Summer Crossing (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Why, oh why, couldn't Grady be more like her older sister Apple, married, with child, nice house, go getter husband? Apple, which happened to be the only thing Lucy could eat during her pregnancy, leaves her supposedly older and wiser daughter to look after Grady. So it goes. Apple suggests they call a doctor to fix things. However, Grady reminds her of a friend they lost who bled to death on a public toilet. In a way it is fitting that "Summer Crossing," a novel Capote did not want published, and Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel serve as odd bookends to a remarkable literary life.

What a beautifully imperfect book. This is Capote's first novel written sometime in the 1940s and not published until 2004. Why the big gap? He left his apartment and told his landlord to throw it away. Grady - beautiful, rich, flame-haired, defiant - is the sort of girl people stare at across a room. The daughter of an important man, who people want to be introduced to. A girl to whom people sense something is going to happen ... Grady is a 17-y/o girl who decides not to join her parents and sister to the family's annual vacation. This time, in France. The reason? She is eyeing this good-looking boy who mans the parking lot. She is pretty (tall, cropped blond hair, flawless skin) so she is not thirsty for attention. In fact, she foregoes of Peter who is equally handsome and lovable. Grady fancies the parking attendant more whose name is Clyde.Thankfully the landlord kept it. Eventually it landed in the hands of Sotheby's for auction. They notified the lawyer in charge of Capote's Trust. He gave the transcript to the New York Public Library, and he also had the book published. The big question is why didn't Capote want "Summer Crossing" published. Robert Linscott, Capote's editor at Random House told him it was too conventional, that it was good, but it did not reach the level of excellence Capote had achieved with his short fiction. In fact, Linscott told Capote that any writer could have written it. Impossibile non collegare Grady con Holly, la protagonista di “Colazione da Tiffany”, di cui possiede alcuni tratti caratteriali, quali l’amore per la trasgressione e la ribellione alle regole. Summer Crossing" refers to two distinct crossings during a long hot summer in New York. Lucy and Lamont McNeil are making an Atlantic crossing to see what the Germans have left of their European holdings. Grady, the child-woman can be tedious, a fashion magazine come to fitful life. The fleeting evocation of her mother's history is much more sharply observed, as if the young Capote, despite himself, was precociously attuned to disappointment: 'The mother of a top-flight debutante has at her hands a social version of atomic revenge; but then she was cheated out of it, for there was the new war, and the poor taste of a debut in wartime would have been excessive: they had instead given an ambulance to England.'

No writer has ever stamped so methodically on the flames of his own talent. After the sombre fireworks of In Cold Blood, published when he was in his early forties, there are really only embers. So it's good to be reminded by the publication of this first stab at novel writing how much flair he had when he started. He had talent to burn. Schwartz, Alan U. "Afterword" in Truman Capote, Summer Crossing (2006/2005) Random House. ISBN 0-8129-7593-6 pp. 132-138. Un romanzo che iniziò a scrivere a soli 19 anni, a cui continuò a lavorare per un decennio, ma che non volle mai pubblicare. You may consider my review a bit flippant. I suppose it is. Grady's naivete can be grating. But this book is worth the read. Hmmm, this might be considered the first Truman Capote Summer Beach Read! Yes! Never underestimate the power of a woman! But can this marriage be saved? I'm not going to tell you. You'll just have to read it yourself.The novel tells the story of a spoiled young socialite whose romantic dalliances grow increasingly serious after her parents leave her alone one summer while traveling.

Clyde invites Grady to meet his family to attend his nephew's bar mitzvah. Oh? I didn't tell you he was Jewish? And you were wondering where the conflict was coming in. Let's call it cultural. What infinite energies are wasted steeling oneself against crisis that seldom comes: the strength to move mountains; and yet it is perhaps this very waste, this torturous wait for things that never happen, which prepares the way and allows one to accept with sinister sincerity the beast at last in view..." Sounds like a Harlequin book, right? Yes, that was the reason why, up to that part (halfway of the book), I took it lightly. You see, I am in this quest of completing all the Capote books. I am his fan and I'd like to be his completist, i.e., a reader who has read all of the author's main/published works. This is my second to the last Capote. Clyde moves into Grady's parents penthouse apartment. Hormones and pheromones are erupting left and right. Bodily fluids are exchanged on a regular basis. In that maddening state of love, what's a star-crossed couple to do but go over to Jersey and get married at 2a.m.? Oh, yes. They're quite wealthy. They have a penthouse apartment on 5th Avenue. While away, Lucy intends on the finest fashion designers to make their daughter Grady's Debutante dress.

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His prose here and there is glorious, and the seventeen-year-old central character of Grady McNeil feels like a lighter drawn version of Holly Golightly: dazzling in the eyes of those around her, but spiraling into a mode of self-destruction. The second crossing is Grady's from adolescent to woman. She is seventeen. Going to Paris is of no interest to her whatsoever. Mrs. McNeil thinks that young Peter Bell is the reason for Grady's reluctance to leave the city for the Summer. However, Grady only considers Peter her best friend.