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A review by msand3
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote
4.0
There was a period in my early-20s when I was obsessed with Capote. I read everything of his I could grab from the library. This was one of the last books of his I read, but I remember thinking these stories were too saccharine for my taste. I think I had burned out on Capote at that point.
Returning to these stories almost fifteen years later, I realize that I may have been too harsh in my initial assessment. Although Capote walks a fine line between nostalgia and Bildungsroman, these are undoubtedly finely-crafted tales. Indeed, they offer moments of sometimes painful emotional truth cleverly wrapped in the guide of light "holiday tales." Buddy and Miss Sook are essentially lonely characters who find refuge in each other. Their holiday rituals neither mask their isolation nor delude them into happiness, but are true expressions of joy in a harsh world where we must make the choice to be good to each each. Their joy is never easy or part of gilded holiday trimmings, but deep, genuine expressions of love that often emerge from pain and suffering.
And that is where Capote mines the truth of the human spirit in a culture that so often commercializes it as "holiday cheer" or (even worse) sells us the illusion of that spirit in the form of crass nostalgia.
Returning to these stories almost fifteen years later, I realize that I may have been too harsh in my initial assessment. Although Capote walks a fine line between nostalgia and Bildungsroman, these are undoubtedly finely-crafted tales. Indeed, they offer moments of sometimes painful emotional truth cleverly wrapped in the guide of light "holiday tales." Buddy and Miss Sook are essentially lonely characters who find refuge in each other. Their holiday rituals neither mask their isolation nor delude them into happiness, but are true expressions of joy in a harsh world where we must make the choice to be good to each each. Their joy is never easy or part of gilded holiday trimmings, but deep, genuine expressions of love that often emerge from pain and suffering.
And that is where Capote mines the truth of the human spirit in a culture that so often commercializes it as "holiday cheer" or (even worse) sells us the illusion of that spirit in the form of crass nostalgia.