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Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote
by: Truman Capote

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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 809
EAN: 9780375702419
ISBN: 0375702415
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: September 13, 2005
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: September 13, 2005
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 307713

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The private letters of Truman Capote, lovingly assembled here for the first time by acclaimed Capote biographer Gerald Clarke, provide an intimate, unvarnished portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most colorful and fascinating literary figures.

Capote was an inveterate letter writer. He wrote letters as he spoke: emphatically, spontaneously, and passionately. Spanning more than four decades, his letters are the closest thing we have to a Capote autobiography, showing us the uncannily self-possessed na•f who jumped headlong into the post—World War II New York literary scene; the more mature Capote of the 1950s; the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of In Cold Blood; and Capote later in life, as things seemed to be unraveling. With cameos by a veritable who’s who of twentieth century glitterati, Too Brief a Treat shines a spotlight on the life and times of an incomparable American writer.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Better than a diary!
When you read personal correspondence written to friends, lovers, and business associates . . . well, it doesn't get any better! Candid, un-censored, witty, funny, revealing, cutting . . . it's all there! A great look at the true Truman Capote. Very interesting.

Rating:

- A sense of Capote
Letters are interesting to read and you get a real feeling for how needy he must have been to be loving everyone so much.
I think it is better to read his biography first, so that you know who the people are in the letters. It's a little confusing otherwise. That's what I plan to do.

Rating:

- Too Much Of A Good Thing
I always loved Truman Capote's writing and looked forward to this book oh, so much, especiallywhen I saw it was edited by the estimable Gerald Clarke, who has written so brilliantly on Capote in his biography (and who also wrote GET HAPPY, a terrific life of Judy Garland). (Hmmm, he must specialize in the tiny.)

But alas Capote's letters just aren't as good as his fiction. They seem hurried, scattered, as though he were writing too fast to revise, everything exactly the opposite of what one likes about the stories and filmscripts. I will say you do get a different side of him, and the outlines of his social world become clearer, so view this compilation as an addendum to the biography, and you won't go far wrong.

I was surprised to see him make so much of (i.e. ... Read More

Rating:

- Not the treat I was expecting
Truman Capote is one of my all time favorite writers so I was surprised that his letters are somewhat of a disappointment. The letters span 46 years with the majority of them from the late 40s and 50s. It's too bad that there are only a handful of correspondence from Capote's celebrated period following the release of "In Cold Blood," a book which turned him into a celebrity. I suppose he was too busy with his success and celebrity to write letters during this period. There is nothing about his famous Black and White Ball or the infamous article which scandalized the jet set. Hardly anything is here from the 70s either, a period in which he was practically a household name, appearing in movies and talk shows.

What is included are letters to his editors, Robert Linscott and Bennett ... Read More

Rating:

- A book for fans of the genre and of the man
"Your letter was too brief a treat, but a treat all the same; there is only one excitement to my day, and that is when the postman comes." So wrote the author who sometimes waited an hour for the best word to come to mind when engaged in concocting a novel, yet spun off letters to friends and colleagues like cotton candy.

Truman Capote, to whom fame came early and lasted long, called all of his correspondents by such adorations as "precious baby, darling child." To almost anyone he was likely to say, "much love, little blue eyes" or "I miss you 24 hours of the day" or "a thousand kisses, precious." It seemed that nearly everyone he wrote to was his darling, his love, and wanted showering with kisses.

Not that he couldn't be cutting and catty, though always with gentility, ... Read More

Books : Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote