Portraits and Observations

<b>From the Modern Library&#146;s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote&#151;also available are <i>Breakfast at Tiffany&#146;s </i>and<i> Other Voices Other Rooms </i>(in one volume)<i> In Cold Blood </i>and <i>The Complete Stories</i></b><br><br>Perhaps no twentieth-century writer was so observant and graceful a chronicler of his times as Truman Capote. <i>Portraits and Observations</i> is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by this most beloved of writers. Included are such masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as &#147;The Muses Are Heard&#148; and the short nonfiction novel &#147;Handcarved Coffins&#148; as well as many long-out-of-print essays including portraits of Mae West Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn New Orleans and Hollywood written when he was twenty-two to the author&#146;s last written words &#147;Remembering Willa Cather&#148; composed the day before his death in 1984 <i>Portraits and Observations</i> puts on display the full spectrum of Truman Capote&#146;s brilliance. Certainly Capote was as Somerset Maugham famously called him &#147;a stylist of the first quality.&#148; But as the pieces gathered here remind us he was also an artist of remarkable substance.