Other Voices Other Rooms, Truman Capote

Even since I found out that Harper Lee is a character in Truman Capote's novel, I simply *had* to see how he rendered her. There is so little biographical information about Harper Lee that I was - well, curious. Besides, there is one wonderfully nostalgic paragraph in Mockingbird saying that "summer was Dill... stealing kisses when Jem wasn't looking," so I *had* to see what love there was between Lee and Capote, Capote who turned out to be gay. Perhaps it's prying, but it's without malice. I'm very fond of Scout. I can't help wondering.

The book is beautifully written. The language and the portrait of life in the south, lazy and redolent and slightly creepy, really draws you in. I don't know about the "intensity of Capote's writing" lauded on the cover of my book, because I didn't find it intense, I found it detailed and poetic. The conversation and turns of phrases are reminiscent of Mockingbird, so I'm sure Lee was influenced by Capote's novel, which got published first. I had fun deciphering the transmogrification of names - it's "Noon City" here for "Meridian," no doubt, and there's a homestead called the "Landing" too. I recognized Capote/Dill at once in Joel: the short boy with britches too small for him, sensitive and a hand at hatching lies. I LOVED our first glimpse of Idabel/Lee, a really ferocious tomboy whom the sensitive (and gay) Joel is intimidated by. In Mockingbird, through Lee/Scout's own perspective, we know that Scout is a tomboy but her manner is much more aggressive described from the outside. She has a ladylike sister to compare against - Lee, I remember, had a sister, too. Idabel and Joel go skinny dipping in the creek and Idabel makes no qualms about it, so I'm sure that was only a proprietary reference in Mockingbird when Jem and Dill tell Scout she can't come cause they were going in naked! Joel and Idabel try to run away.

I'm hard pressed to see how Idabel shows Joel "the closest thing to love" (also quoted from my bookcover). Joel does long to show her affection after he becomes her friend, but she fights him when kissed. (So yes, there must be some germ in the Scout/Dill romance, too!) The ending also loses me completely. Why is Joel suddenly indifferent to Idabel, if she is his only friend? That disappoints me. Also, although Joel is very sensitive, I thought the novel was supposed to be an exploration in homosexuality, and the only reference I have is Joel seeing two men kissing, and being puzzled by it. Is it because he faced female temptation (via the circus midget lady) that he's scarred? Does he withdraw from Idabel because he's come to terms with his sexuality? Is Cousin Randolph gay?

I am probably really lost.