My cousin Martin used to throw a Christmas party in his Boston apartment every year. At one point in the party he'd gather everyone around who'd listen in rapt attention while he read aloud Truman Capote's beautiful short story “A Christmas Memory.” This was a decades-long tradition and I was lucky enough to attend one year. Martin worked professionally as an actor so he's especially good at dramatising and doing the voices in the story. Though he hasn't held his party for many years, this year he organized a video call with eighty or so guests to watch as he recited the story again. It was a lovely way to unite people from all over the US and globe who can't physically meet this year because of the pandemic. In order to carry the tradition on and share this good feeling, I've made a video of myself reading Capote's story aloud which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBb-9iB89gQ
This is the most lovely Christmas story and unusually sweet for Capote who was such a troubled and viciously distempered individual. I know he was a great writer but I can't help feeling somewhat prejudiced against him since he once said of Joyce Carol Oates that she's “a joke monster who ought to be beheaded in a public auditorium.” Putting aside his personal insecurities and bad behaviour, in this story he perfectly evokes a holiday spirit of cheerful sentiment, friendly goodwill, the evocative warm scents of Christmas baking and a melancholy longing for loved ones we've lost. In their perfectly-balanced companionship young Buddy and his much-older female friend create a harmonious world for themselves filled with loving traditions. Yet, at the same time, they are oddly strangers to each other since Buddy never gives her a name except “my friend” and though Buddy is not his name she calls him this “in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend.” This anonymity funnily makes the story feel more intimate as if individual identity doesn't matter as there is a perfect bond which makes them “each other's best friend.”
The relationship they share is made even closer with their opposition against the unnamed people who also inhabit the house. It's striking how the presence of these familial others is never felt except when chastising the pair for singing and dancing while getting tipsy after they've completed their baking. Their special friendship is sublimely self-enclosed and the cakes they send to people (many of whom are strangers) is such a touching gesture for rewarding mere moments or general expressions of kindness. Of course, it's somewhat uncomfortable reading the racist description of Mr Haha Jones with his “Satan-tilted eyes”. Though he ultimately turns out to be a kind-hearted individual and we're seeing him only through the pair's erroneously-fearful and misguided perception, I don't think this excuses such a detail in the story. It shows it to be a product of the time. Nevertheless, the overriding message of this tale is so graceful and no matter how many times I hear it I get very emotional at the end. I feel lucky to have made some similarly special friendships in my life.
