Customer Reviews

Other Voices, Other Rooms

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Joel Knox is the main character in this riveting and compelling novel of the South. It’s probably the most “true” of all of Capote’s works—based mostly on his life as a child in Alabama. This is, probably, one of the most perfect books, second only to IN COLD BLOOD which IS the most perfect. Some have likened OTHER VOICES to McCuller’s THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, but I don’t take to that comparison. This is much more Gothic and more completely formed than HUNTER. Published in January 1948 and Capote's second novel (but the first to reach print), this still engaging work was a sensation and best seller that year and has been in print ever since. Like Capote himself, it's one of a kind. A misfit young boy, Joel Knox, the product of a broken home (as was Capote), travels from New Orleans to the backwater town of Noon City, Mississippi in search of his unknown father. After twelve years of separation, his father has supposedly written to Joel's loving aunt in New Orleans and wants Joel back. But Joel, longing for his father's love, finds himself in the decaying hothouse home of his stepmother, Miss Amy, and his clever and perverse cousin Randolph, their black "maid" Zoo, and Zoo's ancient father Jesus Fever. Joel's father is in the house too, but not in the form he anticipated. Two local girls, Florabel and the wild tomboy Idabel, round out the players and are Joel's allies in a threatening world of perversity, mental instability, and sexual ambiguity. Even though he was just 23 when he finished this work, Capote displays tremendous inventiveness, narrative talent, and over-the-top imagery. A coming-of-age story, this work gushes southern atmosphere and contains, in Capote's own words, "a certain anguished, pleading intensity like the message stuffed in a bottle and thrown into the sea." It also is semi-autobiographical, "an attempt to exorcise demons," although Capote claimed many years later that he was unconscious of this when he wrote it. On another level, this work is also about the elusive search for the father, and the discovery that one is all alone, seeking to feel that "everything is going to be all right." As a post-war novel, OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS found an audience longing for the same thing, seeking the safety of a benevolent father in a perverse world, and wanting to grow up and find itself. The only other novel that I enjoyed this much (though it is totally different, yet at the same time Capote-like) was Jackson McCrae’s KATZENJAMMER (Soon to be a major motion picture) with its twists and turns.

Forget what you've heard about IN COLD BLOOD being the number one Capote book. It isn't. OTHER VOICES is and should always be the thing he is rememberd for. While not a large book, it is, by most literary stands, almost perfect. Sure, it's Gothic, but then that's what the South is about, and consider too when he wrote it. It's really a coming of age tale, with more insight and twists than you'd expect from someone as young as Capote was when he wrote it. Of all the works by this great author, this is the first one you should tackle. Also, try reading it with its companion book, THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD by Jackson McCrae.

Why this book isn't better known is beyond me. It is Capote's best work and it is one of the few complete and satisfying books on the market, even if it was written decades ago. The story is told by a child narrator (think Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, or McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD) and we follow the story as he allows us to. The characters are just brilliant and well-developed without pages and pages of background. I read somewhere that the critics blasted Capote for his "Gothic" book, so many years ago when it came out. One example of things they had trouble with was a red tennis ball that the ill father used to drop down the stairs when he wanted to communicate with the others in the house. How is that gothic? At any rate, this is a concise book that is perfect in form, length, and content. Please, please, please do youself a favor and add this to your list of "must haves."

Also recommended: Gerald Clarke's bio on Capote and McCrae's Bark of the Dogwood--a tour of Southern homes and gardens.

If you randomly selected a pretentious literary critic with a lot of time on his hands and pages from obscure novels that people only read to say that they've read them, added a computer with internet access and an extensive thesaurus, Daniel Myers is the sort of thing you would conjure up! I know you are motivated only by enlightening your fellow readers and not by the type of vanity and narcissim that would compel one to constantly type just to see their own words in print...

If you randomly selected pages from Poe's short stories and those from Faulker's novels and threw them into the cauldron over which the witches of Macbeth preside and had them cast a spell over them, this book is the sort of thing you would conjure up.-One is hardly suprised, by the way, that the witch scene is partially recited herein.-The book is curiously reminiscent of Rimbaud's famous credo about the poet making himself a seer by a derangnement of the senses, a credo by which Capote, and Faulkner and Poe and many other great artists, lived their tragic lives. - The imagery is as beautiful and lush as the setting in the deep South. But it is an imagery of the heart as well as the place. I DO wish the young Capote had threshed out this book into the Bildungsroman it was so clearly intended to be. But, for whatever reason, he stops short, leaving the reader with a deep impression of his vivid imagery and lyricism. But, when it comes down to it, not much else. Still for a 17 year old, this is quite a feat.-One need only compare how Capote handles the character of Idabel who was based on the same girl on whom Harper Lee based her character Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird (They grew up in the same town.) to see how much purer and deeper a seer and artist Capote is than Ms. Lee could ever hope to be.-So, to sum things up, an exquisite read, but one wishes that Capote's Joel could have developed and discovered more about himself and the world at the point where the book, rather coyly, ends.

Truman Capote's novel "Other Voices, Other Rooms" opens with the main character, 13-year old Joel Harrison Knox, traveling to the home of his long-estranged father. As the book progresses, Joel becomes more intimately involved with the people of his father's household and of the larger community; there is a stress on oral history as Joel learns their stories. Overall, plot struck me as secondary to character revelation.

The people of Joel's new world are colorful, often pathetic, and sometimes grotesque; at times it really feels like Capote is putting on a human freak show for the thrill-seeking reader. He leads us through a world of decaying old buildings and broken spirits. But Capote always respects the essential humanity of his troubled characters.

There is a pronounced theme of alternative sexuality and/or gender identity throughout the book. Capote establishes this theme early on in his description of the main character. Joel is described as not looking like a "'real' boy": "He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned." "Other Voices" thus has a lot to offer readers with an interest in gender issues as they have been explored in American literature. Capote also does an interesting job of portraying a mixed-race household where the African-American servants are as vividly drawn as the Caucasian family members.

Throughout the book there is some richly descriptive language, as well as intriguing representations of American vernacular English. Although at times "Other Voices" seems more an exercise in style than a fully satisfying narrative, it is for me quite a remarkable coming-of-age story.

I read this book to find our how its dead mule, John Henry, came to hang himself off the balcony with a spittoon tied to his leg. This is Capote's first published work and I can't believe it's never been made into a movie. The boy Joel seems so real and having finished the book, I so want to know what became of him. Did he grow up to be that strange, funny little man I used to see on Merv Griffin's talk show?

I'm almost finished reading Truman Capote's "Other Voices, Other Room, and I must say that this is the best book I have read in a long time. This is the first Truman Capote novel I've read and boy!! IT IS EXVELLENT. It is the story of a young boy's search for his father. It is a sad story, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. TRUMAN CAPOTE IS A GENIUS!!!

Capote's first novel written at the age of 23 showed his genius from the start. The beguiling story of a youth who comes to live with family long forgotten; he is initiated into this house of confusing characters and ghosts that haunt the past as well as the present.

Capote's talent lies in his ability to make you feel the warm, muggy southern breeze upon your throat as he wraps it around your very body. He writes of his south like a man possessed and enthralled with the life that abides there. At times the story tends to wander and for that I would give it a 3.5 but for all intents and purposes it is entirely unforgettable. Kelsana 7/24/01

An infinitely complex novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a riveting examination of the often disturbing human heart. One of Capote's most obscure novels, the book is difficult to comprehend as it is read. It takes great effort to move from page to page trying to find the patterns in the ambiguous and suggestive imagery. However, on completing on the novel and thinking about it, one finds that Other Voices, Other Rooms is a gift to literature. Nobody can agree on what Capote was actually insinuating, but what we can all agree on is that when one reflects on the novel as a whole, one is very likely to think about one's life in a different way. A must read for a serious reader.