Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Whole Capote

Here's the crazy thing.
I don't even really like short stories.
It's not my…… genre.
I like novels.
I prefer the way one can wade through a good novel for days at a time over a same time period spent hopping through the truncated quick blasts of a collection of short stories.
But…. I must admit.
I really liked these ones.
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote.
These twenty stories are arranged chronologically [as to the time of their original publication] ranging from the years 1943 to 1982. You can see a DEFINITE progression in quality, from first to last. Understandable, since the author was 18 or 19 years old when he wrote the first one, and 58 with the last.
But really, they just get better and better as you go.
It's a terrific book.
Here's how I would [potentially blasphemously] put it.
If they came out with The Completer Stories of Flannery O'Connor, The Completer Stories of Alice Munro, and The Completer Stories of Truman Capote, I would be most interested in getting my hands on the Capote volume!
Thus far in my short-story reading, the only book I would prefer even above a Capote would be entitled The [Other] Nine Stories of J.D. Salinger.
Happy reading y'all!

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