THE EARLY STORIES OF TRUMAN CAPOTE

These are the finger exercises of a very young writer, and it's interesting to see what Capote was trying for. The best of them read like imitations of tales that an earlier generation of writers sold to the "slicks" to keep the rent paid, and, as such, they have their pleasures. The performances of the stories themselves are excellent, and Hilton Als's introduction and end notes are full of interest, but here the normally reliable Scott Brick goes strangely wrong, reading literary comment as if the material is drenched with melodrama, when it is definitely not and not meant to be. Why? Still, Capote completists and students of a time when writers could survive by selling short commercial fiction will find much to interest them. B.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2016]