The Complete Stories of Truman Capote

The publication of this collection, coming 80 years after its author's birth, carries with it the hope of cementing Capote's name in the pantheon of great American short story writers.

There was a moment, in those early phases of his career when no hope was needed. Capote was the future of American letters. The make 'em or break 'em New York Times critic Orville Prescott described an only 23 year-old Capote as "dangerously gifted."

With the publication of the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's Norman Mailer declared, "he is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm." And therein, one supposes, lies the rub. For in how high esteem does even Mailer now stand?

The hope remains unfulfilled, in large part because, like the praise of Mailer, the stories are of a time, less of a talent. Though the modern reader will most likely find them natural, easygoing, perhaps even graceful, above all most are mannered and studied to the standards of The New Yorker, Harper's, and other magazines which fueled the surging industry of short fiction in mid-century America. It was an era when to be a short story writer was as active a profession as it is now to be a sitcom writer.

Capote began writing at the age of 8 out of broken-home boredom and the adolescent isolation of being 'other.' Returning from school, he would spend hours honing his storytelling skills.

One imagines the boy working to become the craftsman the man was. This, however, is the short-falling. The Capote of the short stories, what he called 'his great love,' is but a high-class entertainer - a juggler in a tuxedo instead of a clown with a red-nose - playing to the social circle of northeastern elites he so craved acceptance from.

The sly, tricky, melancholy O. Henry endings; the pseudo-air of controversy about homosexual characters, unacceptable to society yet well-known by them; the melding of southern Gothic with New York glam; all point to an enviable knowledge of audience, little rewarding to the modern reader.

The writer's struggle here is for fame, and if not that, base accomplishment - any illumination of the human soul never appears as an interest, unless it be the underlining unattainable fulfillment and satisfaction of the author's own.