Music for Chameleons

In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real people and renders them with the stylistic brio we expect from great fiction. Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise; and a proper Connecticut householder with a ruinous obsession for a twelve-year-old he has never met. And we meet Capote himself, who, whether he is smoking with his cleaning lady or trading sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe, remains one of the most elegant, malicious, yet compassionate writers to train his eye on the social fauna of his time.

"Electrifying . . . a knockout. Capote's alacrity and cunning makes this his most enjoyable book." --Newsweek

"An incomparable stylist and entertainer . . . clean and cool . . . [with a] superb, near-perfect pitch with dialogue." --The New York Times Book Review

"Everything is displayed in this book: insights and recollections of the famous and the obscure; old jokes and fresh wit. . . . These stories and vignettes will endure." --The New Republic

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans on September 30, 1924. He rose to international prominence in 1948 with the publication of his debut novel, "Other Voices," "Other Rooms," His other works of fiction include "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "A Tree of Night," "The Grass Harp," and "Summer Crossing," the author's long-lost first novel, which was rediscovered in 2004 and published by Random House in 2005. His nonfiction novel "In Cold Blood" is widely considered one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. Capote twice won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and was a member of the Natio

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