Get Moss and Kitty to play this game; I bet they’d be wonderful at it.193 If you get any good ideas, please send them along.
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO WILLIAM GOYEN
Fontana Vecchia
Taormina
April 19, 1951
Bill dear,
How good it was to have your letter; but what I don’t understand is—did you ever recieve [sic] a long letter I sent you about Horan et al? I’d rather wanted you to reply to it, but since you don’t mention it I wonder whether it reached you. It was not anything I would care to have had fall into the hands of a stranger.
So glad that you’ve been happy at Yaddo. I loved it too—though I’m afraid I didn’t really get much work done there. I’m delighted that “Ghost and Flesh” is nearly finished. Bob thinks it’s wonderful, a real achievement. I’m mad to read it. Will it be published this fall?
I read Spender’s autobiography.194 What a spurious book—him and his homosexual affairs that were only “undertaken in a spirit of opportunism.” I’ll say. Seriously, though, it makes me hopping mad. But Henri-Louis de la Grange, who was just here, says that you and Signor S. are friendly as ever.195 Surely it isn’t true.
I’d advise you strongly against the Gulf coast. I’ve lived in nearly all those little towns along the coast. They are flat, ugly as tin-roofs; the water is grey soup, the beaches are filthy and so are the people. From May through September all the middle-aged ladies in the South are holed up there. But if you really want to go, there is only one possible place to stay—Pass Christian.196 Why not one of the little islands off the coast of Georgia? Ask Andrew about those.
I don’t know that I will come home in July. In fact I’m pretty sure I won’t—maybe in August. But I do want to see you, precious. Of course we will. Write me. much love from
T
P.S. Give my love to Elizabeth Ames
[Collection unknown]
TO ROBERT LINSCOTT
Fontana Vecchia
Taormina, Sicily
April 21, 1951
Dear Bobolink,
Am in heaven with your praise—you can’t lay it on thick enough, honey; cause I just LOVES it. Only hope the last chapter doesn’t dissapoint [sic] you. Could be.
Am enclosing a little picture you can use if you want—don’t I look healthy? Only Bob please let’s not use that same biography again—about river-boats and fortune tellers and god knows what all.197 So I suggest: “Truman Capote was born in New Orleans; he is twenty-six. A first novel, Other Voices Other Rooms, established him in the front-rank of younger American writers. His stories, eight of which are collected in A Tree of Night, have appeared in the better periodicals here and abroad, and are frequently anthologized. Last year Random House published Local Color, a book of Mr. Capote’s travel pieces. His work is widely known in Europe, where he has lived the last several years.”
Trite—but in the right way. But as for a blurb for the book I give up. Poor Bob, you’ll have to do that. Newton could, only he hasn’t read the book—or I’ll bet Pearl Kazin could do a good one. Ask her. Anyway, it shouldn’t claim too much. As for the back flap, I think you should list my other books, alloting [sic] for each two quotes from the reviews. Blah Blah Blah, N.Y. Times. Incidentally, for A Tree of Night you should quote something from the Christopher Sykes review and from Leslie Fiedler’s review in The Nation.
Marylou sent me a beautiful cable about the book. Everybody’s being so nice. Oh lord, all I’ve got to do is finish now.
Had a letter from Goyen. Am so glad he got the Guggenheim—I’ll bet you are, too.
Bob, is Random going to be good about advertising this time? I mean in this respect you-all have not done such a lot for your child’s last two books. I’m not unrealistic; I know they were not the kind of books it repaid to greatly advertise. But with the Grass Harp I certainly am not expecting to be third-down in a list ad. No sir. I’m expecting to bask in the sunshine of a few full pages. And on that ungrateful note I bid you adieu. Except to say that I love you lots
T
P.S. Will airmail the last chapter soon as finished. Did you change the word “folks” to “people”?
P.P.S. Look inside.
P.P.S. Here is a suitable quote from the Sykes review of A Tree.
“Prose at its best. Mr. Capote gives his readers an exhilarating experience—the classic mark of excellence” Christopher Sykes, London Observer.
Also Leslie Fiedler in The Nation.
For Local Color there is that James Hilton review in The Herald Tribune—and that one in the Sunday Times (pretty grey it was, probably nothing there). I can’t seem to find these, or I would do it myself.
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO ROBERT LINSCOTT
Fontana Vecchia
Taormina, Sicily
April 24, 1951
Dear Boss,
As near as I can calculate, the last chapter will be between 8 and 10 thousand words. The mss. as a whole should run to about 172 pages—which, if properly arranged, could print out to 180–190 pages.
I’m told that Tallulah Bankhead has a radio program on which she sang a new song, composed by Joe Bushkin, called “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” Surely that is an infringement. I do seem determined to sue somebody.
Love (molto)
T
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO MARY LOUISE ASWELL
Fontana Vecchio [sic]
Taormina, Sicily
April 24, 1951
Precious heart—
You were the dearest of angels to send the cable, and now your sweet letter is here. I am so happy and relieved that you liked the book; I wanted you to, I guess more than anyone. A good deal depends on the last chapter—unfortunately I am very tense with it; I feel as though I were holding my nose under water: when I’m finished, I’m going to take a long gulp of air and do a mile of handsprings. I hope La Neige198 lets you buy the chapter—I’m more broke than little Orphan Annie.
Of course I can see why you are upset about Fritz returning to N.Y. On the other hand I don’t think it likely that your paths will cross—surely no one is going to invite you to the same place. But it is an incompatible feeling, God knows. At any rate, I hear you have sublet a heavenly apartment for the summer. We expect to come home early in August, and we will see you in it. Oh I long to see you—it will have been nearly two years!
Tell me, what is Jane [Bowles] doing? She is so tiresome about not answering letters. I hope she is working on the novel she was writing in Tangier; it seems to me it should have been finished by now.
Darling, Jack sends much, much love. Please do write me, precious. I love you always.
T
[Collection Aswell Family]
TO ROBERT LINSCOTT
[Taormina, Sicily]
[May 1951]
Dear Bob,
A quick, quick note to let you know that I do want a dedication.
FOR MISS SOOK FAULK
IN MEMORY OF AFFECTIONS DEEP AND TRUE
All is going well, I think, I hope. It won’t be too long now. Thanks. Love
T
P.S. Sook Faulk is Dolly in the book. She died in 1938. What happiness it gives me to dedicate this book to her!
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO ROBERT LINSCOTT
Taormina
May 3, 1951
Dear Bob,
As far as I’m concerned, Polly is free to use her own judgement: separate or run-together whatever words she wants.199 However, I would prefer that “Sheriff” and “Judge” remained capitalized. Also I have what are probably incorrect, but certainly very definite notions about punctuation, and I think that, except in cases of blatant misusage, my colons and semi-colons should stay as they are.
The check arrived for Anna Mayerson, and I have given it to her. Molto graçias.
Several problems have arisen in my last chapter, problems of technique; but with a kind of slow anguish I am unravelling them. I guess I’d best get back to it.
Love
T
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO CECIL BEATON
Taormina, May 8, 1951
Cecil darling,
Wonderful to have your letter; and am as happy to know you at least have the theatre, if not the cast. Franz Werner, the fortune-teller, is back and I asked him if July was going to be a good month for you,200 and he said yes, but that something astonishingly good was going to happen to you in late August; also, that you are soon going to receive a letter or a long-distance phone call making a proposal which you must accept. It’s amazing how many of the things he’s told me that have come true already. For instance, he told me that in April I would receive a prize of some kind. And I did: the O. Henry Memorial Award (for “distinguished work in the short-story”; it’s the third time I’ve won it).
Jane Bowles is in Paris—much sturm und drang because she doesn’t know where Paul is, and hasn’t heard from him in several months. I don’t know what will happen to Janie; she shouldn’t be floating around this way, especially with all those loathsome Paris characters.
Yes, the E. [Emlyn] Williams’ [sic] did rather suggest that they were friends of yours. But there were several little things that made me decide they weren’t; one was, that every time I mentioned you they immediately would begin to tell me what a wonderful person Oliver Messel was.201 But I made my love for you quite clear to them; so to give them credit, maybe that is why they pretended to be fond of you. But they are a fishy pair. Please don’t repeat this, because they would know where it came from, but they were
