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Perhaps I should say this is not so much the review of a book, but the response A Christmas Memory still draws from me each year when I read it. Perhaps it is just a simple statement of the preciousness of memory and the gift it brings us to keep things alive within us, though those things have been gone from us for many years. A Christmas Memory" is a short story by Truman Capote. Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, it was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963. It was issued in a stand-alone hardcover edition by Random House in 1966, and it has been published in many editions and anthologies since. This little tale is considered to be semi-autobiographical. Truman Capote many years later reminisces about one of his childhood Christmases - the one that was destined to be the last he spent together with his best friend. I have walked the streets of Monroeville, Alabama, many times. There is little sign of Truman Capote or Nelle Harper Lee in that town, other than the old Courthouse, now a museum. Truman Capote's childhood summer and Christmas home is a vacant lot. Ms. Lee's home, if my geography is right, is occupied by something akin to a Dairy Queen, though some owner long past decided the name recognition was not worth the franchise price to have it.
The story centers around the friendship between a seven-year-old boy called Buddy and his sixty-something friend - a superstitious woman who “wouldn’t even dream of getting out of bed on the thirteenth” but who has a kind heart. They are very distant cousins, but this does not seem important. Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays. These reflections have been written over the course of nearly three years. After my wife read these thoughts, she pointed out the importance of marking the time of thoughts in connection with the events of our lives. They struggle hauling the heavy thing home, and a car carrying a rich mill owner’s wife stops and the wife offers to buy the tree off of them for “twobits.” The cousin refuses.The universe of these two is restricted to the house in which they live with other somewhat abstract relatives, walks in the nearby woods, and occasional visits to local shops. They, however, regard their simple life as equal to the most pleasant one that may be had in the world outside. A Christmas Memory' is a short story written by Truman Capote, first published in 1956. This much sought-after autobiographical recollection of Capote's rural Alabama boyhood has become a modern-day classic.
What a delight for anyone who loves seeing small children and old people do what they do best – love each other and be kind to the world. The Thanksgiving Visitor and A Christmas Memory have both been carried to Wilmington. Holiday dinners there are not small affairs. Friends and neighbors fill the house. Extra tables and chairs are brought in. Each couple, group, single, brings a dish. Truman Capote's The Thanksgiving Visitor was chosen as a Moderator's Choice by Laura Webber, "The Tall Woman," as a read for the group On the Southern Literary Trail for November, 2014This short vignette tells of the last Christmas Capote spent with his friend, a distant, decades older cousin.
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