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A Christmas Memory: One Christmas, and The Thanksgiving Visitor (Modern Library) Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 12, 1996

by Truman Capote (Author)

4.6 1,266 ratings

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A holiday classic from "one of the greatest writers and most fascinating society figures in American history" (Vanity Fair)!

First published in 1956, this much sought-after autobiographical recollection from Truman Capote (In Cold Blood; Breakfast at Tiffany's) about his rural Alabama boyhood is a perfect gift for Capote's fans young and old.

Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship and the memories the two friends share of beloved holiday rituals.

A Christmas Memory has been described as "[a] gem of a holiday story" (School Library Journal, starred review), and this warm and delicately illustrated edition is one you'll want to add to any Christmas or Capote collection.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Taking its place next to Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood on the Modern Library bookshelf is this new and original edition of Capote's most famous short stories: "A Christmas Memory," "One Christmas," and "A Thanksgiving Memory." All three stories are distinguished by Capote's delicate interplay of childhood sensibility and recollective vision.

From the Back Cover

Available for the first time in a single volume are the three holiday stories that Truman Capote regarded as among his greatest works of short fiction. Two of these childhood memoirs - "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor" - center on the author's early years with a family of distant relatives in rural Alabama. Both pay loving tribute to an eccentric old-maid cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, who became his best friend. In "A Christmas Memory", Miss Sook, Buddy (the narrator), and their dog, Queenie, celebrate the yuletide in a hilariously tipsy state. In the poignant reminiscence "One Christmas", six-year-old Buddy journeys to New Orleans for a reunion with his estranged father that shatters many illusions. And in "The Thanksgiving Visitor", Miss Sook invites the school bully, Odd Henderson - called by Buddy "the meanest human creature in my experience" - to Thanksgiving dinner.

About the Author

TRUMAN CAPOTE was born in 1924 and died in 1984. Based on his own boyhood in rural Alabama in the 1930s, A Christmas Memory was orginally published in Mademoiselle in 1956 and later was included in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

BETH PECK, a designer and illustrator of many children's books, fell in love with the writing of Truman Capote and counts her paintings for A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor, also by Capote, among the work that is closest to her heart.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable-not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "It's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together--well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."

It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."

The hat is found, a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses out-of-doors has faded: it once belonged to a more fashionable relative. Together, we guide our buggy, a dilapidated baby carriage, out to the garden and into a grove of pecan trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard's legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek; it has its winter uses, too: as a truck for hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. Queenie is trotting beside it now.

Three hours later we are back in the kitchen hulling a heaping buggyload of windfall pecans. Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass. Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milkglass bowl. Queenie begs to taste, and now and again my friend sneaks her a mite, though insisting we deprive ourselves. "We mustn't, Buddy. If we start, we won't stop. And there's scarcely enough as there is. For thirty cakes." The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight. At last, when the moon is quite high, we toss the final hull into the fire and, with joined sighs, watch it catch flame. The buggy is empty, the bowl is brimful.

We eat our supper (cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam) and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we'll need a pony to pull the buggy home.

But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skinflint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of homemade jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers for funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know a fool thing about football. It's just that we enter any contest we hear about: at the moment our hopes are centered on the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize being offered to name a new brand of coffee (we suggested "A.M."; and, after some hesitation, for my friend thought it perhaps sacrilegious, the slogan "A.M.! Amen!"). To tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the Fun and Freak Museum we conducted in a back-yard woodshed two summers ago. The Fun was a stereopticon with slide views of Washington and New York lent us by a relative who had been to those places (she was furious when she discovered why we'd borrowed it); the Freak was a three-legged biddy chicken hatched by one of our own hens. Everybody hereabouts wanted to see that biddy: we charged grownups a nickel, kids two cents. And took in a good twenty dollars before the museum shut down due to the decease of the main attraction.

But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund. These moneys we keep hidden in an ancient bead purse under a loose board under the floor under a chamber pot under my friend's bed. The purse is seldom removed from this safe location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, a withdrawal; for on Saturdays I am allowed ten cents to go to the picture show. My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.

Now, with supper finished, we retire to the room in a faraway part of the house where my friend sleeps in a scrap-quilt-covered iron bed painted rose pink, her favorite color. Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt. Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man's eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies. Last summer others in the house contracted to pay us a penny for every twenty-five flies we killed. Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven! Yet it was not work in which we took pride. And, as we sit counting pennies, it is as though we were back tabulating dead flies. Neither of us had a head for figures; we count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations, we have $12.73. According to mine, exactly $13. I do hope you're wrong, Buddy. We can't mess around with thirteen. The cakes will fall. Or put somebody in the cemetery. Why, I wouldn't dream of getting out of bed on the thirteenth." This is true: she always spends thirteenths in bed. So, to be on the safe side, we subtract a penny and toss it out the window.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Modern Library; Reissue edition (November 12, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679602372
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679602378
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 870L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.69 x 7.59 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #114,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #605 in Holiday Fiction (Books)
- #3,673 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #8,195 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.6 1,266 ratings

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Truman Capote

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Truman Capote was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was raised in various parts of the south, his family spending winters in New Orleans and summers in Alabama and New Georgia. By the age of fourteen he had already started writing short stories, some of which were published. He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for the New Yorker which provided his first - and last - regular job. Following his spell with the New Yorker, Capote spent two years on a Louisiana farm where he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He lived, at one time or another, in Greece, Italy, Africa and the West Indies, and travelled in Russia and the Orient. He is the author of many highly praised books, including A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1965), which immediately became the centre of a storm of controversy on its publication, Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published by Penguin. Truman Capote died in August 1984.

Photo by Jack Mitchell [CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Z Hayes

Beautiful holiday stories that hold up to repeat readings

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2012

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I had never read any of Truman Capote's stories until a good friend recommended "A Christmas Memory". I looked up the title here on Amazon and was pleased to discover that this particular edition by The Modern Library contains three stories, i.e. "A Christmas Memory", "One Christmas", and "The Thanksgiving Visitor".

My favorite is of course the title story, "A Christmas Memory". The story recounts one Christmas in the life of young Buddy (who is actually Truman Capote himself) and his favorite cousin, Sook, an older lady who is deemed simple by many other adults but who is Buddy's kindred spirit and primary caregiver. When Cousin Sook announces "It's fruitcake weather!" one November morning, young Buddy knows he is in for an exciting time. Together the pair go about the countryside, looking for pecans, buying whiskey from Mr. Haha, a bootleg liquor maker, and finally, once all the ingredients have been assembled, the pair embark on a marathon baking session, making fruitcakes for an interesting group of people such as the President of the United States, people who have passed through Sook's and Buddy's lives, mere strangers who for some reason Sook shares an affinity. With her meager savings, Sook manages to get the cakes baked and delivered. The story is short but very well-written, it evokes a time long gone, and Sook is a memorable character indeed. The reader can tell that Capote who is the Buddy in the story loves Sook deeply and the pair's antics will have readers alternately chuckling and crying.

In "One Christmas", the author narrates the time when as a young boy, he is sent to spend Christmas in New Orleans with his father. Buddy is reluctant and unwilling to leave his beloved Sook and familiar surroundings in their small Alabama town, but eventually gives in and makes the trip all by himself. This was the period of the Great Depression where many are without, but Buddy discovers his father (who is divorced from Buddy's mother) is actually quite well-off. The story explores the fragile father-son relationship with a great depth of credibility. Buddy hardly knows this stranger who is his dad and is wary of the man, but over the short period of time leading up to Christmas, a tenuous bond forms between the pair. The ending is heartwrenching, and I wept as I read the pain within this little boy and the agony suffered by his father. "One Christmas" is one of those bittersweet family holiday stories that will remain in readers' hearts for a long time.

Finally, there's "The Thanksgiving Visitor" which in brief is a story about Buddy and the school bully, a boy named Odd Henderson. Odd is described as "the meanest human creature in my experience", a twelve-year-old who makes Buddy's life at school a living hell, to the point that Buddy dreads going to school. Sook in an attempt to help Buddy, invites Odd to their home for Thanksgiving dinner. Buddy is horrified, picturing Odd thinking up new ways to torment him, but there's a surprise in store for all concerned. I loved this story for the compassion displayed by Sook, and would recommend this selection for anyone looking for a wonderful, heartwarming holiday read.

18 people found this helpful

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Laura's Reviews

An unforgettable collection of short stories

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020

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A Christmas Memory is a collection of three short stories written by Truman Capote. I’ve previously read In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. This collection is unlike anything I’ve read by him before. It’s a tender recollection of memories of his time as a youth living with elderly cousins in rural Alabama.

Truman’s parents divorced when he was a very young child and had a bitter custody battle over him. This led to him being raised by cousins, three elderly spinsters and a bachelor, in a rural town. As he looks back on his childhood in the 1930’s living with his cousins, Capote realizes these were the happiest times in his childhood. In particular, the childlike sixty-year-old Miss Sook Faulk took care of Truman, was his friend, and confidante. She was a shy woman who was a very good person.

In the first story, “A Christmas Memory,” Miss Sook, Queenie the rat terrier, and Buddy (Truman Capote) make fruitcakes to show people they care about them. They scrape together all of their money for the ingredients and send them off to loved ones when they are complete. They don’t have much, but they love to make others feel loved. This story has one of the most poignant endings of any story I have ever read. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

In the second story, “One Christmas,” Buddy travels to New Orleans to visit his father for Christmas. The visit doesn’t turn out as he imagines, and he longs for his home back in rural Alabama. Luckily when he returns home, Miss Sook helps to explain the true meaning of Santa Claus.

In the final story, “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” Miss Sook invites Buddy’s nemesis, Odd Henderson, for Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Will Odd show up? Miss Sook shows Buddy her humanity in this story.

Reading this collection, I want to make homemade fruitcake now. This collection of short stories was very touching and perfect for the holiday season. I feel bad for Buddy’s childhood, but happy that he had such a friend as Miss Sook. Even more powerful, I’m glad that he was able to memorialize her in these stories. They are short stories, but are filled with humanity, the spirit of joy and giving, and love and loss.

Favorite Quotes:
“It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.”

“I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”

Overall, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote is an unforgettable collection of stories. I highly recommend it.

Book Source: Purchased from Amazon.com

15 people found this helpful

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Pego44

Mildly interesting

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2020

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I thought the stories were well written and since they are short each is a quick read. The characters linger after reading which for me is a good sign. The storylines were not compelling.

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024

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Capote shares a precious Christmas memory. Purchased one for myself and another as a gift.

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2023

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This is a fun little book by Capote of youthful ventures in Alabama. It is almost lyrical in the way that it reads and flows gently along. Like the the Christmas stories of other renown authors it’s well worth the read.

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richard e whitelock

ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2023

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Capote writes from his heart and personal experience as a young boy growing up in a small south Alabama town near Mobile. His relationship with a much older cousin and their adventure in baking Christmas fruit cakes and flying kites make for an adorable and memorable story of old southern charm. At age 10, the boy, Buddy, is shipped off to military school. He leaves his friend and the traditions he grew up loving the most.
It's a sweet story about two gentle souls who were best of friends and loved one another genuinely. Andif you nuy the edition that includes the CD of Celeste Holmes reading the story, you can double your pleasure and really sense the true love and pleasure these two shared with one another. It's the icing on a well baked cake, fruit cakes!

2 people found this helpful

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MingMia

Excellent Service

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024

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I didn’t think I’d be able to find this version of Truman Capote’s stories. But, I was pleasantly surprised to find it from this “used books” seller on Amazon. It was a great value and the book was in wonderful shape. It was packaged appropriately and delivered in a timely manner. I would definitely buy from this seller again. Very pleased.

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Florian Schilling

Childhood memories and how to write them

Reviewed in Germany on December 12, 2021

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Immediately transported to the South, amongst his strange and unique family, and into Capote‘s fascinating heart and mind. Beautiful pieces of writing that will enhance the melancholy of the holidays

Carstairs Alberta

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2016

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This book arrived on time. A classic for any age.

カロリナ

子供時代の幸福と孤独

Reviewed in Japan on November 19, 2006

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三篇とも、あたたかく、そしてすこし切ない物語です。

原文で読むことで、カポーティの文章の美しさとリズムを感じることができました。

もう何度も繰り返して読んでいますが

読むたびになんだか懐かしいような、泣きたいような気分になります。

そして感傷的だけれど、書き手の抑制がきいた物語でもあると思います。

カポーティの作品は、どんなに美しい物語、切ない物語の中にも

書き手としての冷徹な視線が背後にあるような気がします。

などと考えてみたところで、やっぱり読むともう無条件で心を動かされてしまう作品たちです。

3 people found this helpful

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Libellule

Difficult

Reviewed in Canada on December 30, 2013

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I found this a difficult read, and I am not sure exactly why? Maybe the vocabulary (I was constantly looking up words in the dictionary, also the fact that it seemed to me like the same story was being retold.
Not avery pleasant read for me, but I kept going because I know Truman Capote to be an important American writer and I wanted to finish at least this short book he wrote.

ガッベリーウェイ

懐かしささえ覚える、牧歌的な幼年期の日々

Reviewed in Japan on May 6, 2006

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秋から冬にかけての歳時記にまつわる幼年期の思い出を綴った短編集である。クリスマスの話が２つに感謝祭の話が１つ。カポーティが幼年期に預けられていた母方の祖母と思われる家での、彼を取り巻く人々との生活が描かれている。その多くにでてくる年の離れた従兄弟や奉公人（女中）や犬達との、のどかでほのぼのとした暮らし。それがどこか、このところ話題となる昭和の日本の３０年代、それも田舎の暮らしを思い出させるから不思議である。クリスマスケーキを作る準備の話とか、感謝祭に客を呼ぶ支度とかの細部にわたる描写も楽しい。彼の周りにいるのは、少し頭の弱いもう若くはない従兄弟であったり、いつも足下にいる犬であったり、いわゆるinnocentな仲間たちである。それはとりもなおさず、カポーティ自身がinnocentであったということだ。後年の彼の境遇とは随分違う生き方が描かれていて、でも彼の原点はこうした人達との暮らしであったのだろうと確信がいく小説群である。村上春樹が翻訳を出しているが、彼らしい文章になっているのにびっくりする。翻訳で読むと、原作の読後感がかわってしまうではないかと思えるので、是非原作で読むことを薦めます。

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A Christmas Memory: One Christmas, and The Thanksgiving Visitor (Modern Library) Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 12, 1996

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