There is pleasure in reporting how very fine [The Grass Harp] is, how admirably and even brilliantly accomplished—instinct with vitality and humor and a tenderness which never curdles into sentimentality. One's pleasure in this case has little to do with literary actualities: it rises, rather, from satisfaction at the confirmation of a talent…. The Grass Harp represents [Capote's] first serious experiment in major fiction. (p. 73)

It is true that the arboreal fable of The Grass Harp is meant to symbolize an escape from humdrum reality, that Mr. Capote's real theme is the search for one's real self, and that such a theme is not to be stigmatized as trite merely because it is traditional. It has the effect of triteness in this play because it is in no way rendered active by Mr. Capote's art: when he has finished it still belongs to tradition, he has in no way made it his own. When his people speak we hear only othe...

In so far as it is a story of youth and loneliness, Truman Capote's second novel resembles his first, but there are noteworthy differences in quality. "The Grass Harp" is less contrived than "Other Voices, Other Rooms," not so elaborately furnished, not so densely metaphorical. Although much of it is not quite literally credible, it is extravagant, rather than bizarre, and there are no such Gothic touches as the red tennis balls and the hanging mule. More of the writing is...