A TREE OF NIGHT and Other Stories

Publication info: Bulletin from Virginia Kirkus' Bookshop Service ; New York (Feb 1, 1949).

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ABSTRACT
Doubtful- yes- for the critical reception accorded Truman Capote last year- and the sensational success of his first
book will establish acceptance, in many quarters, for this, his second. As in Other Voices, Other Rooms, Mr. Capote
still concerns himself ...

FULL TEXT
Category: Fiction
Publication Date: 1949-02-28
Publisher: Random House

Doubtful- yes- for the critical reception accorded Truman Capote last year- and the sensational success of his first
book will establish acceptance, in many quarters, for this, his second. As in Other Voices, Other Rooms, Mr. Capote
still concerns himself with dark corners and perversions. However, in using the short story rather than the novel
form to play around these inverted folk, A Tree of Night avoids the rambling vagaries that characterized Other
Voices. These stories are bold, even crystalline, showing a remarkable beauty of language and a variation of
setting that eliminates the hot house, overgrown plant atmosphere of Capote's novel. There is the story of Miriam,
a lonely New Yorker in her sixties who finds herself suddenly aware that she is schizophrenic, and faced with her
image in the shape of a persistent, evil little girl of ten... The title story, which takes place on a hot, stale train going
to Atlanta, deals with the sophomore Kay and her encounters with two passengers, -- a drunken fat woman, and a
deaf, salacious old man, these two representing a kind of tenacious insanity... Master Misery, another New York
City story, tells of Sylvia who sells her dreams, and in the process, her soul, to a gentleman who types them up and
files them away.....The already known The Headless Hawk goes into subterranean twisted-mind territory and the
strange goings on between a homosexual- heterosexual art dealer and his equally homosexual-heterosexual
love.....There are others, like Shut a Final Door, in which a man is pursued by his own private demons, and like
Children on their Birthdays, which presents an overly mature and frustrated child -- all sensitive and creative, with
their own special type of brilliance. Mr. Capote sets up struggles between his characters and then places them in
environments that waver from the psychotic to the supernatural... Not palatable reading for the conservative, the
tender skinned. The market is obvious, from his first.

Audience: Adult
Author: Capote, Truman

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 People: Capote, Truman (1924-1984)

Publication title: Bulletin from Virginia Kirkus' Bookshop Service; New York

Publication year: 1949

Publication date: Feb 1, 1949

Publisher: Kirkus Media LLC

Place of publication: New York

Country of publication: United States, New York

Publication subject: Library And Information Sciences, Publishing And Book Trade, Literary And Political
Reviews

Source type: Trade Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Review

ProQuest document ID: 916886024

Document URL: https://colorado.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-

journals/tree-night-other-stories/docview/916886024/se-2?accountid=14503

Copyright: Copyright 2012, Kirkus Reviews. All rights reserved.

Last updated: 2019-10-15

Database: Social Science Premium Collection,ProQuest Central

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