Music for Chameleons : New Writing - Softcover

Truman Capote

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141184612 ISBN 13: 9780141184616

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2001

Synopsis

At the centre of "Music for Chameleons" is Handcarved Coffins, a 'nonfiction novel' based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven 'conversational portraits' including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the 'beautiful child' and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real people and renders then with the stylistic brio we expect from great fiction. Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise; and a proper Connecticut householder with a ruinous obsession for a twelve-year-old girl he has never met. And we meet Capote himself, who, whether he is smoking with his cleaning lady or trading sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe, remainds one of the most elegant, malicious, yet compassionate writers to train his eye on the social fauna of our time.

From the Back Cover:

'Everything is displayed in this book: insights and recollections of the famous and the obscure; old jokes and fresh wit... These stories and vignettes will endure.' - New Republic.In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real people and renders them with the stylistic brio we expect from great fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141184612
• ISBN 13: 9780141184616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288