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Other Voices, Other Rooms

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 5,395 ratings · 352 reviews

Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the deca...more

Paperback, 232 pages

Published February 1st 1994 by Vintage (first published 1948)

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Sep 13, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: coming-of-age, family-drama, southern, semi-autobio, gothic

In 1935, at an early age of 11, Capote began writing. The first novel that he attempted to write was Summer Crossing but one day, while he and a fellow southerner and writer Carlson McCullers, the author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), were walking in the woods, he got inspired to write something about the rural life in the South. So, he set Summer Crossing aside and wrote this book. This then became his first published book (1948) when Capote was 24 years old. The style is Southern Goth...more

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Oct 18, 2010 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: You're such a Truuuuuuuu-man

Recommended to Mariel by: Oh capote-y! I love the books that you wrote-y

Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms is more of a raising yourself through experiences and colored glasses- green, red, rose, purple, the whole over the rainbow spectrum- world views than coming of age. The painful growth into what you think you are, and who you really are. I'm more and more irritated with "coming of age" tag these days, since I can't accept that there's this point where one comes to this point, and then you're done. It's more like stops and starts, backwards and forwards,...more Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms is more of a raising yourself through experiences and colored glasses- green, red, rose, purple, the whole over the rainbow spectrum- world views than coming of age. The painful growth into what you think you are, and who you really are. I'm more and more irritated with "coming of age" tag these days, since I can't accept that there's this point where one comes to this point, and then you're done. It's more like stops and starts, backwards and forwards, all mixed together confusion, isn't it? It can't just be me? We aren't always grown up in memories, anyway, despite that 20/20 hindsight some people supposedly have (it'd help to have Capote's 100% conversational recall). I'm still little, sometimes.
I love this book. I get the feeling that the people I've met who've read Capote don't feel this kinda gratitude that I feel towards him. Like maybe they wanna say, "Dude, Mariel, it's just a book" and back away slowly and then run away as fast as they can. I kinda did raise myself through movies and stories and stuff (probably still do), and I feel strong connections to characters, as if they were real people. I relate to how Joel made up these fictions to get by, like about the deadbeat father, or his dying mama. How he does the same with the new people he meets, most of whom are living their own fictions. All in Capote's humanist way that doesn't care about the bullshit. He sees them without judgement or sorrow. "You do know they aren't real, Mariel?" I've been (to my mind, snottily) asked fairly often. But they are! Someone wrote them. And aha! In the case of Other Voices, Other Rooms, Idabel was based on the same little girl whom Harper Lee based Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird on. Capote and Lee grew up with her. So she is real *smug*. (I'd not have forgotten about this girl either.)
This story is kinda sick feeling in the can't look away possibly impending disaster of the future, and more than in just the southern gothic way of the times that uses background for inherent creepiness (I'm from southern usa so it will either feel like home or trying too hard for me). I'm haunted by this shedding your skins feeling and rejecting yourself, and losing fantasies you made for yourself to hide from ugly realities, and getting lost in the pretensions and ugly realities of those other people, in all those other places. I can understand memories feeling like the sick hot days like these. Hear the doom drumbeats of all those original people doing their thing to their own drums. Watching other people like this. It took me twice as long as the usual coming of age story to not feel skinless. I'm grateful to Capote for writing this book that can relate to that feeling of being lost. And for feeling like we're in together. Yeah, I know it's just a book. I don't care.

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Mar 19, 2008 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

It wasn't until after seeing "Capote" (excellent film, by the by) that I got the itch to read something by the film's namesake. Thus far my first choice, "In Cold Blood," has been checked out every time I've gone to the library, so I settled instead for his first novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms."

I was not surprised to see the young protagonist, Joel, as a reflection of Capote himself. What did interest me, however, was that in the twenty-fifth anniversary edition I was reading, Capote wrote a...more

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May 07, 2007 lori mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: myfavorites

my favorite quotes:

"...all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved."

"...so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many...more

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May 07, 2007 Robbin rated it 3 of 5 stars

You know Truman Capote's famous quote about how he felt that he and Perry Smith grew up in the same house, and then one day he got up and walked out through the front door, while Perry left out the back? Also, you know the unnecessary speculation that Capote actually wrote his friend Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? I really enjoyed this book with its odd, closely observed detail and gothic, Southern, open claustrophobia. Still, it kind of feels like this book and To Kill a Mockingbird incuba...more

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Aug 16, 2007 Jamie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Eh. I've heard that this is considered his best writing ever. He apparently wrote it at Yalta, while Carson McCullers was staying there. It's the novel that put him on the map. See there I go again, caring more about his bio than his actual writing. The truth is, this might be his 'best' work ever, but it just didn't do it for me. I've read most of what he's written, and none of it has been as interesting as his actual life.

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Nov 14, 2012 Ginny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bellissimo romanzo di formazione, disseminato di riferimenti autobiografici, che l’autore riveste di una fitta rete di simboli di innegabile fascino.
Il viaggio del tredicenne Joel Harrison Knox verso un luogo sperduto nella campagna del profondo Sud degli Stati Uniti, per incontrare il padre che non conosce, è innanzi tutto la toccante vicenda di un adolescente assetato di affetti; insieme, però, è anche una rappresentazione paradigmatica del processo di crescita, ovvero dell’abbandono definiti...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Steven rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

This is a beautiful little gem that reveals the early Capote as a master of exquisitely poignant prose and captivating characters. It's a story told through the eyes of young boy who travels from New Orleans to seek out his long-lost father at an isolated mansion surrounded by eerie swampland, where he befriends a young girl who helps him to navigate the mystifying world of adolescence. I've read it through twice; despite its brevity, the novel is rich with allegory and the haunting atmospherics...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

I swore off novels about pubescent southern children after I read The Member of the Wedding two years ago and realized that I couldn't handle this vast subsection of American literature without flashing back to high school English classes, with all their short fifties novels about kids facing kooky minor characters and beat-you-to-death symbolism around every corner. [And I even liked To Kill A Mockingbird all four times it was assigned to me between eighth and tenth grade.]

Anyway. This book is...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Aleyna rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've come to the conclusion that if you want to be a writer, the most important books for you to read are the more obscure novels by famous writers. Why didn't Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms gain the critical acclaim that In Cold Blood received? Why isn't Salinger's insightful, albeit incomplete portrait of Seymour Glass in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction as beloved as his brazen sketch of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye? For every Jay Gatsby, the...more I've come to the conclusion that if you want to be a writer, the most important books for you to read are the more obscure novels by famous writers. Why didn't Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms gain the critical acclaim that In Cold Blood received? Why isn't Salinger's insightful, albeit incomplete portrait of Seymour Glass in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction as beloved as his brazen sketch of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye? For every Jay Gatsby, there's an Amory Blaine- find them, meet them. Learn their story and why it isn't as told as others.
Little Joel, from Other Voices, Other Rooms, is the protagonist of a To Kill a Mockingbird-esque coming-of-age tale that involves haunted hotels, marshy adventures, and endearing tomboys- all the workings of a would-be classic. Why then, is it not remembered fondly with other merited bildungsromans; why isn't Joel a Huck Finn, a Scout Finch, a Francie Nolan? This is a question that the aspiring writer must be able to answer- that is, if the aspiring writer wishes to be remembered. The point of writing, or rather, one of the myriad reasons writers exist, is to create beauty. But what's beauty if it isn't marketable, relatable? It might reach a few, but as a writer, you must want for your beauty to reach millions, to stretch on through the passing decades, to never fade like a painted piece of canvas forgotten in a dusty attic. Learn from other authors' mistakes; William Faulkner was an advocate of this method, and look where it got him.
So why, then, is Other Voices, Other Rooms not necessarily considered one of the greats? I thought it was brilliant enough. The quaint Noon City was charming, the mystical lore of Jesus and Missouri Fever was tantalizing, and of course the characters' names were entertaining and creative enough- so what was wrong? I think the book fell victim, as so many do, to an overdose of the purple prose. I think Capote's message, whatever it was, got lost in his sublime syntax. I did appreciate the beauty of his words, though, but sometimes it was a little too much to bear at once. Sweet words must be taken in moderation, lest they make their consumer sick. Capote learned this later on (Other Voices was his first novel), as proven by his wildly successful work of fiction, Breakfast at Tifffany's.
There is also the matter of the character, Randolph. Randolph, the feminine, frail, glib-almost-to-garrulousness cousin of Joel's stepmom, adds a strange quirk to a southern coming-of-age novel- he is gay. To elaborate, he is gay and in love with Spanish boxer Pepe Alvarez, someone who is, during the novel's timeline, a mere memory that Randolph inanely writes letters to. I'm not sure what role Randolph was exactly meant to serve in Other Voices- with Joel's growth being the main concern of the rather anti-climactic plot, Randolph's tragic love-sickness seems lost, almost inaccessible. Should we feel sorry for Randolph? Should we be sickened by the man who, as revealed in his lengthy, though at times touching monologue, accidentally shot, and thus paralyzed, Joel's father? It is at least obvious that he is someone Joel can relate to: Both are described as being too "pretty" in appearance, and both feel unloved; Joel finds solace in Randolph's presence. During the end of the novel, in which Joel realizes that Randolph is the lady he saw in the window earlier, Joel is able to embrace his own homosexuality- that point, however, didn't stand out quite as well as it should have.
I think the real problem with the book- and this is not about its standing among other books, but how I received it- is that I read it on my Kindle. With an already misty feel, as though you might reach out to grab the story's meaning but come back empty-handed, the Kindle distanced me from the story even more. I feel like that with nearly every book I read on my Kindle. Maybe characters were meant only to live on pages, not trapped behind screens.
After all, how can beauty pass from decade to decade if it's stuck inside some two-dimensional machine?

Anyways, for the most part, I enjoyed this book, though I was a little baffled by it at parts. I think, if there were somehow a grand re-marketing of it, it would find a welcoming audience in the midst of our country's struggle for gay rights.
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Oct 30, 2012 Camilla rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novella is by far my favourite of Capote's works. This, Faulkner and Toni Morrison (perhaps also Carson McCullers) merge in my mind to form a postcard of the American South: where everything is symbolic, people say both what they mean and what they don't mean, and ghosts run riot.

Other Voices, Other Rooms also merges in my mind with Turn of the Screw by Henry James. They are both essentially ghost stories with an underlying psychoanalytical moral (although James, brother of William James, a...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Janice marked it as to-read

Shelves: classics

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "...all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved."

"...so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the be...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Kyle Shroufe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: modernism-post-modernism

This is my first Truman Capote book read. Although it was almost 2 years ago I remember the book like it was yesterday. The fact that this was his first (actually second 'Summer Crossing') book shocks me because of the maturity and clarvoyence that comes through his writing, his words are a seperate art form that feels as though it's only meant for a select few. Luckily I feel like one of those few because I was automatically drawn to his style of prose and his effectivness in word usage. He can...more

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Jul 05, 2010 Jay rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Other Voices, Other Rooms”
by Truman Capote

Book Review by Jay Gilbertson

This is maybe the eighth, could be the ninth time I’ve read this amazing little novel and I know for certain I’ll read it again one day. Billed as Capote’s first, and in my opinion his best work, Other Voices, Other Rooms is truly an amazing piece of literature and still haunts me today.
The author took a classic coming-of-age theme and carefully, subtly and with fascinatingly flawed characters—ripped it to smithereens! Th...more “Other Voices, Other Rooms”
by Truman Capote

Book Review by Jay Gilbertson

This is maybe the eighth, could be the ninth time I’ve read this amazing little novel and I know for certain I’ll read it again one day. Billed as Capote’s first, and in my opinion his best work, Other Voices, Other Rooms is truly an amazing piece of literature and still haunts me today.
The author took a classic coming-of-age theme and carefully, subtly and with fascinatingly flawed characters—ripped it to smithereens! The story centers around two powerful topics that Capote struggled with his entire life: the search for a father-figure and the struggle with sexual orientation. What carries this tale is Capote’s brilliant prose and impeccable descriptions of place. He is one of the more rare authors that compel the reader to constantly re-read certain passages not because they’re confusing but due to the incredible picture the author presents of thirteen-year-old, Joel Knox, on the brink of manhood.
Give this a try:
“…He lay there on a bed of cold pebbles, the cool water washing, rippling over him; he wished he were a leaf, like the current-carried leaves riding past: leaf-boy, he would float lightly away, float and fade into a river, an ocean, the world’s great flood.”
With the death of Joel’s mother early on in the story, he is sent off to live with his estranged father in a dilapidated old hotel that, like its occupants, is further sinking into disrepair. From the psychotic step-mother, Miss Amy, to her eccentric cousin, Randolph, to the crusty-cook, Zoo, there isn’t a stereotype left to imagine. Throw in Idabel and Florabel, twins as different as they are alike, and you’ve got a brew of misfits that will surround you with color and sparkle contrasted with loneliness and despair at every turn. One jarring element that any modern reader will find uncomfortable to read is Capote’s use of the ‘N’ word. Though common back when this work was first published, it seems appropriate within the story and adds yet another layer to this complex cast.

Another of the many fascinating characters is not a person, but an old resort called Cloud Hotel. It too is a falling apart place with a history that will burn into your imagination and leave you wanting to know more. Though I’ve read everything Capote ever wrote, it’s this novel I return to because like some poetry, each reading I find some new gem to marvel and wonder about.
Like this clever title-weave-in:
“…But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams…”
Oh and there’s also a midget and a woman with a huge wart on her chin and a one-armed barber and a cat named Toby. And of course, there’s a woman in the window and you won’t believe who that turns out to be—or perhaps you will.

For more information about the author visit:
www.capotebio.com

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Apr 15, 2010 Jack rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read in the introduction that, when this first came out, a reviewer from the Times wrote something to the effect that the only point of writing this book was for the author to get it out of his system. I think that's about right, I'm not really sure how prejudicially I view that statement, because today, I have the advantage of viewing the book as a stepping stone towards the rest of Capote's body of work. It's interesting to see a young Capote writing his first book with a setting and protago...more

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Mar 08, 2010 Dinayuri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-write-recommend

In this semi-autobiographical novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, 13-year-old Joel Knox is sent to live with his father after his mother passes away. Joel was abandoned by his father at birth. Therefore when he is not greeted by him until about half-way through the novel, there is great disappointment. All of his questions about his father are ignored and instead, he meets a wide variety of interesting characters that all have engaging stories. Such as Randolph, a transvestite wh...more

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Dec 15, 2009 Kerri Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Truman Capote's novel is so beautifully written that I found it hard to believe it was his first. There is a lyrical, dancing quality to his writing, like sunlight dancing on waves, that carries you along, e.g., 'He lay there on a bed of cold pebbles, the cool water washing, rippling over him; he wished he were a leaf, like the current-carried leaves riding past; leaf-boy, he would float lightly away, float and fade into a river, an ocean, the world's greatest flood.' His descriptions of his cha...more Truman Capote's novel is so beautifully written that I found it hard to believe it was his first. There is a lyrical, dancing quality to his writing, like sunlight dancing on waves, that carries you along, e.g., 'He lay there on a bed of cold pebbles, the cool water washing, rippling over him; he wished he were a leaf, like the current-carried leaves riding past; leaf-boy, he would float lightly away, float and fade into a river, an ocean, the world's greatest flood.' His descriptions of his characters are just as evocative. Joel, the boy at the centre of the novel, is very lonely, and your heart aches for him as you read the novel. Joel's mother has died and he is sent to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. He has fantasies about this unknown father that verge on heroic but the reality is as far from them as can be imagined. You wish very much that he will find the love that he craves and he does, but from a most unexpected source.
Ruin is a prominent feature of the story. The mansion Joel's family lives in; an abandoned hotel that he is taken to; the nearest town of Noon City; all are well past their prime and descriptions of them, of which there are plenty, evoke a sad feeling of decay and weariness. Quite a few of the characters are also very lonely.
If a novel reveals anything about its author, I would venture to say that Capote had a very low opinion of his fellow humans but at the same time, a great love of them. Both sentiments come through strongly in this book. The book also deals with a theme that, for Capote in real life, would have consumed much of his early years; that of gender and sexual orientation. Joel is described as effiminate and one of my favourite characters, Randolph, is a .... well, I won't give THAT away. It's a great surprise. Idabel, a girl who befriends Joel, is extremely tomboyish, and seems to hate the fact that she is female.
For all its pathos, you will be curiously warmed by this story at the end. It makes you feel it is worthwhile never giving up hope. (less)

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Jan 16, 2013 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

My high school lunches were not glorious. A hopeless introvert in thrift store garb, I was relegated to the table where zitty kids used French fries to sop up pizza grease and debates raged daily about the merits of Pokemon characters. By fall of my sophomore year I had had enough of that scene. I had had enough of any scene, in fact. I wasn’t a nerd. I wasn’t a jock. I didn’t fit into any Breakfast Club categorization. I was Richard and that was all and to be honest as a teenager I didn’t reall...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Nell Grey rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: favourite, classic-fiction

Joel has come to a large neglected house in Alabama to live with a father he doesn't know, and the beautifully observed details of the sights, sounds, people and creatures of the nearby town, the house and the surrounding countryside, slowly build to create an almost surreal atmosphere as he tries to find himself and his place in the world. Joel's conflicting emotions are shown with a rare sensitivity, and although there are dark touches throughout, they're of the darkness of dream rather than n...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Nathan added it

I originally picked up this book because it was Capote's first published novel. I was curious to see if it was at all rough or immature. It wasn't.

Capote is as visually captivating as ever. One sentence stuck in my mind: "She tossed the firefly into the air where it hung suspended like a small moon." Simple, vivid imagery.

When I hear a novel described as "coming of age," it often triggers snoring, but this one engaged mostly through characters. The people are kaleidoscopic misfits: cross dressin...more

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Feb 16, 2010 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-interest, 2010-reads

Capote's short debut novel chronicles the sometimes painful growing up of Joel, a 13-year-old delicate boy sent away from the charms of his aunt's New Orleans home after his mother dies to live in the Alabama backwoods with his long-unseen father, Edward. Joel sees the trip as an adventure but after he arrives nothing seems to happen as he had envisioned or wanted. This is some of the richest, most ornately woven writing in English -- highly alliterative, exactingly described, deeply felt. Capot...more Capote's short debut novel chronicles the sometimes painful growing up of Joel, a 13-year-old delicate boy sent away from the charms of his aunt's New Orleans home after his mother dies to live in the Alabama backwoods with his long-unseen father, Edward. Joel sees the trip as an adventure but after he arrives nothing seems to happen as he had envisioned or wanted. This is some of the richest, most ornately woven writing in English -- highly alliterative, exactingly described, deeply felt. Capote often captures perfectly the awkward inner confusions of adolescence and the mystery and magic of the world from that POV. Even so, I have to admit, that I found the piece difficult to like, reluctantly turning the pages rather than willingly and enthusiastically doing so. Through much of the elaborate writing, I wanted Capote to get on with the story. For half the book, Capote frustrates the expectations of his protagonist and reader by deliberately keeping the fate of the boy's father a secret. When the secret is revealed, I found it hard to understand why it was necessary to have kept it a secret, other than possibly due to fragile Southern manners and sensibilities. In any case, this slow-moving approach allows Capote some latitude to explore some of the then-unspoken issues of manly identity and repressed gay and bi-sexual desire, in his own autobiographical doppelganger, Joel, and in the guise of a queenly uncle, Randolph, and in Joel's attraction to a neighborhood swamp-rat tomboy, Idabel, who is probably, along with the black housekeeper, Zoo, the most delightfully realized character in the book. The book takes place in a half destroyed, decaying mansion that seems to harbor echoes and ghosts of a livelier past and in a swampy back country rife with legends and freaky shopworn characters. The story often takes odd, surrealistic sidetrips akin to magical realism.
All in all, this is a solid homecoming/coming-of-age/autobiographical work with ample helpings of Southern gothic quirkiness. I can see why it is admired and beloved my many, but there's something about Southern lit and its flighty characters that makes my skin crawl; the region is awash in ignorance and superstition (as reflected by this book's characters) and seems hellbent on continually impeding the progress of the nation. The reason I liked Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood so much is that she cleverly mocks all of that. When all is said and done, it makes me wish that Lincoln and Grant had had nuclear weapons in the Civil War, quite frankly. At least Capote managed to get out of there.(less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Patricia Stewart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics-challenge

Other Voices, Other Rooms written by, Truman Capote is a remarkable novel of the South written so many years ago. It is the story of a young boy barely thirteen years of age brought under false pretenses to live with his father in a run down Southern mansion after the death of his mother.

The journey to Skully’s Landing is long, hot and without substantial food. Joel’s desire to meet, live and be accepted by his father is stronger than to remain in the safety of his Aunt Ellen.

In the first chapte...more

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Nov 24, 2009 Allison added it

Shelves: gave-up-the-ghost

Welcome to the latest round of GUTG!

I thought I was going to go the distance with this one, I really did. I made it all the way to page 100 which, these days, is exceedingly far when I'm ambivalent about a book. Where did we go wrong? It's well-written with some beautiful imagery (although the flowery prose did start to grate a bit, and the descriptions/stage directions probably could have been cut in half and still been effective, but if you like ATMOSPHERE, boy, does this book deliver) and int...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Kathleen rated it 2 of 5 stars

OK, I read this because I wanted to see the portrait of Harper Lee in the character of Idabel Thompkins, and now I've seen it. I had the vague feeling that I might have read this book before, when I was too young, and that maybe I skimmed parts and missed the significance of certain things. This time I got the significance, probably, still skimmed and still felt vague.

Sorry, Truman Capote, but at least you are dead and not reading my review. I really liked In Cold Blood, OK, but it freaked me o...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ah, back to Capote once again. Other Voices, Other Rooms was the first published novel of Truman Capote. It is difficult to summarize this books other than it tells the story of young boy sent to live with his father after his mother has died. The young man encounters a life where time seems stands still on a decaying plantation in the deep south and each character seems to have more problems than the next one.

This book was groundbreaking when it was published for so many reasons. First, it lau...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Constantin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Apr 26, 2013 Chase added it

Dazzling. However, after having read other (mostly) Southern gothic horror-ish type works (Wide Sargasso Sea, We Have Always Lived in the Castle), I am intrigued by that overly hot, stuffy, hallucinatory feeling of all these works. Does it have to do with a hot humid climate, heavy food? IN any case it raises lots of interesting questions about what really happens and what is imagined or dreamed, and does NOT really happen.
Another topic that comes to mind after reading this book has to do with t...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Molly rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd never read Capote, and I can't say that this book enabled me to form an opinion either way. It's an odd piece of work, though an enjoyable one -- there's a kind of dense, humid mystique that clouds the pages and makes the simple prose feel complicated. The cast of characters is also somewhat predictable: a middle-aged, faded-debutante, Miss-Havisham-inspired eccentric; a closeted Southern dandy with a taste for baroque furnishings; a spiteful, redheaded tomboy with an adoring hound dog and a...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Michael Flick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just finished reading Gerald Clarke's Capote biography and realized that I read "Other Voices, Other Rooms" when I was in high school, 50 years ago. All I could remember about it was the smoldering photograph of Capote on the dust jacket. So I bought a copy and read it again.

In a sense, this is the homosexual version of "Lolita," though it would be more accurate to characterize "Lolita" as the heterosexual version of "Other Voices, Other Rooms," as Capote's book was published in 1948 and Nabok...more I just finished reading Gerald Clarke's Capote biography and realized that I read "Other Voices, Other Rooms" when I was in high school, 50 years ago. All I could remember about it was the smoldering photograph of Capote on the dust jacket. So I bought a copy and read it again.

In a sense, this is the homosexual version of "Lolita," though it would be more accurate to characterize "Lolita" as the heterosexual version of "Other Voices, Other Rooms," as Capote's book was published in 1948 and Nabokov's masterpiece did not follow until 1955 (in Paris, 1958 in New York). Both are transgressive, dealing with an older man and a faunlet/nymphet (both terms courtesy of Nabokov).

It's short, only 194 pages, and the plot is thin, the characters not richly developed. The language is florid, poetic, but often doesn't make sense. When did anyone ever see a deepening green dusk? "And now dusk was coming on. A sea of deepening green spread the sky like some queer wine…." Just an example. Capote strains for the lyrical, artistic, but his words can miss their mark--he's just straining, overdoes it.

There's an unfortunate amount of repetition--he even uses the phrase "other voices, other rooms" twice when it would have been more effective had he used it just once.

This is high Southern Gothic, but others did it better. William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Harper Lee come immediately to mind.

If you ever wonder what happened to Joel Harrison Knox, we saw it play out before our eyes as Truman Capote mistook fame for genius, and that ultimately killed him.

Still, this is a haunting book and worth reading. The dialogue is spot on. When Cousin Randolph tells his story, Chapter 8, any shortcomings of the rest of the book are forgotten. He tells us everything we need to know:

"The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell."

Magnificent. Four stars for this alone--and the memory of that original dust jacket, which, alas, is replaced in this edition by a humdrum photograph of Truman leaning against a wall among roses. The original dust-jacket photograph explained as much about the book as its words.(less)

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Mar 20, 2010 Caitlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

Oh, Truman - what happened to you?

This book is beautifully written, tells a beautiful, bittersweet story, and is a painful read when you think of what its author became. I'm not sure how he made it from the young man that wrote this amazing and beautiful book to the caricatured flaming celebrity-worshiping queen of his later years. In this, his first book, the depth of his talent is enormous and apparent and I finished it thinking of how sad it all makes me.

Wonderful Southern gothic characters i...more

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About Truman Capote

Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

He was born as Truman Streckfus Persons to a salesman Archulus Persons...more

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The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories

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Quotes from Other Voices, Other Rooms

“The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell. ” — 116 people liked it

“Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportian suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lovers's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favourite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.” — 87 people liked it

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