Other Voices, Other Rooms

13-year-old Joel Knox leaves his aunt's house in New Orleans, where he has been comfortably cared for since his mother's death, ostensibly having been summoned by the father he has never met. His solo journey into the gothic environs of Southern decay leads him to an obscure backwater where he meets blighted characters haunted by the past, struggling with the present and dubious of the future. Joel has long been able to take himself to a "secret room" in his mind, and often has unbidden visions as well. He puts his observations of the new people in his life to good use, eventually realizing basic truths about himself and what matters to him. A brilliant short novel packed with elegant prose, atmosphere and humanity. If only Capote could show more have held on to the wise young man inside himself shown to us here.

"...only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves" show less

For starters, My thanks to the folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books.

This is Truman Capote’s first novel and it shows, for reasons both good and bad. On the good side, it shows that, even at the tender age of 23, Capote could didn’t need anywhere near a thousand words to paint a picture. With just half a paragraph he could pluck you out of your easy chair and plop you down beside a dusty country road leading to nowhere. It is easy to see the places that he is describing.

It is also easy to see that much of what he is writing is, if not autobiographical, at least about himself. Readers can, with the clarity of hindsight, sense that many parts show more of the story were written by a young man struggling to come to terms with an identity that many are reluctant to accept even today. Also evident was his portrayal of the pain and uncertainty of a boy who spent his life being shuttled from one guardian to another. Those familiar with To Kill a Mockingbird might recall the character of Dill who lived just such a life and, like Joel, was prone to telling imaginative tales about his life. For those who don’t know, Harper Lee based the character of Dill on her lifelong friend, Truman capote.

Unfortunately, Capote’s inexperience shows when it comes to the overall story line. While he is incredible at presenting vignettes, in the long run the story bogs down in a surreal mire that cannot decide between southern gothic or decadent drollery. In either case, it isn’t somewhere that you want a plot to stay it.

Bottom line: I’ve read every Capote story ever published and devoured In Cold Blood twice which is fortunate because I have faith in his ability to write. If I didn’t, this might be the first and last Capote novel I ever read. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t read it or that I don’t recommend it. I’m just saying that you should not judge Truman Capote’s career solely on this book. You would be doing a disservice to both him and yourself.
FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire. show less

I wanted to like this book. I tried to understand it and get through the writing which at times was so heavy I felt as though I was living in the deep south with Capote's characters -- sweltering, steamy, humid, heavy and mind numbing.

This is filled with southern Gothic themes of a raggedy plantation, a crazy step mother, an Uncle that is more than bizarre, conversations that float and go no where, snakes, tom boys, dusty antiques, rambling back water roads and, of course black help who are rendered spiritualistic and much to my chagrin, are portrayed derogatorily.

This is his first novel and it starts with the theme that runs through all Capote's books, a person disenfranchised and unloved, searching for love in all the wrong places, show more longing to belong.

When twelve year old Joel receives a communication from a father he never knew, calling him home, he follows. Abandoned at birth, now that his mother dies, the child has no other option.

When he arrives in the deep south, he does not meet his father. Instead, he finds a crazy step mother and a host of others who are just too eccentric to be real. And, that is my quarrel with the book. The writing is much too composed for a twelve year old.

Capote gives too much intelligence to Joel. While there are beautiful phrases and vivid images, overall the characters were over developed, and in the end, nothing happened.

The reader is left with a is that all there is feeling of disappointment.

No stars for this one! show less

3.5***

Capote’s debut novel is a semiautobiographical coming-of-age story. After the death of his mother, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox leaves New Orleans to travel to rural Alabama, and the home of the father who abandoned him at birth. Skully’s Landing is his stepmother Amy’s dilapidated mansion, set far in the woods, and without electricity or indoor plumbing. Among the residents of the estate are a centenarian Negro, Jesus Fever, his granddaughter Missouri (known as Zoo), who keeps house for the family, and the mysterious cousin Randolph. The person who is obviously missing is Joel’s father. Nearby live two sisters, Florabel and Idabel, the latter a tomboy who provides a glimmer of love and approval to the lonely Joel.

This is show more a classic Southern Gothic novel, full of ghosts, haints, superstitions, secrets and closed off rooms. There are real dangers aplenty as well: poisonous snakes, quicksand, and people with guns. Joel is isolated not only by the remote location, but by the lack of connection with these people. He is confused and cautious, and his loneliness and despair are palpable.

Capote’s writing is wonderfully atmospheric. Here is what Joel sees on his journey to his new home:
Two roads pass over the hinterlands into Noon City; one from the north, another from the south; the latter, known as the Paradise Chapel Highway, is the better of the pair, though both are much the same: desolate miles of swamp and field and forest stretch along either route unbroken except for scattered signs advertising Red Dot 5c Cigars, Dr. Pepper, NEHI, Grove’s Chill Tonic, and 666. Wooden bridges spanning brackish creeks named for long-gone Indian tribes rumble like far-off thunder under a passing wheel; herds of hogs and cows roam the roads at will; now and then a farm-family pauses from work to wave as an auto whizzes by, and watch sadly till it disappears in red dust.

Like Joel, I felt somewhat lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Was Capote trying too hard to be atmospheric? Was he forced by the standards of the day to be so circumspect regarding his message of awakening homosexuality? It makes Cousin Randolph’s statement all the more poignant: ”The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries; ... any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell. ” show less

This review contains spoilers.

After his mother dies, 13-year-old Joel is summoned to live with his father in a decrepit house with eccentric family members and discovers who he is over the course of a sultry summer.

I have read that Truman Capote said about this book that "somebody had to write the fairy Huck Finn." I know a little about Capote, or I think I know something about him. I think he was ambitious and yearned to take what he assumed was his rightful place among the great writers of American literature. I don't think this first novel of his even approaches Huckleberry Finn in terms of influence or achievement. About the only thing the two books have in common is a young male protagonist and a deep South setting. But if we put show more comparisons aside, it is a very interesting novel in its own right, even if I did have ambivalent feelings toward it after finishing it.

I doubt Capote invented the Southern gothic, but this novel is stuffed with the tropes of that genre. Joel goes to live in an isolated, crumbling mansion, stuffed with dusty, heavy, antique furniture and surrounded by a weed-infested overgrown garden. He goes to live with a full complement of eccentric characters as decrepit as the house: the aging, dotty, Southern belle aunt; the effeminate, dissolute uncle; the invalid father hidden away in the back bedroom. The African-American characters, by contrast -- especially Zoo, the housemaid -- are primitive, spiritual, almost caricatures with their bizarre names (Jesus Fever, Little Sunshine). Capote throws in a healthy dose of the Grotesque, culminating in a mule charging off an interior balcony in a crumbling hotel and hanging itself.

Capote's language perfectly mirrors the mood of his book and the humid Alabama summer during which it takes place. His writing is languid, slow-moving, evocative of sultry afternoons when there is nothing to do. Without this wonderful writing, this book wouldn't be nearly as compelling. Not a lot happens, and the reader is left to question what little that does take place. After Joel tries to run away from home and ends up catching pneumonia, the story takes on a surreal aspect where not much is explained. In the end, we are wondering whether Joel consciously chooses to stay in this place, which seems caught in a bubble of time, or is he compelled to stay there because there is really nowhere else where he can fit, similar to Zoo's predicament after she returns from her ill-fated journey to Washington DC?

I may not have fully understood this book, but I am glad I read it. Capote's writing captivated me, and I think Other Voices, Other Rooms earns an important place in Southern literature, although perhaps not the place that Capote envisioned for it. It depicts the decay and dissolution of the old South, an inevitability that Southerners are still perhaps in denial of today. show less

Prose as thick and tangled as a kudzu vine and Gothic to the point of being grotesque – this is one of the most complex and evocative novels I’ve ever read.

Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) begins with a pre-teen boy arriving to move in with the father he never knew, hoping to avoid going to military school. In a sense it's the same premise as Ricky Schroeder's 1980's sitcom Silver Spoons. Unfortunately for Joel, the young protagonist of this novel, he does not find his father to be an affable man-child who drives a train around his mansion. In fact, Joel does not find his father at all until more than halfway through the novel, Mr. Samson being mysteriously hidden at his own home at Skully's Landing.

Instead, Joel becomes acquainted with the eccentric cast of Southern Gothic figures who live on and around Skully's Landing. There's his grouchy step-mother Amy, odd-ball cousin show more Randolph, a maid named Zoo Fever who helps Joel settle in but dreams of running away, and the tomboy Idabel who becomes Joel's only friend. Unable to escape from Skully's Landing, Joel escapes further into his mind (the "other room") as the only way to keep above the nuttiness around him. When he finally meets his father, well lets just say it's not very pleasant either and they don't end up playing Pac-Man together.

There's not so much of a plot in this novel, just more of vignettes of Joel's daily life as he sinks more into the morass of Skully's Landing. Capote's prose is beautiful, if just plain weird and full of the grotesque. It's kind of reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird in tone but lacking the hope and wonder of that novel. Here the discoveries that come with growing older are not edifying but demoralizing. show less