Spare the Laurels

OTHER VOICES OTHER ROOMS (231 pp.) -- Truman Capote--Random House ($2.75).

The author of this first novel is only 23, but his literary promise has already caused a flutter in Manhattan publishing circles. When Editor Cyril Connolly of England's highbrow Horizon visited the U.S. last year (TIME, Oct. 20), he noted with sad alarm:

" 'Get Capote'--at this minute the words are resounding on many a sixtieth floor, and 'get him' of course means make him and break him, smother him with laurels and then vent on him the obscure hatred which is inherent in the notion of another's superiority."

On the strength of Other Voices Other Rooms, Novelist Capote is safe from smothering in laurels. The book is a literary contrivance of unusual polish, better than the brightly ghostly short stories that gave its author a minor reputation. But it is immature and its theme is calculated to make the flesh crawl.

Swampland. Joel, a boy of 13, journeys east from New Orleans in the summer to find his father, whom he has never seen, at a lonely place called Skully's Landing. It is a journey into mysteries and wonders. From the town of Noon City he is taken in a slow wagon, by an ancient Negro named Jesus Fever, down a swampland road into night and sleep. He opens his eyes on a vivid morning scene:

"An expanse of pale yellow wall separated two harshly sunlit windows which faced the bed. Between these windows stood the woman. She did not notice Joel, for she was staring across the room at an ancient bureau: there, on top of a lacquered box, was a bird, a bluejay perched so motionless it looked like a trophy. The woman turned and closed the only open window; then, with prissy little sidling steps, she started forward."

The woman, who is his father's wife, Miss Amy, proceeds to hit the bluejay with a poker. This proves to be an appropriate introduction to the household. Other inmates are the languid and effeminate Cousin Randolph, Jesus Fever's granddaughter Zoo Fever, and Joel's father, Mr. Sansom, who is mysteriously sick and invisible. Joel begins to think maybe he doesn't exist. But in the evening a red tennis ball bumps down the stairs as if it had a life of its own, and rolls into the parlor. That is how he learns that his father is lying upstairs paralyzed, after having been shot by Randolph in a moment of hysterical terror.

Sinister Summer. In this atmosphere, half sickening and half magical, the events of the summer continue to shock the boy's senses like the bluejay and the red ball. At first Joel misses his aunt in New Orleans. But the sinister fascinations of Skully's Landing increase, centering on the tomboy, Idabel, who lives up the road, and on Cousin Randolph, who drinks sherry, calls him "darling" and holds his hand.

As a novelist, Truman Capote, who was born in New Orleans, owes something to Proust, something to Faulkner. In some ways he gets very close to childhood and to the profoundly sensational values of a child. But for all his novel's gifted invention and imagery, the distasteful trappings of its homosexual theme overhang it like Spanish moss.

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