Truman Capote’s (Queer?) Tales of Fantasy. Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

Truman Capote’s (Queer?) Tales Of the Fantastic

by Jeff baker

Hard to believe that a generation has gone by without knowing Truman Capote from their TV or movie screens as well as being parodied by comedians, all making him talked-about as not only one of the best-known American authors of the 20^th Century but a master of self-promotion, gleefully eating it up every public chance he got. He was, of course, Gay (“Homosexual” was the term in his day) although he didn’t make a big deal of it, he certainly didn’t hide it. Sometime in his Twenties. Capote met the just-divorced writer and dancer Jack Dunphy who had danced in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma. They soon moved in together and became “partners” for the rest of Capote’s life. Dunphy shunned the spotlight, while Capote wallowed in it.

And, of course, Capote was a writer. Best known for chronicling the real-life horrors of “In Cold Blood,” his fiction writing slowed to a trickle after the book’s success in 1966. He worked on articles and a screenplay and a never-finished novel, concentrating more on cultivating his lucrative celebrity. But before all that, there were the short-stories, a handful of them fine fantasies, most of which are overlooked, most of the short-stories are overlooked period. Most of his mature stories (there is a posthumous collection of early stories, he was working at the New Yorker when he was in High School!) have been collected as “The Complete Stories of Truman Capote,” and reading them is a revelation that quickly dissipates the biting caricature of Capote he himself embodied in public appearances. The most famous of these; “A Christmas Memory,” made legendary from appearances in school textbooks, recordings and screen productions, and it alone would establish the author as a superb craftsman with a gripping sense of place and character.

Capote’s fantasies (some of them with only a tentative speculative element) include “A Tree of Night,” “Miriam,” “The Headless Hawk,” “Shut a Final Door” and “Master Misery,” the last of which was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These tales run the gamut from horror to fantasy and generally feature a protagonist who encounters a stranger who affects their lives, not always for the better.

In “Miriam,” an elderly woman meets a mysterious, and persistent, young girl.

In “A Tree of Night,” a woman may be haunted in several ways, including memory.

“Master Misery” involves a man who buys dreams and includes a scene at the Automat. (!!!)

None of the stories or characters are overtly Gay, and there is a good deal of ambiguity and vagueness even with regards to some of the plots of the stories.

Nonetheless, these are good and neglected tales from a master of short fiction who should have written more.

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Jeff Baker blogs about reading or writing sci-fi, fantasy and horror and other sundry matters on or about the thirteenth of every month. His fiction has been published in “The Necronomicon of Solar Pons” among other places, and his non-fiction has appeared on the “Amazing Stories” website. He first encountered “A Christmas Memory” in Junior High School and his husband Darryl can do a good Capote impression. He regularly blogs and posts fiction on his website https://authorjeffbaker.com/and wastes time on Facebook at .https://www.facebook.com/Jeff-Baker-Author-176267409096907