The Books: “Music for Chameleons” – ‘Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime’ (Truman Capote)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons – by Truman Capote. Today’s excerpt is from a story called ‘Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime’.

An interesting story – not sure what is real or not: Capote blurs the edges but one thing’s for certain: he is trying to “get back” into In Cold Blood territory with this one, and yet he no longer has the narrative power. He cannot write a narration in the same cool detached way he was able to in In Cold Blood. He inserts himself into the story as a character. As you will see in the excerpt, the majority of the story is presented as a script. It’s a good story, true or no … but this script thing (which he does time and again in this collection) is indicative of Capote’s lessening of confidence in himself as a writer. Based on knowing the rest of Capote’s work, and knowing what was going on for him in his life at the time he wrote this collection, he was FLAILING about for … I mean, it feels like he was flailing about for his TALENT. Like, where did it go? Writing always came so easily to him. And suddenly … that stopped. There’s something about Handcarved Coffins that appeals to me, the characters are wonderfully drawn, and you give a shit about them. Again, you’re not reading Capote for straight reportage.

Here’s an excerpt. It’s been years since I’ve read it, so many of the details are lost – but I always remember the bit about the rattlesnakes!


Excerpt from Music for Chameleons – by Truman Capote – ‘Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime’.

And so it was that I found myself one cold March night sitting with Jake Pepper in his motel room on the wintry, windblown outskirts of this forlorn little Western town. Actually, the town was pleasant, cozy; after all, off and on, it had been Jake’s home for almost five years, and he had built shelves to display pictures of his family, his sons and grandchildren, and to hold hundreds of books, many of them concerning the Civil War and all of them the selections of an intelligent man: he was partial to Dickens, Melville, Trollope, Mark Twain.

Jake sat crosslegged on the floor, a glass of bourbon beside him. He had a chessboard spread before him; absently he shifted the chessmen about.

TC: The amazing thing is, nobody seems to know anything about this case. It’s had almost no publicity.

JAKE: There are reasons.

TC: I’ve never been able to put it into proper sequence. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

JAKE: Where shall we begin?

TC: From the beginning.

JAKE: Go over to the bureau. Look in the bottom drawer. See that little cardboard box? Take a look at what’s inside it.

(What I found inside the box was a miniature coffin. It was a beautifully made object, carved from light balsam wood. It was undecorated; but when one opened the hinged lid one discovered the coffin was not empty. It contained a photograph – a casual, candid snapshot of two middle-aged people, a man and a woman, crossing a street. It was not a posed picture; one sensed that the subjects were unaware that they were being photographed.)

That little coffin. I guess that’s what you might call the beginning.

TC: And the picture?

JAKE: George Roberts and his wife. George and Amelia Roberts.

TC: Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. Of course. The first victims. He was a lawyer?

JAKE: He was a lawyer, and one morning (to be exact; the tenth of August 1970) he got a present in the mail. That little coffin. With the picture inside it. Roberts was a happy-go-lucky guy; he showed it to some people around the courthouse and acted like it was a joke. One month later George and Amelia were two very dead people.

TC: How soon did you come on the case?

JAKE: Immediately. An hour after they found them I was on my way here with two other agents from the Bureau. When we got here the bodies were still in the car. And so were the snakes. That’s something I’ll never forget. Never.

TC: Go back. Describe it exactly.

JAKE: The Robertses had no children. Nor enemies, either. Everybody liked them. Amelia worked for her husband; she was his secretary. They had only one car, and they always drove to work together. The morning it happened was hot. A sizzler. So I guess they must have been surprised when they went out to get in their car and found all the windows rolled up. Anyway, they each entered the car through separate doors, and as soon as they were inside – wam! A tangle of rattlesnakes hit them like lightning. We found nine big rattlers inside that car. All of them had been injected with amphetamine; they were crazy, they bit the Robertses everywhere, neck, arms, ears, cheeks, hands. Poor people. Their heads were huge and swollen like Halloween pumpkins painted green. They must have died almost instantly. I hope so. That’s one hope I really hope.

TC: Rattlesnakes aren’t that prevalent in these regions. Not rattlesnakes of that caliber. They must have been brought here.

JAKE: They were. From a snake farm in Nogales, Texas. But now’s not the time to tell you how I know that.

(Outside, crusts of snow laced the ground; spring was a long way off – a hard wind whipping the window announced that winter was still with us. But the sound of the wind was only a murmur in my head underneath the racket of rattling rattlesnakes, hissing tongues. I saw the car dark under a hot sun, the swirling serpents, the human heads growing green, expanding with poison. I listened to the wind, letting it wipe the scene away.)

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7 Responses to The Books: “Music for Chameleons” – ‘Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime’ (Truman Capote)

  1. Elizabeth Hughes says:

    I also found this story compelling. It is one of my favourite pieces by Capote. Lean and spare and tantalizing. I always find myself thinking about it for days after I reread it.

  2. Elizabeth Hughes says:

    I also found this story compelling. It is one of my favourite pieces by Capote. Lean and spare and tantalizing. I always find myself thinking about it for days after I reread it.

  3. tim waller says:

    Capote is a star chameleon. He loves to present himself as a sophisticated New yorker while attempting to define a new style of journalism wrapped in the disguise of fiction while still clinging to his grass harp country roots. Was it done for art, fame, or just a jug of silver? No matter, the man was brilliant, and Ilove his work.

  4. tim waller says:

    Capote is a star chameleon. He loves to present himself as a sophisticated New yorker while attempting to define a new style of journalism wrapped in the disguise of fiction while still clinging to his grass harp country roots. Was it done for art, fame, or just a jug of silver? No matter, the man was brilliant, and I love his work.

  5. tim waller says:

    Capote is a star chameleon. He loves to present himself as a sophisticated New yorker while attempting to define a new style of journalism wrapped in the disguise of fiction while still clinging to his grass harp country roots. Was it done for art, fame, or just a jug of silver? No matter, the man was brilliant, and I love his work.

  6. stirner says:

    I was just watching old episodes of Johnny Carson on Pluto and I saw Truman Capote recite this tale. I knew it had to be fake even though he told Johnny that it was real. It’s full of the kind of typical fictional descriptions that only an omnipotent narrator could provide.

    For example, how could the narrator know that the windows were rolled up when the couple got in the car? How could he know that the snakes struck “like lightening”? Furthermore, how could the snakes strike at all if they were in a “tangle”? And are we to believe that a veterinary coroner did autopsies on the snakes to discover that they were hopped up on amphetamine??

    Interestingly, I noticed that he mentions that the snakes were rattling; in the Carson interview he said that the snakes’ rattles had been cut off. Capote reminds me of his contemporary, William Buckley. Both men are cut from the same wannabe raconteur cloth, relics of a bygone era even then. They act as if everything they utter is a morsel of high-culture.

    • sheila says:

      I don’t think either were “wannabe” raconteurs. They actually WERE raconteurs. You might not respond to it or find it phony – which a lot of people did back then – but they actually were doing the thing.

      I’ll have to check out that Carson appearance – interesting!

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