I read the manuscript of Summer Crossing with great excitement and a certain amount of dread. I remembered that it was quite likely that Truman did not want this novel to be published, but I was also hopeful that it would shed some light on Truman as a young author prior to the time he wrote his first iconic work, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Of course, I did not trust my own judgment. I therefore asked David Ebershoff and Robert Loomis, Truman’s senior editor at Random House, as well as my wife, Louise, to read the manuscript and to share notes. It is fair to say that we were all happily surprised. While not a polished work, it fully reflects the emergence of an original voice and a surprisingly proficient writer of prose.
Of course, it was not for me alone to judge its literary merit. After much discussion, our verdict was that the manuscript should be published. We reasoned that this was a sufficiently mature work that could stand on its own merits and that its intimations of the later style and proficiency that led to Breakfast at Tiffany’s were too valuable to be ignored.
Before making a final decision I asked my friend James Salter if he would take the responsibility of giving it one more read. Not only is Jim a good friend but he is generally recognized as one of the most luminous prose stylists of my generation. Jim graciously accepted the task and after a short while told me that he concurred in the verdict of my other three judges more or less for the same reasons. The decision was then up to me.
As a lawyer, I realize more than most the responsibilities of a trustee of a charitable trust. I am also very conscious of the high standard of care that any fiduciary must apply in reaching his or her decisions. However, it is not often that a trustee or even a literary executor is put into a position where he must decide whether to publish a work of an important deceased author that, very likely, the author would not have published in his lifetime.
Truman died in 1984. What would he have thought now? Would he have had the historical perspective and indeed the clearheadedness to decide what was best for the manuscript? After much thought it became apparent to me that in the final analysis the novel had to speak for itself. Although it was imperfect, its surprising literary merits seemed to demand an escape from its previous captivity. It would be published.
I wish to thank my advisors and everyone else who has helped make this publication happen. At the end of the day, of course, the responsibility for this decision, legally, ethically, and aesthetically, is and must be mine alone. In this I am mindful of the ironic twist of fate that prevented us from publishing a novel Truman believed he had finished (Answered Prayers) but allows us to publish this novel, which most likely he did not want published. As I write this I see Truman with his impish grin wagging a finger at me. “You are a naughty avvocato!” he is saying. But he is smiling.
ALAN U. SCHWARTZ
October 2005
A Note on the Text
This first edition of Summer Crossing was set from Capote’s manuscript, which was written in four school notebooks with sixty-two pages of supplemental notes, archived in the New York Public Library’s Truman Capote collection. The editors have silently corrected any inconsistent usages and misspellings. In instances when the author’s meaning was not clear, the editors added punctuation such as a comma, and in a few sentences, when a word was missing, the editors have inserted it. The editors’ foremost concern has been to faithfully reproduce the author’s manuscript. They made their corrections solely for the purpose of clarifying the unclear.
