Truman Capote writes to his “darling friend,” the multitalented heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, with comments on her play Cinamee and his own theories of poetry and drama.
Clarks Island
Duxbury, Mass.
20 August 1959
Darling Friend,
Forgive my delay; I’ve been gone for ten days, during which time the play arrived.
Now I’ve read it twice. The scenes are a series of poetic mosaics, each very evocatively inlaid: your eye is fine, a painter’s eye that sets loose an extraordinary montage of haunting or humourous images, and each, taken separately, successfully projects its color and mood. But it seems to me these moods, these vignettes, are too separate—or, perhaps, too alike. I feel that in most writing, but especially dramatic writing, fantasy, particularly psychological fantasy, must be framed with very realistic detail: otherwise it does not quite come alive—poetry cannot be all poetry, it needs the contrast of mundane matter. The thematic line of “Cinamee” is perfectly clear; but, as a play, it leaves me dissatisfied, for its characters seemed to me insufficiently fleshed, and their movements, in the sense of character continuity, too arbitrary. It is a ballet with words: I do not say that in criticism, quite the contrary, for it is a remarkable accomplishment, probably one that could not have been achieved using any other method than you have. The writing throughout is gifted and poetically inventive, and I would extremely like to see this play acted. At the same time I would like to see you write another play—one in which you deliberately suppress your natural talent for atmosphere and “choreographed thought”: a naturalistic, unexperimental play using your very sharp insight into everyday matters. I know you could do it, and it would strengthen your other gifts manifold. You have real talent; and just as important, great discipline.
Darling, I hope you are having a good summer. Mine is quiet; I write, I read, I sit on the beach a bit; c’est tout. I miss you very much; will be back Oct. 2nd and hope to see you soonest. Write just a line. My love always
T
From Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote. Edited by Gerald Clarke. New York: Vintage International, 2004. 487 pp.
FURTHER READING
In spite of the literary friendship between Gloria Vanderbilt and Truman Capote, she and her high-society peers did not react kindly to the social critique presented in Capote’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers. Read the full story here.
Check out Apartment Theory’s retelling of Capote’s famous masked ball of 1966 here.