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TRUMAN CAPOTE Music for Chameleons Toronto: Random TRUMAN CAPOTE the water supply from "his" river to other ranches in the area. In spite of the dedica­ Music for Chameleons tion of a very patient and resourceful FBI Toronto: Random House, 1981. agent, the killer escapes arrest, because he Pp. 265. has been careful enough to cover his traces: nothing can be proved against him. Subti­ tled "A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime," the story instantly recalls the "nar­ The first story in this collection of recent rative journalism" technique of Capote's writing by Truman Capote clarifies what immensely successful novel In Cold Blood must seem a gratuitously mystifying title. (1966). Like the novel, "Handcarved Cof­ As the aristocratic old lady of Martinique fins" also aims at "something that would entertains her guest at the piano in "her have the credibility of fact, the immediacy cool Caribbean salon," dozens of of film, the depth and freedom of prose, chameleons gather at her feet, and give and the precision of poetry" ("Preface," every evidence of listening attentively, p. 7). while she plays a Mozart sonata. At the close of this unusual concert, the old lady Part III comprises seven "Conversational stamps her foot, and the chameleons dis­ Portraits," and traces encounters that Ca­ appear "like sparks from an exploding pote has had with the great and the star." It is an arresting scene that Capote anonymous. His account of how Pearl conjures up for us, and he uses it not only Bailey ("Derring-Do") helped him escape as the title of his introductory story, but also the California police at the L.A. Interna­ as the title of the first of three sections into tional Airport is hilariously funny, and will which the work is divided, and finally as the probably surprise readers by the boister- title of the book itself. And by the time the ousness of its humor. The encounter with reader has finished this volume, he finds Marilyn Monroe ("A Beautiful Child") that he too, not unlike the chameleons in successfully recalls the curious blend of this brief recollection of an almost forgot­ earthiness and wistfulness that animated ten murder, has been hypnotized and that ill-starred celebrity, and like other ac­ enchanted by one of the most artful and counts of Marilyn Monroe that have ap­ accomplished writers of our time. peared recently, persuades the reader again that, in spite of her beauty and renown, her The first section of the book comprises life was hardly the splendid adventure that six selections, most of which are based on so many of her fans likely imagined. How­ direct personal reminiscence or experience. ever, the conservations" that Capote re­ The author uses the first-person singular to cords for us are not simply exercises in establish a point of view, but is otherwise name-dropping. The encounters with the careful to let the "story" or the material he anonymous are just as entertaining and is dealing with dominate and shape the revealing as the meetings with the famous narrative. One of the most subjective of and the notorious. He makes die rounds writers, he is at the same time, paradoxi­ with a charwoman ("A Day's Work"), and cally, one of the least personally intrusive. gives us brief, but telling glimpses into the Or, as he himself notes in a brief, but lives of each of her customers. The conver­ informative, preface which traces his own sation in "Hidden Gardens"—with the literary development: "Actually, in all my powerful female owner of a waterfront reportage, I had tried to keep myself as bar—not only retrieves moments of a invisible as possible." From the vantage shared past, but is also a fond evocation of point of the discreet or innocent observer, the qualities and street scenes of New he is tfius able to resurrect or illuminate Orleans in the spring. In California's San strange fates ("Mr. Jones"), kindly horrors Quentin prison, a grim encounter with a ("A Lamp at the Window"), obsessive young inmate, who was peripherally in­ passions ("Dazzle"). volved with the Charles Manson gang and the Sharon Tate murders, supplies the The whole of Part II consists of the long basis of "Then It All Came Down." story "Handcarved Coffins," a brilliant study of calculated murder inspired by the The reader soon discovers that Capote's desire for revenge. A wealthy western fondness for the bizarre, the inexplicable rancher sends each of his victims a small, and the gothic are alive and well in this new hand-carved coffin to forewarn them of his collection of stories and conversations. He intentions. The victims are members of a is reminded too that the writer's thought local committee who had diverted a part of and experience also embrace sunnier days Brief Mentions 165 and happier hours, even if only retrospec­ Indeed, responsible compassion is a tively, and that the shining horrors of life marked feature of Gool's treatment of his are frequently redeemed by unexpected major characters and themes. Both Henry rewards, by situations of high comedy and and Katherine are required to bear a shared laughter, and by moments of substantial burden as representative fig­ memorable beauty. The private hours may ures. Both, nonetheless, are rendered with be dark and filled with unanswered ques­ warmth and individuality. We are allowed tions ("Nocturnal Turnings"), but the pub­ to know Henry through his introspective lic experiences often distill into hints and diary and letters (pp. 3-25). Here are clues that may yet lead to answers. The reflected his earnestness, romanticism, and author's preface will be of special interest to "ironical rationality." The controlling voice, serious students of Capote's work, and is in however, is that of Adrian, Oxford- itself worth the price of admission to his educated lecturer in sociology, an "Anar­ surprising world. chist of the pacifist type," and author of a dissertation on historical determinism. Harold E. Lusher Adrian's link with determinism warns us that the sense of fate that pervades the novel springs not only from the bias of events and from the requirements of Aris­ totelian catharsis, but from the particular point of view of the narration. It is under this triple doom that the three major personae of Price, Adrian, Henry, and Katherine, capitulate, through exile, through death, through intimate loss, to the inexorable tragedy of the land. Each RÉSHARD GOOL pays a price to participate in that Price tragedy—Adrian the price of Ishmael, that Charlottetown, P.E.I.: Square Deal he may tell the story; Katherine the price of lovelessness, that, though ravished and Publications, 1976. Pp. 186. barren, she may at least survive; Henry die price of a brutal death, that, no longer an "outsider," he may act out the principles of "Promise-keeping and truth-telling are, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and re­ perhaps, the most final social values. With­ sponsible compassion. out them, no society can function." So speaks Henry Naidoo, the protagonist of The rewards of reading Price are many. Price (p. 186). Naidoo is the lawyer son of In no small measure they are due to the poor Natal Hindu parents. His story, nar­ sensitivity With which Gool creates the rated by his friend, Adrian Van der Merwe, ambience and to the exuberance with which "golden-haired representative of Af- he endows die supporting roles. Cape rikaaner Herrenvolk" (p. 2), is the tragic Town on a midsummer holiday (p. 27), for story of the destruction of the liberal option example, and the estuarine Eden of in contemporary South Africa. Henry's childhood (pp. 8-9), are described with rich nostalgia. Gool's versatility in With a strong sense of the dramatic re-creating the idiosyncrasies of colloquial unities, Gool sets his action in Cape Town speech give keen memorability to such between Dingaan's Day, December 16, characters as the promiscuous Doc (p. 32), 1947, and the New Year of 1948, the year and the Cambridge-educated Marxist, Yus- in which the Afrikaaner Nationalists are to souf Rycliffe (pp. 101-02). The masterpiece assume power. Political forces mobilize with among the fixed characters, however, is the Sophoclean inevitability to shape the last "gorgeous, and repulsive, figure" of few weeks of Henry Naidoo's life. In Shaikh-Moosa the entrepreneur, archbe- Katherine Holmes, younger daughter of an trayer of the Categorical Imperative, which old Cape Colored family, Naidoo finds Gool quotes as his novel's epigraph: love, destiny, and "the liberal spirit of the ". treat humanity, whether in your Cape" (p. 118). The love-death paradigm is own person or in that of any other, in every strongly etched. Love and the political ideal case as an end, never solely as a means." also come together in a single design: The spider at the center of the web in ". there is for me only one kind of which all Price's characters are entangled, true love," Henry asserts, "and that is Shaikh-Moosa is "reality" itself, rudiless responsible compassion" (p. 186). capitalism—protean, inventive, flam- 166 The International Fiction Review, 8, No. 2 (1981) .
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