By Truman Capote Published : 1980
Music for Chameleons is a collection of short fiction and non-fiction by the American author Truman Capote. Capote's first collection of new material in fourteen years, Music for Chameleons spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, unprecedented for a collection of short works
----
At the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a ‘nonfiction novel’ based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer.Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits’ including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child’ and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York
BOOK EXTRACT
The chameleons scattered like sparks from an exploding star
He was one of those men who truly noticed a women’s appearance, gathered at a glance the total atmosphere. He was worth dressing for, and it was one of her lesser reasons for loving him.
Green mumba snake – the deadliest
ATTRACTION AND DESIRE
His features were nicely defined, the bone structure quit precise
His emerald eyes were narrow and mean, weapons, bullets threateningly aimed and primed to explode.
Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one, the solidary one, that possess malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices the most hateful. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
Leaving that devil to dance on all those graves….
A suitor en route to a rendez vous? The possibility had occurred to me last night when I’d heard him talking to miss manson, there was a tone, timbre, an intimacy
Strong emotions, fears edging towards terror, can demolish the logic even so logical man
The sea beside them, start above them
My mind was snared in a time wrap, numbered with memories dormant almost half a century
We spoke this morning; it was as if we had talked yesterday and the day before. One wouldn't believe that there had ever been an interruption in our friendship.
I had often dreamed, while awake or sleep or returning to that melancholy village
I never use it so’s to get high. Just enough to lift the uglies a little.
I felt as though seized by a delicious demon, embraced by a mad marvellous merriment : the demon tickled my toes scratched my itchy head, kissed me hotly with his red sugary lips. Shoved his fiery tongue down my throat. Everything sparkled, my eyes were like zoom lenses
Oy vey
Mainson du plaisir – her house wAs famous for an exotic refreshment it offered fresh cherries boiled in cream sweetened with absinth and served stuffed inside the vagina of a reclining quadroon beauty.
This beautiful child is without any concept of discipline or sacrifice. Somehow I don’t think she will make old bones.
I believe that what goes around comes around, what goes up must come down . that’s how life flows and I flow with it.
Of course, sailors and dockworkers go there and the truck farmers, cops and firemen and hard eyed gamblers and harder eyed floozies and around sunrise the place overflows with entertainers from the bourbon street tourist traps. Topless dancers, strippers, drag queens, b girls, waiters, bartenders and the hoarse voiced doormen barkers who so stridently labor to lure yokels into vieux carree sucker dives
The blues, that’s what makes you fat.
Pontalba buiding
Because mrs. F was said to have magical powers. It was said and believed by many serious minded people, that she could tame errant husbands, force proposals from reluctant suitors, restore lost hair, recoup squandered fortunes. In short, she was a witch who could make wishes come true.
Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved; not even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travellers. To know such cities, to unwrap them, as it were, one has to have been born there. Venice is like that.
Fez is another enigmatic city leading a double life.
His chest and arms are a panorama of tattoo emblems : feisty dragons, coiled chrysanthemums, uncoiled serpents
I understand you were quite a cocksman. The ruler of a virtual seraglio
Bal onirique at the coq rouge dali’s gala in nyc
The Parisian elite gathered expecting to be shocked
And really knew nothing about her except that she was some sort of platinum sex explosion who had achieved global notoriety
Are you trying to loosen my tongue?
Q: what, of your own experiences have been the most frightening? A: betrayals , abandonments
Still , our real fears are the sounds of footsteps walking in the corridors of our minds and anxieties , the phantom floating , they create
That’s why there are so few good conversationalist due to scarecity, two intelligent talkers
seldom meet.
Despite her withered thought distinguished appearance, a true seductress, a conversational seductress. Ah how she fascinating she was sitting by the fire in her beautiful house in a Danish seaside village, chain smoking black cigarettes with silver tips, cooling her lively tongue with draughts of champagne and luring one from this topic to that
When I have a sexual fantasy, usually I try to transfer it to reality – sometimes successfully. However, I do often find myself drifting into erotic day dreams that remain just that : daydreams
I’m just a prisoner of my sexual imagination
Comments