The Books: “Music for Chameleons” (Truman Capote)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Music for Chameleons – by Truman Capote. This lovely collection of short fiction, essays, and … er … transcriptions of conversations … was the last thing Capote had published. I love it – you can’t sit and read it and compare it to In Cold Blood because that wouldn’t be fair – you have to take it on its own terms. I personally think some of his best writing is in Music for Chameleons. In the preface to the book, he goes on a long explanation of what he is “working” on, and he says that in this collection he himself has taken center stage. This is true, as anyone who has read the collection will know. He transcribes conversations he has (with people such as Marilyn Monroe – in perhaps the most well-known piece from the collection – and also people such as the superintendent of his building.) He creates little SCRIPTS, slices of life, snippets – Capote says in his preface that he thinks he has created a new form of literature here (which rather makes me sad. I do love the little scripts, but I wouldn’t say that it was anything “new”.) But I guess I should remember that when In Cold Blood came out, it truly was hailed as something “new” – a nonfiction book that read like fiction … a nonfiction true crime book that had the touch of the poetic in the writing … Anyway, Capote is grasping at straws in Music for Chameleons, still trying to be that writer who was hailed as new and important. But still, I have to say – I love the collection and it did quite well, staying firmly on the NY Times bestseller list for months. (This is why the blunt end-title in the movie Capote sayiing he never published another book after In Cold Blood annoys me. Yes, he did publish another book. Okay, not a novel – not another In Cold Blood – but Music for Chameleons is, indeed a book.)

If you don’t like Capote, as a persona, then Music for Chameleons would, perhaps, be annoying, since he is a character in his own book. And you know what? This just occurred to me. In a funny way, the writing here is a precursor of certain trends in literature right now – well, literature and other parts of culture. The self-driven culture – reality TV, memoirs, and then the Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace school of literature … naval-gazing – but also, commenting on themselves as a persona, noticing themselves operating in the world – and expanding on it, making fun of it, mocking it … That’s what Capote is doing here. And he’s not doing it in a typical memoir fashion – he’s doing it in scripts, little movie-scripts of conversations from his own life. Very Eggers-esque, huh?

Here’s an excerpt from the first story in the collection – called “Music for Chameleons”. It’s a situation where you do not know if the “I” of the narrator is Capote – but the way he sets it up makes you believe it is. And so … what is true? What is fiction? Capote blurs the edges – he was always into that … and in the stories here he delights in that confusion.

He also uses the present-tense – which is now almost passe – but was never done at the time.

This is the story of a writer who goes to Martinique – a friend of his had been murdered there many years before. The writer sits on the porch of a woman called Madame – she is the grande dame of Martinique – she knows everything, and everyone … the story is just the two of them sitting out there … she talks, he listens and asks questions … It’s a mood piece. There’s something grotesque here. I am not sure how to describe it. But it’s a grotesque piece of writing. (That’s not a judgment – I’m just describing). There’s a black mirror on the wall – used by various famous writers who came to Martinique to write – if you look in the mirror, you will see the truth, you will find the way. So the narrator-writer finds himself drawn to the black mirror – glancing over at it … And what about his friend who had been murdered in Martinique? Would he be seen in that haunted mirror?

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons – by Truman Capote – ‘Music for Chameleons’

She is tall and slender, perhaps seventy, silver-haired, soigne, neither black nor white, a pale golden rum color. She is a Martinique aristocrat who lives in Fort de France but also has an apartment in Paris. We are sitting on the terrace of her house, an airy, elegant house that looks as if it was made of wooden lace; it reminds me of certain old New Orleans houses. We are drinking iced mint tea slightly flavored with absinthe.

Three green chameleons race one another across the terrace; one pauses at Madame’s feet, flicking its forked tongue, and she comments: “Chameleons. Such exceptional creatures. The way they change color. Red. Yellow. Lime. Pink. Lavender. And did you know they are very fond of music?” She regards me with her fine black eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

During the course of the afternoon she had told me many curious things. How at night her garden was filled with mammoth night-flying moths. That her chaffeur, a dignified figure who had driven me to her house in a dark green Mercedes, was a wife-poisoner who had escaped from Devil’s Island. And she had desribed a village high in the northern mountains that is entirely inhabited by albinos. “Little pink-eyed people white as chalk. Occasionally one sees a few on the streets of Fort de France.”

“Yes, of course I believe you.”

She tilts her silver head. “No, you don’t. But I shall prove it.”

So saying, she drifts into her cool Caribbean salon, a shadowy room with gradually turning ceiling fans, and poses herself at a well-tuned piano. I am still sitting on the terrace, but I can observe her, this chic, elderly woman, the product of varied bloods. She begins to perform a Mozart sonata.

Eventually the chameleons accumulated: a dozen, a dozen more, most of them green, some scarlet, lavender. They skittered across the terrace and scampered into the salon, a sensitive, absorbed audience for the music played. And then not played, for suddenly my hostess stood and stamped her foot, and the chameleons scattered like sparks from an exploding star.

Now she regards me. “Et maintenant? C’est vrai?”

“Indeed. But it seems so strange.”

She smiles. :”Alors. The whole island floats in strangeness. This very house is haunted. Many ghosts dwell here. And not in darkness. Some appear in the bright light of noon, saucy as you please. Impertinent.”

“That’s common in Haiti, too. The ghosts there often stroll about in daylight. I once saw a horde of ghosts working in a field near Petionville. They were picking bugs off coffee plants.”

She accepts this as fact, and continues: “Oui. Oui. The Haitians work their dead. They are well known for that. Ours we leave to their sorrows. And their frolics. So coarse, the Haitians. So Creole. And one can’t bathe there, the sharks are so intimidating. And their mosquitoes: the size, the audacity! Here in Martinique we have no mosquitoes. None.”

“I’ve noticed that; I wondered about it.”

“So do we. Martinique is the only island in the Caribbean not cursed with mosquitoes, and no one can explain it.”

“Perhaps the night-flying moths devour them all.”

She laughs. “Or the ghosts.”

“No. I think ghosts would prefer moths.”

“Yes, moths are perhaps more ghostly fodder. If I was a hungry ghost, I’d rather eat anything than mosquitoes. Will you have more ice in your glass? Absinthe?”

“Absinthe. That’s something we can’t get at home. Not even in New Orleans.”

“My paternal grandmother was from New Orleans.”

“Mine, too.”

As she pours absinthe from a dazzling emerald decanter: “Then perhaps we are related. Her maiden name was Dufont. Alouette Dufont.”

“Alouette? Really? Very pretty. I’m aware of two Dufont families in New Orleans, but I’m not related to either of them.”

“Pity. It would have been amusing to call you cousin. Alors. Claudine Paulot tells me this is your first visit to Martinique.”

“Claudiene Paulot?”

“Claudine and Jacques Paulot. You met them at the Governor’s dinner the other night.”

I remember: he was a tall, handsome man, the First President of the Court of Appeals for Martinique and French Guiana, which includes Devil’s Island. “The Paulots. Yes. They have eight children. He very much favors capital punishment.”

“Since you seem to be a traveler, why have you not visited here sooner?”

“Martinique? Well, I felt a certain reluctance. A good friend was murdered here.”

Madame’s lovely eyes are a fraction less friendly than before. She makes a slow pronouncement: “Murder is a rare occurrence here. We are not a violent people. Serious, but not violent.”

“Serious. Yes. The people in restaurants, on the streets, even on the beaches have such severe expressions. They seem so preoccupied. Like Russians.”

“One must keep in mind that slavery did not end here until 1848.”