Most readers know Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at
Tiffany's and In Cold Blood; or they remember his notorious social
life and wild and witty public appearances. But he was also the author
of superb short tales that were as elegant as they were heartfelt, as
grotesque as they were compassionate. Now, on the occasion of what would
have been his eightieth birthday, the Modern Library presents the first
collection that includes all of Capote's short fiction-a volume that
confirms his status as one of the masters of this form.
Among the selections are "A Tree of Night," in which an innocent
student, sitting on a train beside a slatternly woman and her deaf-mute
companion, enters a seductive nightmare that brings back the deepest
fears of childhood . . . "House of Flowers," the inspiration for a
celebrated Broadway musical, which tells of a superstitious prostitute
who learns to love in a way no one else can ever understand . . . the
holiday perennial "A Christmas Memory," famously adapted into a superb
made-for-TV movie . . . and "The Bargain," Capote's melancholy,
never-before-published 1950 story about a suburban housewife's shifting
fortunes.
From the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to
aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of
Capote's oeuvre are captured in this first-ever compendium. The
Collected Stories of Truman Capote should restore its author to a place
above mere celebrity, to the highest levels of American letters.
