Other Voices, Other Rooms

Written in the Southern Gothic style, famed American author Truman Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), is semi-autobiographical. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks and was infamous for its suggestive picture of the author.

The book follows the story of thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, a young, effeminate boy discovering the different forms of love. Joel has lived with his aunt in New Orleans ever since his mother passed away, but he receives an invitation to live with his long-missing father in Skully’s Landing. His aunt loves him but allows him to go, insisting that he return if he is unhappy.

The Landing, it turns out, is a giant, decrepit mansion on an isolated plantation. Living at the mansion is a host of interesting characters including his stepmother, Amy, her cousin Randolph who now owns Skully’s Landing, a neighbor tomboy named Idabel, and two black caretakers Jesus and Zoo. While walking the grounds, Joel spots a “queer lady” watching him from a window. When he mentions this to Amy and Randolph, they insist that it is a ghost.

Joel decides he is unhappy at Skully’s Landing. He sends a letter to his aunt along with postage money. When he returns to the mansion from spending time with Idabel and her sister, he finds his money on the ground.

Amy and Randolph refuse to introduce Joel to his father despite his interest. When they finally do introduce Joel to his father, he is disappointed to discover that his father is a paralyzed mute having fallen down a flight of stairs after being accidentally shot by Randolph. When he tries to attend to him, he feels nothing for his father. Joel discovers that Amy invited him to live at the mansion to help relieve her of the burden of taking care of his father. However, Joel makes a much stronger emotional connection to Randolph and Zoo, whom he treats as a maternal figure. A fruitful emotional connection to Amy becomes unlikely, and he will not take care of his father at a satisfactory level.

One day in Randolph’s room, Joel notices a picture of Randolph, Amy, and his father. Randolph explains their relationship, how he came to shoot Joel’s father, how Amy came to take care of him, and how he discovered that he is a homosexual.

Joel’s relationship with Idabel continues to deepen. One day as they are fishing, Joel gives her a peck on the cheek. Idabel beats him up for it. They discover over time that they are both attracted to others of the same sex. Joel decides to run away from the mansion with Idabel to a carnival, where he meets a dwarf woman who attempts to touch him sexually on a Ferris wheel. Separated from Idabel, he searches for her in a storm. He catches pneumonia and returns to the mansion, where Randolph nurses him back to health.

Randolph builds a life for Joel in which the boy is completely dependent on him. He uses their increasing emotional bond to manipulate a romance. Joel feels he has matured from his experiences at the mansion and the relationships he has fostered with its inhabitants. The final paragraph eludes that the ghostly figure in the window from before was Randolph watching Joel.

Truman Capote took two years to complete Other Voices, Other Rooms. The book’s Southern Gothic style focuses on the elegance of Skully’s Landing and the isolation Joel feels. Joel’s delicate nature and personality are loosely based on Capote, and Idabel is loosely based on his childhood friend Harper Lee, who would go on to write To Kill A Mockingbird. Other characters slightly resemble people Capote knew in real life.

Capote insists that the main theme of the novel is the search for a father. Capote’s own father, while not paralyzed like the father in the book, was non-existent in his life. The book is also a coming of age story about self-acceptance. Through his bizarre encounters with an eccentric cast of characters, Joel develops a strong sense of self and becomes comfortable with his homosexuality by the end of the book.

Known for his short stories, Capote was already being heralded as a prominent young writer, and 20th Century Fox bought the rights to the book before it was even published. The book received mostly positive reviews, with comparisons of Capote to the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and Oscar Wilde. Only twenty-three at the time of publication, Capote rose to stardom based on the book’s popularity as well as the controversy surrounding its illicit contents. It is one of only a handful of books with a homosexual protagonist from the first half of the twentieth century and is notable for its absence of a tragic end. A film version of the book was released in 1995.