Summer Crossing (Penguin Modern Classics)

It must be 50 years since I read Breakfast at Tiffanys, I’d be unable to even attempt any kind of review of it other than recalling a feeling of enjoyment, so I was fascinated to read TRUMAN CAPOTE’s first – not published until 2005 – and ‘lost’ novel SUMMER CROSSING.GRADY lives in New York City with her parents in an apartment with spaces so large that you can barely see from one end to another. Her older married sister APPLE lives in an expensive suburb. Grady is only seventeen but she owns her own car, a blue Buick (this is set in 1945, though the novel was actually begun in 1943), and the blurb on the back of my Penguin edition describes her as ‘defiant.’ More accurate I would say would be ‘perverse’ and ‘vulnerable’ – but then I’m writing from the point of view of someone who could be a concerned grandfather writing about his granddaughter. When Grady’s parents go on their annual vacation, she insists on staying in New York and instead of developing her relationship with her social peer PETER BELL, she uses the time to pursue an unlikely relationship with CLYDE MANZER who is working as a parking lot attendant. He’s older, abrupt, insecure, from a very different social background – and as it transpires, pathologically jealous. The scene is set for disaster – and without wishing to give too much away – if drama and disaster is what you have in mind – and of course it is, otherwise you wouldn’t have considered Truman Capote - then you won’t be disappointed.In spite of numerous rapid point-of-view changes, I felt I wasn’t really getting into each of the characters at first. But Capote being Capote consolidates the polarity between individuals and families in a more dynamic way than internal monologue. For me, there are two seminal scenes; the couple visit the Central Park Zoo – Clyde lives so far away in Brooklyn he never knew there was a zoo. They look at the big cats, they look at each other – it’s as corny a device as heck, but it sure works. The second memorable scene is a cringemaking appraisal of social class and religious backgrounds revealed when they go to visit Clyde’s family, with Clyde’s moma controlling and making you realize how young and how totally out of her depth Grady is. These defining scenes are undercut with glimpses into Clyde’s social life, his friends with names like Mink, Gump, and Bubble - and maybe I misread, but isn’t there just a hint that Clyde might be bi-sexual?Capote’s phrasing is dawn fresh (yes, that’s fresh not French for the benefit of UK readers); ‘fairy tale tall, the buzzing of prayer, goose happy, a rainfall of memory,’ and ‘whiny, worm-white and unwilling,’ – maybe it’s fortunate it wasn’t published in 1946, how reviewers of debut novels hate wordplay! Oh, and ‘bourgeois as a napkin ring.’Almost as interesting as the novel text itself is the Afterword by Alan Schwartz trustee of the Truman Capote Literary Trust.

Summer Crossing is full of beautiful imagery like Capote's other novels.It is a book about teenage rebellion written when Truman Capote was about that age. Change of Identity? Rejection of past?As it is unfinished, and leaves off at a critical time it is unsatifactory because the reader wants to know what happened to the characters

I picked this up in a last-chance bookshop in Bristol last year, having pleasant memories of the perfection of "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (and also the poignant "A Christmas Memory", in that same volume) and being attracted to the story of another feisty young heroine adrift in New York (this novella has been viewed by some as a preliminary attempt at BAT).Written by the author when in his teens, put aside, thought to be lost, rediscovered after his death and finally published in 2005, it's the tale of Grady McNeil, a wealthy 17-year old girl left in the city by her parents for the summer, and the secret romance she pursues with a parking-lot attendant named Clyde, whilst rebuffing the advances of a more suitable suitor. There are a few memorable touches - for example, Clyde's mother shares a childhood memory of living in a city on the side of a mountain, her father sweeping up birds that fell frozen to the ground, burning most in bonfires, but bringing home a few to be nursed back to life. It comes at an awkward moment for Grady, because she's just been asked her age. "It was as if the fingers of a hypnotist had popped close to her eyes: alerted, turned out of a slumber where the cherished, slain by other winters, burned in wing-fluttering fires, she blinked and said, "Eighteen"; no, not yet, it was weeks ahead, her birthday, almost two months of days uncut, not tarnished [...]" [p88].However, I found I never forgot that this was a book that the author hadn't - for what ever reason - published, and couldn't stop thinking of it as a sketch for a better book, with characters that were more firmly defined. Perhaps this would have made me care more about the heroine, and her vacillation between her two beaux - as it was, I found myself closing the book with relief when it (and she) came to an end.

If you enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany's then read this book as it gives an insight into its development and heritage. If you have not read breakfast at Tiffany's you should.

It's an interesting debate whether an author's previously unpublished work should remain unpublished. For what it's worth, I'm extremely glad I read Summer Crossing. The book is obviously unfinished and therefore nowhere near as accomplished or cohesive as Capote's other works, but there are revealing moments that make it worthwhile, for example the beautiful description of a mother bidding a temporary, touching farewell to her daughter. So while I wouldn't expect another Breakfast at Tiffany's, it's worth a few hours of any Capote fan's time.

Ja wie Bücher halt sind. Den einem gefallen sie den Anderen nicht. War jedenfalls NICHT enttäuschnend. Habe es für eine Arbeit genötigt.

Finally we find out why Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow named their daughter "Apple," after the sister of the heroine of Truman Capote's masterful 40s novel SUMMER CROSSING, discovered in a heap of trash by a fellow who moved into Capote's Brooklyn apartment after he vacated for Europe. The Berg Collection at New York's Public Library bought up the manuscript to add to their Capote archive when it presently became available through the trash-seeker's family (together with a whole heap of other manuscripts, letters, family papers, and one complete short story--a lot of unpublished material which makes a trip to the NYPL a must for the Capote fancier). And now his longtime publisher, Random House, has brought out the book to mixed reviews. Well, not everyone gets Truman Capote, and even I, his greatest fan of all times, vacillate like the pingpong of radar between two states of adoration and cold hauteur. Sometimes he writes like the American Proust he said he was, and sometimes he writes like Maya Angelou on one of her greeting cards for Hallmark. Sometimes these disparate effects can be traced within the borders of one sentence. Maybe that's why I like him so much, because he cares about his writing, and yet he really doesn't care about taste.Some people (like the publishers for example) have said that the heroine of SUMMER CROSSING, Grady McNeil, reminds them of Holly Golightly, that she's an early and inferior sketch for Holly Golightly, who charmed us all in Capote's later BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. If she's an early sketch for anything, she might be in the running for a proto Kate McCloud. McCloud was to be the heroine of Capote's notorious unfinished novel ANSWERED PRAYERS, and we all know what happened there. What's great about her passion in SUMMER CROSSING is the sharply observed contretemps it gets her into. She knows it's ridiculous that she fell for Clyde's seedy charm. Something about his Jewishness got her where she lives, in the shadow of the Holocaust she finds his Jewish identity supersensual, with the darkness and profundity of a DH Lawrence hero. We haven't had this kind of direct equation lately--the Jewish underclass punk as the noble savage, the dangerous temptation to the "heiress of all the ages" whom Grady represents so beautifully. Some of the sex writing still takes one's breath away, it is so stark and unrelenting. Clyde may be an animal, but I'd do him in ten seconds if I were that kind of girl.From sentence to sentence you haven't read a better book this year, but as a novel, it's a little thin and undeveloped, or maybe it's a little bit confusing and Capote might have considered re-writing it from the POV of Peter Bell, the upperclass twit with the swimmer's bod who considers Grady his property, since they grew up together with the silver spoons. As it stands, Peter's just a sideshow for the main attraction. We see Grady going downhill irrevocably, but we don't believe it. She's too strong to be so weak--and yet that's the chief virtue of this creation.

Until last week, I had yet to actually read a single page written by the legend known as Truman Capote. I had seen the films on his life and the film adaptations of his work (`Breakfast at Tiffany's' and `In Cold Blood') but had never actually read any of his work, despite wanting to. Then I heard some intriguing information regarding a film adaptation for `Summer Crossing', and the backstory regarding the publication of this novel itself had me completely obsessed with the idea of reading it. So, I ordered it and breezed through it in an afternoon. At a mere 126 pages, this is one of the easiest reads I've endured this year, and one of the most rewarding in the mere fact that it opened my eyes to Capote's work and has inspired me to read more.Yes, `Summer Crossing' is a slight work in that it feels unfinished. It is brief and underdeveloped and yet rich with ambiguous backstory that feels fresh and enlightening. Despite wanting so much more upon reading those final words ("she said, "I know.") I was wholly satisfied with the way that Capote developed so much without saying very much at all. The burgeoning love story purposefully pulled back into feeling nearly skeletal and allowing us to develop for ourselves the way we want to see things was astonishing, and Grady's layering and un-layering felt so raw and emotionally stirring.I personally cannot wait to see how this is adapted, because if offers so much room for interpretation and embellishment.The fact that this was supposed to be Capote's first novel only to have him trash it and have it found by the janitor of his apartment building, who held on to this for so many years before releasing it in auction to have it published (with estate's consent) in 2004 is quite the story (I almost feel like that would make an interesting film in itself) and really serves to make this novel all the more special. With sharp wit and cheeky passages, Capote had a real keeper here. I can't wait to see what he deemed acceptable.Any suggestions on what I should read next?

Quirky and interesting. I think a love of NYC makes it more compelling. Each of the cast of characters is realistic.

This was a good read. I think any reader would enjoy! Has this been made into a film as yet?