Other Voices, Other Rooms is a very good novel, with an extremely simple scheme and plot which the author slowly loads with baroque and decorative details, yet without complicating it. (p. 478)
Mention has been made of Poe in connection with this book of Capote's. It seems to me, however, that the points of resemblance are purely casual and are due to a similarity of subject matter rather than to conscious derivation. In certain of Poe's tales, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Gold-Bug and others, set in the American provinces, in decaying houses full of memories, it is easy to discern the forebears of the country house in Truman Capote. But there is a difference between Poe's and Capote's approach to reality. Poe, even at his most fantastic and unreal, is always extremely literal, accurate, and realistic in his aims and intentions…. [Poe] really believed in the existence of a reality outside of himself. And it matters little whether this reality was moral and psychological or … erotic and sexual.
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