How I Feel While Reading "Capote: A Biography" By Gerald Clarke

There is nothing better than being consumed by a book. There is something amazing about occupying that space in which you forget about your surroundings, those zombie-like moments when you don't notice the hangnail on your thumb or the bright plastic toys scattered across the carpet. You don't hear the click-click steps of the dogs, pacing the hardwood floor. You don't see the gauzy sunlight through the window--you are in a brightness all your own.

This book is a privilege. It is a 551 page carnival--sweet, dusty tents in the South filled with oddities and medicinal tonics; a World Fair bursting with inventions and crowds and a gigantic ferris wheel; a masquerade ball, with feathers and dancing and slashes of rouge and drunken groping. I have seen the scuffed foot, gritty South. I've been to Connecticut and watched at the train station with wives waiting for their husbands to complete the daily commute from Manhattan. I've been a fly on the wall at the office of the New Yorker--its flat, irritable interior saving passion for the pages of the magazine.

What I like about this book is the fact that Clarke is meticulous in his inclusion of detail. He includes quotes from many players and this helps to develop the character of Capote, a man not always likeable but certainly recognizeable. I feel Capotes's quirkiness. I feel his imaginative but difficult childhood. I feel his passion for writing. I feel his need to be known. The reward in this book lies in my new understanding of the man who gave Perry, one of the criminals in "In Cold Blood," a voice, a man who, through the words that made that book, portrayed the complexities of all that is part of being human, the fine lines between loveable and deplorable, excuseable and responsible, and moral and wicked.

I am only on page 77 but I understand that in the words to come, we hear about a feuds with Gore Vidal and Jacqueline Susann; a friendship with Babe Paley, C.Z. Guest, and Joanna Carson. We will dance at The Stork Club and El Morocco. We will be skinny and fat. We will be worshipped and we will be hated. We will drink much wine and we will write about it and we will publish.

I feel like I am in line for a ride on the biggest roller coaster at the best amusement park. I will see the world from a great height--nothing between me and the sky except this experience.

I can tell you right now: 551 pages are not nearly enough.

P.S. Apparently, while a young, unknown Capote worked as a copyboy at the New Yorker, he submitted a couple of stories to the fiction dept. They were rejected. Flippin' snobs.