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Christmas with Capote - Page 3

© Pamela St. Clair

The writing is rich with imagery that finds us cooking in the kitchen alongside Buddy and Ms. Sook, with eggbeaters whirling, spoons spinning, vanilla sweetening and ginger spicing the air, and kitchen odors drifting out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. Imagery as rich finds us marching alongside these two companions in the woods, as they search for the tree to take home and decorate with horded treasures or handmade drawings. The two cross frosted grass in early morning, beneath a sun, which is "round as an orange and orange as hot-weather moons," and which "balances on the horizon, burnishes the silvered winter woods." Sounds fill the woods; a renegade hog grunts, a wild turkey calls, birds shrill. Smells permeate as well. The pine scent is described as an ocean, where black crows, rather than seagulls, swoop for red berries. The kitchen, the woods, all are steeped in a magic that often escapes the adult gaze. As Sook speculates, you don't see the Lord upon dying, you see him when you're lying in the grass with your friend, watching your kites dance with the clouds in a blue sky. "A Christmas Story" traces the bond between these two sensitive souls, a bond that clearly doesn't diminish with Sook's death, as Buddy expects to see "a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven."

Their bond is the common theme, as well, in "One Christmas," where Buddy unhappily spends the holiday with his father in New Orleans, and in "The Thanksgiving Visitor," where Sook insists on inviting Buddy's nemesis and the school bully, Odd, to dinner. Whether away from home or sitting around the dining room table, Buddy learns from Sook that deeper currents often swirl beneath the surface of our outward behavior. This simple woman understands better than most the complexity of the human heart.

The stories will ring with simple truths long after the holiday bells stop tolling. They're nostalgic, but not mawkish. Like the famed fruitcakes, spice tempers the sugar, and a dose of whiskey cuts the sentimentality.

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A picture of Truman and Sook.

Another of Truman with his dad.

Truman's behavior, which deteriorated along with his drinking and drug abuse, and his lavish parties often outstripped his literary fame. A brief biographical sketch can be found here., A treasure of The Modern Library: a one volume collection of three Truman Capote short story classics, "A Christmas Memory," "One Christmas," and "The Thanksgiving Visitor." These holiday remembrances recall Capote's childhood in depression-era Alabama, where Capote lived with distant relatives. The stories pay tribute to Capote's childhood friend, his eccentric older cousin Sook Faulk. At sixty-plus years of age, Ms. Sook is as much of a child as is the young Capote, or Buddy, as she calls him. She is a simple woman, a child trapped within an adult body. She views the world with naïve wonder, yet despite never having ventured farther than five miles from home, she is a keen observer of human desires and behavior.

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