The Books: “The Grass Harp” – “Master Misery” (Truman Capote)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Still in the short-story collection The Grass Harp: Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories – by Truman Capote. Next story in the collection is a haunting beautifully written piece called “Master Misery”. There are elements of Breakfast at Tiffany’s here – young girl in New York, navigating around. Many of his short stories take place in the South, Truman’s main source of inspiration – his childhood home. But New York has its own energy source for Truman, its own poetry – and here he taps into it. I LOVE the writing here – great characters too. Sylvia, the ingenue, is in New York – living with her sister and her sister’s husband. She ends up meeting a man who “buys dreams”. Literally – you tell him a dream you had, and he will pay you.

There’s a melancholic creepiness at work here … what happens when you sell your dreams, etc. But the symbolism isn’t too overt – Capote sticks with his story. Mr. Revercomb buys your dreams. Sylvia sells one. Then she sells two. And then things start to change for her.

I particularly like the opening of this story, so I’ll excerpt that.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp: Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories – by Truman Capote – “Master Misery”

Her high heels, clacking across the marble foyer, made her think of ice cubs rattling in a glass, and the flowers, those autumn crysanthemums in the urn at the entrance, if touched they would shatter, splinter, she was sure, into frozen dust; yet the house was warm, even somewhat overheated, but cold, and Sylvia shivered, but cold, like the snowy swollen wastes of the secretary’s face: Miss Mozart, who dressed all in white, as though she were a nurse. Perhaps she really was; that, of course, could be the answer. Mr. Revercomb, you are mad, and this is your nurse; she thought about it for a moment: well, no. And now the butler brought her scarf. His beauty touched her: slender, so gentle, a Negro with freckled skin and reddish, unreflecting eyes. As he opened the door, Miss Mozart appeared, her starched uniform rustling drylly in the hall. “We hope you will return,” she said, and handed Sylvia a sealed envelope. “Mrs. Revercomb was most particularly pleased.”

Outside, dusk was falling like blue flakes, and Sylvia walked crosstown along the November streets until she reached the lonely upper reaches of Fifth Avenue. It occurred to her then that she might walk home through the park: an act of defiance almost, for Henry and Estelle, always insistent upon their city wisdom, had said over and over again, you have no idea how dangerous it is, walking in the park after dark; look what happened to Myrtle Calisher. This isn’t Easton, honey. That was the other thing they said. And said. God, she was sick of it. Still, and aside from a few of the other typists at SnugFare, an underwear company for which she worked, who else in New York did she know? Oh, it would be all right if only she did not have to live with them, if she could afford somewhere a small room of her own: but there in that chintz-cramped apartment she sometimes felt she would choke them both. And why did she come to New York? For whatever reason, and it was indeed becoming vague, a principal cause of leaving Easton had been to rid herself of Henry and Estelle; or rather, their counterparts, though in point of fact Estelle was actually from Easton, a town north of Cincinnati. She and Syvia had grown up together. The real trouble with Henry and Estelle was that they were so excruciatingly married. Nambypamby, bootsy-totsy, and everything had a name: the telephone was Tinkling Tillie, the sofa, Our Nellie, the bed, Big Bear; yes, and what about those His-Her towels, those He-She pillows? Enough to drive you loony. “Loony!” she said aloud, the quiet park erasing her voice. It was lovely now, and she was right to have walked here, with wind moving through the leaves, and globe lamps, freshly aglow, kindling the chalk drawings of children, pink birds, blue arrows, green hearts. But suddenly, like a pair of obscene words, there appeared on the path two boys: pimple-faced, grinning, they loomed in the dusk like menacing flames, and Sylvia, passing them felt a burning all through her, quite as though she’d brushed fire. They turned and followed her past a deserted playground, one of them bump-bumping a stick along an iron fence, the other whistling: these sounds accumulated around her like that gathering roar of an oncoming engine, and when one of the boys, with a laugh, called, “Hey, whatsa hurry?” her mouth twisted for breath. Don’t, she thought, thinking to throw down her purse and run. At that moment, a man walking a dog came up a sidepath, and she followed at his heels to the exit. Wouldn’t they feel gratified, Henry and Estelle, wouldn’t they we-told-you-so if she were to tell them? and, what is more, Estelle would write it home and the next thing you knew it would be all over Easton that she’d been raped in Central Park. She spent the rest of the way home despising New York: anonymity, in virtuous terror; and the squeaking drainpipe, all-night light, ceaseless footfall, subway corridor, numbered door (3C).