Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory
Capote Revisits Childhood in Classic Tale of Unlikely Friendship
Long before Truman Capote moved through the glamorous circles of elite society, he had humbler beginnings in Depression-era Monroeville, Alabama where he spent his boyhood in a sprawling house with aging, stuffy relatives while his parents battled for custody of him.
Miss Sook
His sole comfort in these few lonely years was an unlikely friendship with the youngest of his cousins, the gentle Miss Sook. The sixty-something woman was a shy spinster, often dismissed as a simple-minded overgrown child, but to Capote (nicknamed Buddy), she was his world. The two outsiders forged a bond through their separate loneliness and, in two of his autobiographical short stories – "A Christmas Memory" (1956) and "A Thanksgiving Visitor" (1967) – Capote remembered the friendship that was perhaps the most meaningful of his entire life.
A Christmas Memory
"A Christmas Memory" is the first of the "Buddy and Miss Sook" tales and is told through the eyes of Buddy as a young adult. After a series of increasingly incoherent letters from his aging best friend, he receives one that is unmistakably clear. Miss Sook has died.
Buddy can't remember his friend without recalling the string of Christmases marked by a rigorous routine of baking fruitcakes. Although the two lived comfortably amid the wreckage and squalor of the Great Depression, they were often penniless as nonworking members of their household. They were left to toil through odd jobs throughout the year, socking away coins for their holiday fund, to earn money for the loads of ingredients required to bake dozens of fruitcakes.
Their tradition was one rooted in generosity, for these gifts were not for common friends and relatives but for those people they scarcely knew in recognition of some good deed that was once performed, perhaps even forgotten, throughout the years. A small wave hello or a pleasant conversation was enough to earn a spot on the mailing list. These people didn't know their mere pleasantries struck a much deeper chord in the hearts of Buddy and Sook. For a brief moment an awkward, soft-spoken sissy and a simple-minded old lady were accepted by a world that not only dismissed them, but often didn't acknowledge them at all.
The Fruitcake Club
A wide assortment of strangers shared an unknown kinship as members of this fruitcake club, from President Roosevelt to the town's notorious Mr. Haha, the much-feared Indian bar owner who took pity on Buddy and Miss Sook with their pile of coins and gave them a bottle of whiskey in exchange for the promise of a fruitcake.
Like the fruitcake-baking, planning the holiday festivities was a laborious task. Aside from preparing the Christmas feast for the family, Buddy and Miss Sook tramped through the snow deep into the woods to find the perfect Christmas tree, the envy of all passersby as they hauled it back into town.
They decorated the fir not with modern twinkling lights and store-bought ornaments, but with treasures saved with precious care, like bits of antique lace and tarnished tinsel. With their secret money-box drained, there was usually little left for the best friends to buy each other gifts, so they made each other handcrafted kites and took to the skies after opening the duller presents from the stodgier members of the family.
"A Christmas Memory" is really a culmination of memories about an enduring friendship that was strengthened through traditions of generosity and respect, but these moments were all the more memorable on this one special Christmas, because it was the last Buddy and Miss Sook ever spent together.
Truman Capote's "A Thanksgiving Visitor"
Madness in Truman Capote's "Miriam"
Capote, Truman. The Complete Stories of Truman Capote. Random House Publishing Group. 2004. ISBN 0-679-64310-9
Buddy and Sook
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