Different voices, different spaces
Other voices, other rooms ( Other Voices, Other Rooms ) is a novel by Truman Capote , which the Southern Gothic is attributed to a subgenus of the US lurid literature . The first edition was published by Random House in January 1948 and immediately went to number 9 on the New York Times bestseller list , where the book stayed for nine weeks.
The novel is characterized by an atmosphere of isolation and decadence. It is Capote's first published novel that also has autobiographical features.
Emergence
Truman Capote got the inspiration for the novel from a forest walk he took in Monroeville , Alabama in 1945 . He then immediately put the manuscript of his novel Sommerdiebe aside and began work on the new work. After leaving Alabama, he continued working on the manuscript in New Orleans , as well as in the Yaddo artists' colony in Saratoga Springs , New York , where he met the writer Carson McCullers , who helped him complete it and also helped him find one Agents and a publisher helped. Capote finally completed the novel in 1947 in a rented vacation home on the island of Nantucket , Massachusetts .
action
After his mother dies, 13-year-old Joel Harrison Knox, a lonely, feminine-looking boy from New Orleans is sent to live with his father Edward R. Sansom, who left him when he was born. He travels to Noon City, the last stretch on a truck, and finally arrives at Skully's Landing, a huge, crumbling mansion on an isolated plantation in Mississippi . Joel meets his disgruntled stepmother Amy Skully, her cousin Randolph - a gay, narcissistic dandy - and the young, colored maid Zoo, with whom he falls in love. After a few days he becomes friends in particular with the defiant girl Idabel Thompkins, a tomboy .
Despite Joel's questions, his father's whereabouts remain a mystery. When he is finally allowed to see him, it turns out that he is mute and completely paralyzed . He fell down a flight of stairs after Randolph accidentally shot him.
After the death of her grandfather, Jesus Fever, who is over centenarian, Zoo leaves the property to go to Washington .
Joel is very disappointed, looks for Idabel and escapes with her to a fairground. There he meets a dwarf woman. On a ferris wheel, the woman tries to sexually touch Joel, but is rejected by him. During a storm while searching for Idabel, Joel contracts pneumonia and eventually returns to the Landing, where Randolph nurses him to health.
characters
- Joel Harrison Knox: The 13-year-old protagonist of the story, a half-orphan who is seen as a self-portrait by Truman Capote, who was himself slight and how the character could tell colorful stories of lies.
- Mr. Edward R. Sansom: Joel's paralyzed father, a former boxing manager.
- Miss Amy Skully: Joel's stepmother, who is in her late forties. She is described as small but sharp-tongued. Miss Amy's character is modeled on that of Truman Capote's older cousin Callie Faulk. Capote's grandmother Mabel Knox, who always wore a glove on her left hand and saw herself as a “southern aristocrat”, is said to have been godmother for the figure.
- Randolph: Miss Amy's cousin and the owner of Skully's Landing. Randolph, around mid-thirties, is narcissistic, relatively openly gay, and has traveled widely. The character has slight echoes of Capote's cousin Bud Faulk, a likely gay bachelor, whom Capote felt as a role model during his youth.
- Idabel Thompkins: A boyish neighborhood girl who makes friends with Joel. She is an exaggerated portrayal of Capote's childhood friend Harper Lee - who later processed Capote as a neighbor boy dill in her famous novel Who the Nightingale disturbs .
- Florabel Thompkins: Idabel's sister, in contrast to her, appears feminine and squeamish.
- Jesus Fever: A hundred year old servant on Skully's Landing who lived through the days of slavery.
- Missouri Fever (Zoo): The granddaughter of Jesus, who is in her mid-twenties. With a scarf she covers up scars that were once inflicted on her by a man. Missouri Fever's character is based on a cook who was employed at the home of Capote's family in Alabama.
- Pepe Alvarez: A Latin American boxer whom Randolph obsessively loved.
- Ellen Kendall: Joel's kind aunt in New Orleans who sent him to see his father.
- Little Sunshine: A small, ugly-looking African American who has found shelter in the crumbling Cloud Hotel .
- Miss Wisteria: A blond, short woman who is at a fair in Noon City and befriends Joel and Idabel.
German editions (selection)
- Different voices, different spaces. Novel . Retransmitted by Hansi Bochow-Blüthgen , Berlin, Darmstadt, Vienna: German Book Association, 1964, 191 pages
- Different voices, different spaces. Novel . Translated by Heidi Zerning, Zurich: No & But, 2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rudisill, Marie & Simmons, James C. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House, 2000), p. 115.
- ↑ a b Berendt, John. "Introduction" in Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (2004/1948) Random House. p. xiv.
- ↑ Rudisill, Marie & Simmons, James C. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House, 2000), pp 126th
- ↑ Rudisill, Marie & Simmons, James C. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House, 2000), pp. 128-129.
- ↑ Rudisill, Marie & Simmons, James C. The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House, 2000), p. 120.