing it.
A book which for me started out confusing and strange and by the end just left me completely and uncaringly baffled. 2 stars
Read for May On The Southern Literary Trail

Southern Gothic with a twist.

This well-written debut novel garnered a lot of press for Capote way back in 1948. In fact it shot him to the pinnacles of fame, where he stayed until his death. Given the racial language that is used, (Deep South, 1948, full of casual epithets that were acceptable at the time), I'm surprised that it's still available. It would make for a rollicking censorship argument - racist language as a reason to take it off the shelves and ground-breaking portrayal of a coming of age of a young gay man as a reason to keep it on the shelves.

Anyway, it was a well-written, dripping with atmosphere story. Joel's mother is dead, and he's living with a kind aunt when a letter from the father who abandoned him, arrives. He's packed off to Mississippi to live in a large, run-down mansion, populated with eccentric souls. Joel's journey is from self-alienation to self-knowledge as he moves from naive young boy to teenager, aware of his sexual identity as a gay youth.

The book was well-written, I'd give Capote five stars out of five for style, and I am glad to have read the book to see for myself the extent of Capote's talent at the age of 23 - quite phenomenal. But personally, this story didn't really resonate, and for that reason, I gave it two stars.

Like if a queer coming of age story was a southern gothic fever dream… beautiful

An incredible little book, with a complexity & depth you wouldn't expect from its small size. What's that? Truman Capote was twenty-three when he wrote this? Oh well, there's not much to say to that. except maybe "holy *&@#*!!!!" This book is so full of wisdom & experience & gorgeous language, full of longing, of dreams dashed, of plans destroyed, of innocence shattered, and so compelling, so beautiful, so overstuffed with so many different aspects of the rich tapestry of humanity contrasted with the overflowing nature of the deep south & its savage decay, ghostly history & seething passion. How the young author crammed so much life & so much gorgeous writing into this great haunting work is a mystery that thankfully we are not required to solve. We can just enjoy this tiny glowing jewel for the masterpiece it is. An adolescent's journey thru hope & disappointment, and all the various characters he encounters and whose stories he takes in & becomes tangled up with, from a beloved house servant to a fiery young tomboy troublemaker to a melancholy, morose cousin...even the incidental characters have the unsentimental ring of truth about them. Full of wonder, mystery, heartbreak, hilarity, & much, much more.

You know Truman Capote's famous quote about how he felt that he and Perry Smith grew up in the same house, and then one day he got up and walked out through the front door, while Perry left out the back? Also, you know the unnecessary speculation that Capote actually wrote his friend Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? I really enjoyed this book with its odd, closely observed detail and gothic, Southern, open claustrophobia. Still, it kind of feels like this book and To Kill a Mockingbird incubated together, and if Lee's book shows the front door, this eccentricity is probably the back.

I just got served a healthy dose of Southern Gothic. Or so other sources would have me believe. I never knew what that was supposed to mean until now, but it clicked once I read the foreword, like any sensible reader would do, after reading the book.

So, from the foreword I found out that Southern Gothic is all about the decaying swamps and decaying prosperity of the white plantation owners once slaves became unavailable for legal reasons. All this aside, I can honestly say that I found the text beautiful, with its atmosphere and the hints of supernatural forces at work, the morbid descriptions and extravagant metaphors and similes, in a fittingly decadent sort of way: “The white face of afternoon took shape in the sky”, "he let himself be carried in its course: his head was light as a balloon, and as hollow-feeling; ice as eyes, thorns as teeth, flannel as tongue" - flannel, really? In an enumeration together with thorns and ice? All these would make a younger me revel in awe of the author’s imagination and command of language. And really, he’s very good, if a little too pretentious at times (especially with the flannel).

What I continued to focus on throughout the book, were the ways in which white people took their status for granted. Not by saying anything racist or doing anything racist, but by their demeanour and their air of superiority. I know that probably they’d be all stuck up in other contexts – so it’s probably more of a bad habit than anything else, but this particular context imbues their behaviour with racist overtones. Guess I should just call it a product of its times and get over with this, because there was another element which attracted me. It is the frankness of expression of a spectrum of feelings between people who did not conform to rigid gender norms. And, as I imagined and was later confirmed in the foreword, that was a very big deal then.

So, flannel aside, the book was a great read, and it contained some of the most beautifully imaginative English prose that I came across.

«Інші голоси, інші кімнати». Трумен Капоте 4,5

Айдабель: «Як я тобі казала, хтозна, що відбувається в Лендінзі».
Джоел подумав: «Хтозна, що відбувається будь-де».
 
В романі «Інші голоси, інші кімнати» багато американського півдня, з його готикою, символікою та культурою, зрештою, з травмою, яка не дає старим ранам затягнутися («Because we got beat» Walker Percy). Це той самий південь, знайомий за романами Вільяма Фолкнера та сучасниці Трумена Капоте, його подруги Гарпер Лі, авторки «Вбити пересмішника», «Іди, вартового постав». 

Американський південь — це в першу чергу про штати Луїзіана, Міссісіпі та Алабама, пов'язані географічно з дитинством письменника. Це там де за кожною назвою місця є своя легенда: «Під місячним деревом», готель «Хмара», «Ставок потопельників». 

Американський південь — це завше про перехід, переїзд, зміну станів. Він надто живий і плинний, хоч навіть у руйнуванні є зміна. У ранніх оповіданнях та повістях Капоте чимало складних образів, які читаються по-різному. Але на прикладі жителів Лендінгу я бачу поламаних людей, які просто зайняли свої місця у загальній головоломці. Пройти через зміни, усвідомити їх і прийняти вдається тільки деяким (без спойлерів). 

Айдабель і Джоель могли б надихнути творців серіалу The End of the F***ing World на створення відповідних персонажів у ньому. Але це не точно.  

Якщо дочитати до восьмого розділу, який все більш-менш розставляє на місця і олюднює персонажів, розповідає про їх минуле та мотивацію — загальну історію буде простіше зрозуміти. 

Всі книжки в яких є мандрівний цирк — це любов, посіяна в мені ще Реєм Бредбері в оповіданнях і романі «Щось лихе насуває». 

Капоте розповідав, що «Інші голоси, інші кімнати» завершив перший етап його кар'єри письменника. Написаний за два роки і виданий роман допоміг йому закрити тему прийняття себе, як частини процесу дорослішання.

Possibly the spookiest aspect of this unsettling novel is the knowledge you bring to it: Capote was only 23-24 when he wrote it, and yet he exists in two of its autobiographical characters -- Joel, the young teenager, and his uncle Randolph, the theatrical, narcissistic, unstable alcoholic that prefigures the role Capote would play in his own life. Or so it struck me.

Gerald Clarke wrote that one of the novel's themes was "the loneliness that afflicts all but the stupid or insensitive," and that rings very true to me. It is a profoundly lonely book, as books that deal with any kind of unbelonging in the world are. It's also the loneliness of the mentally ill and those who live in their world. The topics and themes this book manages to cover, or at least allude to, are really staggering given its publication in 1948: homosexuality, mental illness, rape, transvestitism and suicide are just a few, and the book manages to stay believably young its p.o.v., in a very surreal yet familiar place of knowing-but-not-knowing on the cusp of adolescence. Occasionally florid but never sloppy, enthusiastic and surreal, sad, and beautiful.