[In the following essay, Mitchell-Peters considers the portrayal of homosexuality in Other Voices, Other Rooms, focusing on the function of Camp and Southern Gothic style on the novella.]

INTRODUCTION

With possible influence from the utopian “greenwood” of E. M. Forster's Maurice, originally written from 1913 to 1914 and first published posthumously in 1971, Truman Capote released his first novel in the late 1940s with a striking never-never land that provided an alternative to the stifling realities for homosexuality during this time. There are three settings that exist in this text: the first is a typically redneck Southern backdrop filled with the necessary types and Capote's campy satire, the second is a mysterious rundown mock-haunted castle where the adult homosexuals and/or drag queens hide, and the third is a Peter Pan-like Oz, where queer youths gather, bond, and discover their young yet very real feelings. The novel's original setting of the Southern redneck reveals the most hostile environment for homosexuality, an environment that still exists today, not only in the South but throughout the United States, as we have witnessed recently with the grotesque murder of Matthew Sheppard in the fall of 1998. The second setting the reader is introduced to has received most of the criticism to date: its gothic feel has allowed the novella to be deemed a Southern-gothic tale, although, as this article will discuss, the use of gothic themes is equally as satirical as the mock-maleness of the redneck Southern inhabitants. The setting that has received the least amount of critical investigation is Capote's unique creation of a fantasy locale. Within this fantasy location, Capote not only moves away from the types of dismal realities that are evident in Baldwin's novel and Williams's stories, but shifts the subjects of homosexuality to queer adolescents. With the real world lurking in various forms behind the carnival of life that Joel and Idabel discover, their world—the world of queer acknowledgement and arguable homosexual awakenings—marks a hope for their inherent desires. Capote's text thus marks the first modern representation of homosexuality where a character's queerness does not lead down some version of the river Styx to a contemporary Hell. Instead, Joel and Idabel flourish and reveal that their natures are definitely queer. Truman Capote's first novel illustrates influences from a number of sources to tell the revolutionary stories of its young, queer heroes. This article will explore the literary influences in this text to illustrate how Capote re-constructs a gothic setting and employs aspects of Camp sensibility to construct his unique queer characters. Unlike Capote's contemporaries—such as James Baldwin or Tennessee Williams, who portray aspects of homosexual repression, disillusionment and violence in their texts from the 1950s—Capote's early book gives a type of literary birth to two young queer and often times detectably homosexual characters. This accomplishment—which arguably fuelled the negative, often hostile criticism that surfaced after the novel was published—is a tremendous feat in pre-Stonewall American literature. Capote is rivalled by no one in the first half of the twentieth-century, and his wondrously loaded book accomplished many tasks which were not tackled in full until the 1960s and 1970s: in Other Voices, Other Rooms there is no Frankensteinian arrangement of master and slave, nor questionable desire and excessive abuse and related power struggle. The destructive reality of homosexual panic is not a major part of the story Capote tells. Rather, Capote's text cleverly manipulates form and characterization and creates a number of compelling queer characters.

If a Victorian murderer is queer, if cannibalism is queer, if Marilyn Manson is queer (arguably really queer), if Madonna in the early 90s was queer, and if I am going to argue how two pre-teens are queer, how can one pin-point a definition for queer? Perhaps my question is aptly responded to: queer allows for interpretative movement, and related questioning and cultural theorizing. Queer allows for a readership which isolates aspects of uncertain, odd, and sometimes gay or lesbian characters and circumstances; not always homosexual, but definitely not only heterosexual, queer challenges the binary of straight/bent to include instances of possible homosexuality, bisexuality, cross-dressing, or uncertain or bizarre, physical interactions within such a trajectory of difference. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues that queer includes

the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically.

(“Queer and Now” 8)

Aside from opening definition and representation, Sedgwick's writing is integral to a contemporary consideration of queer as it's compound object insists that gender and the idea of meaning as well as signification cannot be static. Less complicatedly, the notion of a signifier—something we can read as queer—will shift and never have precisely the same meaning in any questioned circumstance. Hence, Marilyn Manson's neo-gothic vampiress persona, Madonna in a designer suit grabbing her non-existent yet certainly powerful phallus as she exposes a meshy black bra, as well as characters who stray away from heterosexual advances to acknowledge same-sex ones, are all examples—however different—of queer behaviour: none exhibit direct homosexual interaction, but each example is out-of-the-ordinary, and is susceptible to a queer reading and thereby a decoding of signifiers to present gay and or lesbian undertones (at least).

To explore the relationships between queer and/or homosexual representation, gothic nuances and settings, and Camp, in this article I will: (i) introduce the relationship between gothic themes and Camp as a literary technique to counter the Southern-gothic style in the text, and present the ways the reader can re-think these categories in Other Voices, Other Rooms; (ii) approach the criticism which followed the book's publication, questioning the focus on Southern-gothic style and homophobic discourse in such criticisms; (iii) illustrate Capote's technique of Camping gothic themes to create a queer text, and (iv) analyze the main characters in this text to solidify their queerness and emphasize their homosexual natures. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the ways that gothic styles are undermined by Camp sensibility—Capote's specific style of reacting to the homosexual representations in literature of the late 40s and 1950s—and focus on the developments of representation and queer sexuality through the novel's important combination of these two very different yet often interlined styles of Southern-gothic and Camp to create a readably queer text.

THE GOTHIC AND CAMP: RE-THINKING GENRES

As discussed throughout the preceding chapters, gothic literature reacted to norms and related representations in traditional literature during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As such, the gothic articulated the controversial issues of incest, murder, and promiscuous sexuality, and created an exciting arena for the development of the supernatural and the occult. Gothic, in short, rebelled against traditional domesticity and sentimental literature, as a writing style which embodies and develops horror and terror (Arnaud, 123). Can Other Voices, Other Rooms be considered as a novel which re-employs the atrocities of a nightmarish imagination? Curiously, the Signet edition's introductory page describes the book as “terrifying.” It appears that the school of criticism which highlights the gothic motifs in the text is the influence which subverts Joel's sexuality through the masked label of sensitivity, and avoids Idabel's lesbianism by focusing on her as a tomboy. On the introduction feature page of the Signet edition, Skully's Landing is described as “[a] mouldering mansion[,]” as the mysterious drag queen has been interpreted as “[a] ghostly face at a curtained window.” It appears that the publishers went through great pains to emphasize the gothic-like backdrop of the novel to focus on gothic motifs and similarities to overt the then-controversial issues that Capote's novel presents. As this paper shall argue, the author deliberately uses gothic themes and gay Camp style to create eccentric, queer characters who challenge the tradition of homosexual representation in contemporary American literature.

As the pre-Stonewall homosexual character has been locked in the abyss of gothic representation since Marlowe's “Edward II” and most conveniently crystallized as the pre-modern villain in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Capote manipulates a neo-gothic setting to develop characters with a particularly queer consciousness, as the text moves away from the literary tradition of homosexual desire and impending death. One may wonder why Capote employs the gothic to express queer sexualities: the gothic form is habitually indulgent, imaginative, supernatural and horrific, hence in the gothic novel almost anything can happen. The gothic novel can be read with particular attention to queer sexual spaces, where unclear, or partially veiled instances of physical intimacy can be interpreted with attention to homoerotic undercurrents. Moreover, aspects of the gothic create an often suppressed homosexual character or encoded homosexual (or homosocial) relationship between a desired male character and the corruptive monster or demon. What is gothic becomes questionable and simultaneously homosexual with the theme of a double-life in Stevenson's “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and with the combination of Camp, the Narcissus myth, murder, and death in Wilde's Dorian Gray, what was questionably homosexual in the nineteenth century becomes detectably queer almost one hundred years later. Modern literary representations of homosexuality have frequently been found in texts which re-employ gothic motifs, such as Djuna Barnes's Nightwood or Carson McCullers's Reflections in a Golden Eye. In the twentieth century the gothic monster is given a more human form, in the style of Dorian Gray, as the male homosexual. Truman Capote's Southern-gothic tale of Other Voices, Other Rooms borrows from this intricate tradition, as he introduces a series of gothic types, themes and settings, only to dissolve Joel's spooky, late night arrival to re-present the gothic into a daytime carnival of Campy aesthetics. I would like to argue that Capote was well aware of his specific mock-gothic agenda and, as this chapter shall argue, by countering gothic with Camp the author rebels against the gothic's inscription of homosexuality and death. Robert Miles suggests that part of male representation in the gothic is the value of sight and the visual, hence, “[i]n Gothic writing, desire inheres within the visual” (57–60). Capote's first novel uses the visual in a similar manner, with a distinctly different twist: in Capote's text what is excessively visual is an acute, flamboyant and flagrant series of images that bombard the reader throughout the text. As the author uses aspects of a genre which relies inherently on the visual, he manipulates gothic motifs with a style that encompasses a strong visual intensity. The Camp style of this text allows for the amusing, new type of literary representation of queer personalities. Capote distinctly re-constructs aspects of gothic style, then Camps it: he takes an already excessive and fantastic style, creates a parody of it by adding to such a style with colourful prose, and over-the-top characters. By countering and complimenting gothic nuances with Camp, Capote is able to manoeuvre a style which will enhance the intensity of his characters, further emphasizing the open boundaries of interpretation that queer theory introduces.

Capote uses a conventional late-40s genre by adopting a Southern-gothic style, and through a precise use of camp aesthetics and language he turns it queer: as the nineteenth-century gothic challenged traditional literary form with unbelievable reincarnations of the occult-supernatural, Capote re-thinks his own variety of vamps, and tones down their supposedly dangerous natures through excessive camp-humour. By employing a Camp style of satire and excess, Capote un-haunts the night-time gothic of Skully's Landing, and as day breaks the author slowly and completely creates an absolutely queer textual space that replaces the gothic nuances with a very definite gay-Camp sensibility. Over the years, many critics have argued that Camp is gay, as others have argued that it is not. Camp style is a product of a most definitely queer sensibility, where the homosexual artist adopts a genre to create a parody of another genre, thus taking away its power and strength. Capote's use of gothic motifs allows him to de-sensitize the focal issues of what should be gothic, and in return he focuses on his concerns: rather than murder and monsters Capote takes the fear out of the rumoured fearful inhabitants of Skully's Landing.

Through the young queer characters of Joel and Idabel the text gives birth to two adolescents who are readably homosexual. This text tells the stories of their discoveries of their own, different, and queer sexual awareness. Susan Sontag has infamously argued that Camp is not necessarily a gay style and that Camp is not political (281). As this discussion shall exhibit, Camp is a critical part of readership appreciation, and the manner in which Camp is detected, interpreted and often appropriated is definitely a gay phenomenon, although it is by no means gay male exclusive. Sontag reads Camp as “the love of the unnatural, artifice and exaggeration” (275). In Other Voices, Other Rooms such aspects of Camp style intersect with the gothic themes, and undermine—if not extinguish—them. Like Wilde's important literature, in Capote's text Camp expresses a political voice. As Camp is an excessive parody, and thus incorporates satire as its principal mode of humour, when one Camps something—such as a mannerism—one often ridicules a convention, especially gender typology. Hence, this chapter will have a detailed look at how Capote Camps the Gothic as a means to create a definitive satire which allows him to create the queer personalities of Other Voices, Other Rooms.

THE EARLY CRITICS

In most pre-Stonewall criticism, Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms has been explored in homophobic, pop-psychoanalytic readings, which consider the text as terrifying and perverse, and the characters are more often than not examined as deviant. Many critics slander this book, as they attempt to solve the sexual mysteries of Capote's creative characters through aspects of trivial, demeaning psychology. The negative criticism which accompanied the publication of this novel is essentially a homophobic reaction, a direct result of the anti-homosexual sentiment of the late 40s and early 50s. Chester E. Eisinger clearly illustrates his own homophobic reactions to the sexual diversity in Capote's text as he argues that Other Voices, Other Rooms presents a “world of flight, childhood terror, estrangement and perverted love” (16). As such, Capote's intuitive and imaginative novel is not only reviewed in regard to negative approaches to the unusual characters, settings and situations, but in regard to the main characters' lack of sexual conformity. Rather than unique or revolutionary, Capote's characters are reviewed in response to theories of sexual deviance and related ideologies of perversity. I would like to counter Eisinger's argument by emphasizing that Capote's main character Joel Knox and his equally queer sidekick Idabel Tompkins are reactionary creations, marking this text's very important position in the history of gay, lesbian, and queer literature; hence the focal point for the arguments that dominate this paper. To prove Eisinger's argument is problematic, one must note that Joel journeys willingly to the text's fantastic locations of Skully's Landing and Noon City, and both Joel and Idabel do not engage in a horrified flight from either of these locales. Rather, the unprepared reader may desire flight from the issues this novel presents, as Joel and Idabel embrace these settings as the homeland of their queer adventures. Contrary to Eisinger's homophobic remarks, Joel's arrival brings an end to his possible childhood terror and presents Joel with a series of personal discoveries which take place in his new Southern setting. As well, rather than estrangement, Joel and Idabel's comraderie demonstrates supportive friendship: with Idabel, Joel learns how to make friends with a carousel of different people, most significantly his cousin Randolph and Miss Wisteria. The relationship between these characters creates a queer comraderie amidst the unconventional mock-gothic and Campy settings. Sadly, Eisinger is not alone, and many of Capote's early critics use the demeaning terms grotesque and perverted to describe the characters, the identities and the sexualities in this author's early writing. Although various re-constructions of the gothic genre are part of the foundation in this text (as I shall explore throughout the next section), Capote builds away from the possible reactions of trauma and horror, and presents a Southern paradise where queer sexuality, in varying forms, flourishes in abundance.

Ihab Hassan is the one exception amongst the early critics. However, his book on the contemporary American novel was released over a decade after Capote published Other Voices, Other Rooms. Capote was plagued with unflattering, narrow-scoped reviews and analyses for over ten years. Conservative approaches to the gothic themes, as seen in Eisinger's criticism, dominated the questioning of setting and description in Capote's early text. Moreover, his latter works Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood remain his most famous. Capote cleverly borrowed from the mystery and suspense of classic gothic literature to create a setting which would allow for the colourful characterizations that take place throughout the text. The use of night and day, the binaries of good/evil and straight/queer are certainly themes and sub-themes crystallized in nineteenth-century English fiction. However, as the gothic and Camp themes adequately house his characters' unconventional mannerisms, both genres reveal the revolutionary sexualities in this text. Capote purposely presents aspects of unclear or partially revealed desire which can be read as queer coding: the shy-boy, the tomboy, and the drag queen all function as signifiers for sexual queerness, creating a text which depicts queer sexuality and possible homosexuality not as dismal destruction, but as a possible option. Thus, Hassan considers Capote's use of gothic themes as an “extravaganza” where the “narcissistic overestimation of the self … begs for allegorical interpretation” (234 & 239). Hassan explores Capote as an author who exhibits unusual characters, sexual diversity, and double-identities in a profound post-gothic genre with an excess of Campy style. Combining the gothic with a paradoxical use of humour, the author turns the scary into a carnival of the unorthodox. In line with Hassan's arguments, Capote's text is about interpretation, somewhat allegorical, perhaps metaphoric, theoretically semiotic, but most of all revolutionary: the novel's careful representation of genre, gender, identity and sexuality challenge the established representation of queer sexuality and homosexuality in literature and create a literary arena where the author can introduce and reveal a new selection of not-so-straight characters. Gothic therefore becomes a neo-gothic style, possibly even a mock-, quasi-, or partial-gothic, which moves away from the traditions of English and American gothic as it undermines the central component of fear with curiosity. Hence, the integral binary of fear/attraction that exists in nineteenth-century gothic fiction is overthrown, and what is supposed to be scary is actually rather amusing. In this new Southern-Camp-gothic, sexuality can flourish and the characters are free enough to explore some aspects of their sexual orientation.

MORE THAN GOTHIC

CAMPING THE GOTHIC

Far too often the adaptation of gothic themes has allowed for the creation of the doomed homosexual. The night-time and the sub-cultural haunts are part of the inevitable despair and death of the queer character in pre-Stonewall fiction. Death can be read as a metaphor, a punishment and deliverance, and the process of dying or journeying towards death is part of the pre-Stonewall homosexual character's rite of passage, hence an inevitable “moral” fate. From an exploration of coded language and ambiguous sexuality in Frankenstein and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” to Dorian Gray, the queer character is destined to a regimented fall and an inevitable death at the end of a given text. Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms portrays sometimes gay, often lesbian, and habitually queer characters without the inevitable; the author creates the birth of queer sexuality which leads his young heroes to discover their adolescent awareness. The main characters are budding teens who are different, queer, and often homosexual, and there is no attempt to explain the different personalities of Joel and Idabel, as they do not conform to typical gender representations. No matter how “unnatural” people may seem, in Capote's fiction the eccentric characters are typical. The author represents queerness as he indirectly critiques the adaptations of the gothic genre which have been used a myriad of times to express homosexuality and related destruction. Capote reconsiders particular aspects of the gothic mode through his parody of a Campy Southern-gothic style, as he frees what is queer and gives life to the homosexual discoveries of his young characters.

Over recent years a few studies have been done which move away from the condemning attitudes of the pre-Stonewall critics. Like Hassan's text, the two books by Helen S. Garson consider Other Voices, Other Rooms as an example of exceptional fiction. Garson's arguments focus on the novel as a piece of literary accomplishment rather than a disruptor in a conservative literary canon; Other Voices, Other Rooms is explored as a text which counters the conventional novel of the 1940s. Garson suggests that “Capote's novel was a piece of a new pattern in fiction, one that was described by terms such as narcissistic, grotesque, symbolic and aesthetic” (13). Like Garson, my explorations will embrace Capote's use of the grotesque and the narcissistic to highlight and de-code the text's important queer signs. Thus, my approaches are concerned with the manner in which Capote represents the grotesque, through his own combination of Gothic motifs and his use of Camp-style(s). Along with the parody of gothic themes and the advent of Camp, this paper will explore how, in his first novel, Capote's greatest accomplishment is the insubordination of gender and the expression of personal and sexual discovery for both Joel and Idabel.

Capote suggests a future of gay and lesbian identification for his protagonists through his use of gothic parody: the author builds from a tradition of representing sexuality within an unclear and partially veiled text to imply the queer natures of his heroes through their unorthodox and often eclectic behaviour. In the pages that follow, the setting of Skully's Landing will be examined with attention to gothic similarities which house the ambiguous settings for the text's queer characters. The following section will focus on how Capote recreates a gothic style of sexual representation: a little ghoulish, and basically unconventional, Capote first haunts desire, then Camps it, and creates a strange irony between what should be scary and what is humorous. The result is a type of literary birth as Other Voices, Other Rooms portrays the discoveries of its young and not so young queer heroes. Joel and Idabel's rites of passage are therefore both traditionally and non-traditionally American: Capote creates the search for identity within a seemingly conventional frame—the search for ancestry and the rite of passage—as the characters achieve sexual freedom through unconventional circumstances.

Since Capote playfully borrows aspects of gothic style, the contents of his first novel are often misread and the text is labelled as exclusively Southern-gothic. Of course this text is Southern-gothic historically, but with a particular flavour of its own as the author's efforts to counter his gothic style reveal a paradoxical structure, as the reader continuously shifts between gothic themes and a Camp sensibility. As the earlier critics consider this text Southern-gothic, they search for the gothic theme of good versus evil. Accordingly, the early critics associate the homosexual aspects of the text with darkness and destruction. It should be emphasized that the early critics focus on gothic oppositions of good and evil to lighten the stylistic and creative accomplishments of the Camp text, which lessen the importance of homosexual and queer representations in this late 1940s novel. Rather than approach the novel's representations of genre, gender, identity, and sexuality, the pre-Stonewall studies concentrate on (hetero)normative polar oppositions to condemn the homosexual as a psychologically unsound and deviant subject. With the combinations of gothic and Camp, the novel is bizarre, exciting and unique, especially if one considers Capote's presentation of the rite of passage, the search for identity, and the discovery of queer sexuality. The restructuring of gothic themes demonstrates Capote's rejection of trauma and destruction. Capote first introduces a gothic-type setting and possibly dark characters, then ends the ominous night with the bright sunshine of the day that follows, and the Campy journey that follows.

As one can survey in literature from Christopher Marlowe to Anne Rice, gothic themes have been used to express tragic representations of homosexuality. As Christian England deemed homosexuality a sin against God and the nation, the occult and generally nocturnal worlds of gothic fiction aided the representation of sexuality, desire and same-sex love in pre-Stonewall literature. A queer gothic, and arguably homosexual gothic, springs forth as early as Marlowe (especially if one considers themes of disillusionment, destruction and punishment) and by the end of the nineteenth century Wilde illustrates a particularly homosexual gothic in The Picture of Dorian Gray. By the time Capote had started to write, many writers had already established the gothic mode as a genre which plays an integral role in the representation of ambiguous physical liaisons between people of the same sex. Capote uses the gothic motifs of a midnight arrival, lurking mystery and threatening evil, however, he does not imitate or replicate in admiration. There is no Frankenstein-like doctor and his angst-ridden monster as the characters spring forth from an unconventional, night-time dream-scape to move beyond the destructive master and servant theme. Capote presents a Campy manipulation of the gothic, resulting in a particularly satirical Southern-gothic parody: rather than scary and deathly, everything and everyone is bizarre and queer. Other Voices, Other Rooms will not be explored as the “sadistic fantasy [or] masturbatory horror” that Leslie A. Fiedler condemned it as in the mid-nineteen-sixties, but as a revolutionary pre-Stonewall novel (135).

WILLIAM FAULKNER AND BRAM STOKER

Before exploring Capote's most important representations of queer sexuality—Joel Knox and Idabel Tompkins—I would like to clarify my interpretation of genre in Other Voices, Other Rooms and clearly illustrate Capote's combined use of gothic themes and Camp styles. The Southern-gothic style is the most detectable in the text; it is central to the illustrations of homosexuality. During the pre-Stonewall decades of the twentieth century, adopting a gothic style helped the homosexual writer to publish aspects of same-sex desire in more open—yet by no means out—prose texts. It is within such a study that one can read Capote's earlier writings as an “anti-realist protest,” which used gothic themes to present unreal characters in an almost surreal setting or background (Fiedler 135). Hence, the backdrop to this novel, the haunted-like mansion and the night-time arrival, demonstrates a reaction to a world which would not tolerate homosexuality in contemporary fiction, especially a positive one. It is from this Southern-gothic frame that Capote easily creates unusual heroes and their equally unorthodox sexual discoveries.

As a born and raised Southerner, Capote illustrates his influence from the popular Southern-gothic mode in early twentieth-century American literature. William Faulkner should be read as an influential predecessor, particularly in response to the overwhelming power of death in As I Lay Dying. Specifically, Faulkner's varying narratives in this novel present the occult as a force which overrides the everyday; the voice of the dead mother initiates the journey and haunts the text. Faulkner confidently displays a series of odd characters, strange happenings and often incomprehensible dialects. In this text, Faulkner's focus is on a number of teenaged characters, their rite of passage and their own experiences with death, disillusionment, and sexual discovery. Similar to Cash's journey and the findings that take place throughout Faulkner's story, Capote presents Joel and his search for origins, and both young characters grapple with their identities and lineage on a strange journey which reveals their true natures. Both authors write in a style of language which the reader may not completely understand, complete with dialects, accents and regional expressions. Like As I Lay Dying, Capote's text reveals the discovery of life and experience through an often unclear, yet creative story which only partially reveals the secret of each location and the protagonist's genealogy and personality. Moreover, in Faulkner's book, the voice of the past is the voice of the dead mother, as in Other Voices, Other Rooms the voice of Joel's past is the voice of a dying father: a voice the reader never hears except through the editing, slurring voice of Joel's strange cousin Randolph. The characters are brought together by the supposed death of Joel's father, Edward Sansom. In the Gothic tradition death is often a guiding force: in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Jekyll's fear of death motivates the creation of his elixir—which, ironically, brings him closer to his own death and ultimately destroys him—and in Dracula, Lucy's death not only reveals the reality of the vampire, but unites the vampire hunters. In Capote's novel, death motivates Joel's trip to Skully's Landing, as Joel must make contact with his father and discover his past, and arguable future, before it is too late. Aside from the motif of death and the unconventional narrative, the characters demonstrate the author's influence from Faulkner as both books display a diverse collection of misfits, and a mysterious journey filled with side-stepping interludes that reveal partial (arguably symbolic) sketches of each character. Unlike Faulkner, Capote has one official narrator: an omniscient voice with direct access into the thoughts and feelings of the story's many characters. This narrative style illustrates the eccentric personalities and the queer sexualities. As such, Capote's gothic opens the rusted gate of a not so haunted Castle, and displays not the vampire or monster but, as the following sections shall argue, the queer main characters of Joel, Idabel, and cousin Randolph.

Along with the impact of Faulkner and the tradition of the Southern-gothic, the other major gothic influence of Other Voices, Other Rooms is Bram Stoker and Dracula, and the motif of the haunted castle. Like Jonathan Harker, Joel Knox is prompted to go to a mysterious home, instigated by a letter, and rather than the discovery of the vampire and ominous, deadly anti-Christian blood worship, Joel finds a series of colourful vamps who help him transform his personal consciousness. In Dracula the reader never sees the original letter which prompts Harker to voyage to Transylvania, and Stoker's novel is told in an epistolary format: we read a series of letters, journal entries and newspaper clippings to find out what has happened and what is happening in the life of the sinister vampire Count. In Other Voices, Other Rooms, Joel receives his letter from his father, which turns out to actually have been written by cousin Randolph. Joel, like Jonathan, takes a long journey into the unknown, however, no wolves howl in Joel's new landscape, as he arrives at the mock-haunted castle of Skully's Landing. As well, Joel is included in a series of secrets, surprises and realizations, and rather than sending him to recuperate in a sanitorium, Joel's exposure to the unconventional realities of the Landing allow him to embrace the odd misfits of this new world and leads him to the discovery of his sexual difference. The secrets Joel discovers are far from ominous. Joel is brought away from the clandestine mysteriousness of the night to a bizarre, queer daytime drama.

The realities of the locale and its inhabitants are revealed by a series of eccentric characters, and the reader uncovers these secrets through varying voices in the narrative, particularly when the omniscient narrative gives way to dialogue, and the characters of Randolph and Idabel speak. These characters dramatically help the telling of Joel's story, as they illustrate the Camp style of the text, disclosing the realities of the mock-Southern-gothic environments as they slowly reveal a series of unconventional sexual identities. Joel is allowed to observe the diverse behaviour of queer personalities. From this experience, Joel will soon acknowledge his own sexual orientation. Rather than the deadly gothic monster, Joel's surprise is the gender diversity and the transvestism of Randolph (and presumably Joel's ill father), and from his discoveries Joel learns about his own sexuality. As Jonathan Harker enters the world of the vampire and never is the same, Joel enters the nurturing circus freakshow of Other Voices, Other Rooms and discovers aspects of his identity: through his new friends, Joel becomes involved with the carnivalesque characters and learns to accept his true self.

Unlike Jonathan, who never recovers from his contact with the vampire, the changes that affect Joel are part of his evolution and mark the journey from queer to gay consciousness. Through his manipulation of the vampire Stoker demonstrates the metaphor of queer sexuality, and with the vampy characters of Randolph and Miss Wisteria Capote articulates a more open version of queer sexual liaisons. Most of all, it is the night-time setting of Skully's Landing which allows the untraditional characters to emerge: in the gothic novel danger happens during the night, and in the spirit of midnight mystery Capote introduces the eccentricities of Skully's Landing. Rather than roaming graveyards for blood, these oddities turn out to be the drag-personas of Joel's parental figures, as well as the butch-girl personality of Joel's young counterpart, Idabel. To counter the night-time setting's relationship to Dracula, Capote alludes to his influence from Faulkner with the day time carnival of Southern misfits. Like Faulkner characters, Capote's creations are odd and sometimes difficult to understand. Faulkner's characters are sad victims of limited education and often intense personalities, as Joel and his friends are only partially understood because they can't articulate their true feelings. Capote only partially discloses the sexualities of his characters; readership and decoding the text is part of the consideration of queer representation in Other Voices, Other Rooms. Consequently, unlike Stoker or Faulkner, Capote's characters are illustrated as far less serious, although their positioning as queer, and at times homosexual, subjects is an important one in the history of the gay and lesbian novel. Hence, Capote borrows from gothic literature's creation of the unconventional setting to give birth to strange characters, and express the queer sexuality of his young heroes.

SKULLY'S LANDING

As I have indicated in the preceding paragraphs, the most pivotal Southern-gothic setting is Skully's Landing. Negative criticism denotes the name of this location as an example of death, or as John Aldridge has argued the “aborted symbolism of evil and guilt” (194). As my introduction suggests, the application of the general, vague binaries of good and evil and innocence and guilt are difficult to successfully prove since there is no presence of puritanical light in Other Voices Other Rooms. Skully's Landing is a setting where the “good” pole is absent, and the “evil” pole is reconstructed to portray the dark, the sinister, and the dead or the deadly, as the not-so-sinister, the eccentric and queer. Rather than absolute Southern-gothic, Capote uses parody and Camp to question his use of gothic themes. Skully's Landing can be read in a series of ways which confirm the text's ironic use of the gothic genre: (i) the Landing re-creates the classic gothic locale as the haunted-type house; (ii) Capote's construction of such a space is particularly paradoxical, as he reconstructs the clandestine into a less dangerous and humorous version of the bizarre; and (iii), which is the result of one and two, Skully's Landing presents aspects of mystery without fear, and this new, arguable mock-Southern-gothic locale functions as a post-gothic closet which hides the transvestism of Joel's father and uncle, and leads the way to Joel and Idabel's queer consciousness. Accordingly, once Joel is a part of Skully's Landing, he must confront the queer sexuality and personalities of his father and uncle, as well as the queerness of the many other characters in the text. Experiencing this diversity, Joel begins his journey towards the discovery of his own queer sexuality.

Stephen Adams argues that the gothic and homosexuality share key similarities under the scornful gaze of conservative criticism, most specifically the manner in which both are part of the lurking perverse nature of Capote's narrative (56–88). I would like to suggest that although Capote wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms during a time when homosexuality was judged within the negative confines of Christian moralism, he creates a confident manipulation of what is gothic and who is homosexual. This text can therefore be read as rebellion against the confines of contemporary society and homosexual representation in literature. As a result, the gothic-type setting is not life threatening—but freakish—and the queer character is not abnormal or deviant, but a standard part of such an environment. The pessimism and compulsive heterosexism in the literary representation that Adams discusses is not part of Capote's first novel, since the world and the genre are parodies of other fictional worlds. However, Capote does demonstrate the entrapment of desire in sociological and cultural realities of the text's time. Much like Dracula's towering mansion—the Count's safety from the world of light—Skully's Landing provides Joel with what it provides for Randolph and Edward: an escape and a protection from the absent yet present every day, where diversity and sexuality would stimulate unjust societal treatment in the real world. This unseen world exists beyond the pages of the text. Although the Landing functions as a type of closet for the adults, it leads Joel into the freer world which the reader experiences throughout the story: in this queer pastoral where Joel and Idabel flourish.

FROM QUEER TO GAY, LESBIAN, AND DRAG QUEEN

JOEL

When Joel wakes up at Skully's Landing, he remembers his one and only previous visit when he felt that “the walls were alive with the tossing shadows of candleflames” (26). He remembers the Landing as strange and old, and as he looks around he recollects the supposedly ominous surroundings which welcomed him at midnight (26). As he wakes up, he thinks about how he was led through the house by Miss Amy, up the steep stairs with a “robber['s] stealth,” as his guide partially revealed the pre-modern decor with the feeble light provided by her kerosene lantern (26). Capote re-creates the haunted castle, although its haunts do not threaten Joel or possess any real, life endangering secret powers, like Dracula's Castle in Transylvania. The gothic style of an unknown and shadowy locale welcome Joel, not by the proprietor himself (Joel's absent father), but by a type of mock-gothic servant who shows Joel to his room at the Landing. Joel wakes up, sits in wonder, and thinks about his new home and its mysterious inhabitants: he feels no fear, although the narrator illustrates a setting which could have been perceived as haunting. What follows Joel's arrival is not a nightmare-filled sleep (like Jonathan Harker's in the early pages of Dracula) but a content, full sleep which he awakes from early in the afternoon (28). The supposedly menacing night almost instantaneously breaks into a warm, Southern day, and what was set up as gothic becomes carnival-like: night-time haunts give way to day time eccentricities, and lead Joel to his own self-discoveries. Capote couples aspects of gothic nuances with a Camp sensibility which simultaneously disarms the danger of the night and allows for the developments of the bright and gay day that follows. By overriding the gothic motifs of the unknown inhabitant, the haunted house, and a candle-lit midnight arrival, Capote takes the threat out of the setting of Skully's Landing and introduces the potentially frightening as both intriguing and comforting, as Joel's long, restful sleep insinuates.

Capote crosses the two different influences from the gothic and Camp by combining gothic nuances with similarities to L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. Baum's book is a gothic story for children, fully equipped with an evil witch, a haunted castle, and a lot of magic; moreover, Baum illustrates a battle between the forces of good over the forces of evil. Like gothic fiction, both Baum and Capote provide the reader with a new, mysterious setting, as both novels (and the Camp-cult musical that followed Baum's book) provide both the naive Dorothy and Joel with new, odd, and interesting friends, who confirm that neither Joel nor Dorothy is as odd as they think when compared to the new people they meet. The paradoxic representations of questionable danger which proceed Joel's night-time arrival are lessened with the sunny day that follows and the Campy style Capote uses to present the characters and circumstances which take place during this day. By combining gothic motifs with Camp, Capote begins to represent the sexual diversity and the queer personalities in Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Like the vampires that have no need for mortal necessities of the toilet, Miss Amy informs Joel, “we haven't modern plumbing facilities. Randolph is opposed to contrivances of that sort” (28). The absence of modernity is part of Randolph's eclectic tastes, not only aligning the setting with the haunted locations of nineteenth-century fiction, but signifying Randolph's difference through his inability to conform to basic technological realities. Joel finds himself as a natural part of this strange setting, bidding Miss Amy compliment to her ghostly hair, which is striped like a skunk's: oddly, Joel informs her that he finds it to be “a nice colour” (29, Capote's italics). Miss Amy's skunk-like appearance signifies questionable nocturnal habits, as Joel's almost out-of-place compliment balances the gothic surrounding with an almost Campy remark. Due to the author's use of italics, the truthfulness of this compliment is to be questioned by the reader as the italics are indicators of a Campy drawl, which adds to the specifically Southern style of the Camp Capote employs. This sequence also demonstrates how Joel is not threatened by Skully's Landing and its inhabitants. Rather, Joel's ability to accept the strange world of the Landing illustrates that Joel feels at home in his new, strange surroundings, as he is also different from the conventional world.

Joel's new environment is hardly threatening, and once he awakes from his restful sleep, the Landing is illustrated as eccentric and unique. The world Capote depicts before the Landing is a type of Southern redneck environment, and Joel's interactions with the people in this setting exhibits how he is different from them—this will be explored in the following subsection. When he arrives at the Landing he feels no fear towards his stepmother or the spooky environment, and from his deep sleep he awakes. He falls into sleep, emphasized as sleep comes to him by “falling … falling … FALLING!” (25). Aside from denoting a type of dream-like unconsciousness, the emphasis on falling illustrates that Joel falls from somewhere else, a place which is presumably more conventional. Like Dorothy who falls from a Kansas farm to a colourful world of music and danger, Joel finds himself in a freer setting once he awakes in Skully's Landing. Capote brings on the light of day by sighting an imaginary, unexplained “crocodile [which] exploded in sunshine” (25). I would like to read this part of the text as deliberately symbolic, and consider the exploding crocodile the destruction of a monstrous threat, alleviated with the arrival of sunshine. The crocodile's fate in the daylight is much like the vampire, who burns up in an immediate gust of fire when faced with arrival of the sun. In Other Voices, Other Rooms what is threatening is put to rest with the arrival of daylight, as the Southern-gothic surroundings give way to the Campy, queer day that lies ahead. Ironically, Randolph and Edward are paralleled to the vampire, and like the crocodile who explodes in the sunshine, they are confined to Skully's Landing during the day. In return, for isolated, brief moments, they show their feminine personalities during the evening's interludes. Joel is led away from the Landing during the day, principally by Idabel, and the day reveals a collection of queer characters, as the night partially exposes the drag personas of Joel's uncle (as well as his father). Like the crocodile, the possible threat of this new landing is put to rest, as Joel's new home poses no threat as the new, sunny day brings him closer to his self-discovery.

As the novel unfolds, it is apparent that Joel is both mystified and captivated by the secrets of the Landing. Capote's mock-gothic is embraced by the main characters, and thereby emphasizes the relationship between Southern-gothic and satire. Joel does not try to flee from or battle the vampy characters in this surrounding, but he is caught in a spell by them, fascinated and entranced. Skully's Landing, cousin Randolph and Idabel teach Joel how to settle in, how to feel at ease, even in front of odd or seemingly terrifying things. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Randolph and Idabel teach Joel to not only embrace queerness, but to not feel estranged. By combining gothic nuances with a definite Camp style, Capote emphasizes a liaison between his characters and a queer interpretation: the queer characters are part of an unclear, only partially exposed narrative which can only become more clear as the text progresses.

When Joel wakes from his deep slumber, a magical rite of passage begins as Joel meets a variety of different people. As The Wizard of Oz tells the story of four people and their personal triumphs, Other Voices, Other Rooms tells the story of a similar search. In Dracula, when Jonathan recovers in the European convalescent home, Mina brings him home, and when they return to England nothing is the same. Jonathan has been touched by the sexual unconscious of the vampire sisters, as Joel has been touched by the sexual inversion of the Drag Queen “sisters,” which causes him to evolve past gender restrictions to discover his queerness. Joel too will never be the same after his visit to his father's, but his haven is antithetical to the hell that Jonathan, like most gothic heroes, must go through. When Joel wakes, Miss Amy, Randolph and Idabel—who are certainly more like Dorothy's friends in Oz than the vampire sisters of subconscious desire in Dracula—show him a world which changes him dramatically.

With Joel, Capote presents a queer adolescent protagonist younger than Dorian Gray and a little older than Dorothy. By creating a character as an almost child and not quite adult, Capote avoids confronting the more complex issues of sexuality and identity which Randolph's sexuality and cross-dressing embodies. Instead, like Idabel, Joel's characterization is about identity and a rebellion against fixed gender norms. Throughout the text, Capote overthrows all gender restrictions as he destructs the limitations of specifically masculine or feminine character traits. The circus of outlandish characters not only represent an unconventional world but they all emphasize the difference which is at the centre of Joel's characterization: all of these characters embody traits, either physical or part of their personality, which articulate gender insubordination, gender inversion, and/or queer desire. Thus, each character's difference(s) can be read as signifiers for their queer sexuality, and, in the case of Joel, his homosexuality.

The excitement Joel feels to the many diverse personalities and queer personas—such as Miss Wisteria, Miss Roberta and cousin Randolph—lead to the awakening of his own sexual awareness. Rather than sexual interaction and possible interpretations of physical intimacy, Capote expresses sexual awakening through the development of adolescent behaviour. Consequently, through the people he meets, Joel learns to accept the sexual insubordination of his new surroundings, as he slowly begins to express his own queerness. I emphasize the idea of consciousness or personal awakening as a coming of age and a crucial part of homosexual representation in this text because Joel's realizations come about through exposure to the queer gender rebelliousness of Idabel and Randolph, rather than a homosexual love affair with another character. Consequently, Joel's discovery is a queer-sexual awakening, rather than sexual experience. Joel acknowledges his new friends' queerness as he slowly begins to discover himself. Capote's most important contribution to pre-Stonewall literature is his characters' flamboyant, colourful personas, and how Joel learns tolerance and self-acceptance through his interaction with the wide variety of eclectic and often readably queer people. The characters in this revolutionary text demonstrate that gender typology has no bearing on the queer consciousness that Capote illustrates; as the title implies, the sexual Other is very different from prescribed visions of masculine or feminine gender restrictions. As a result, Joel has the chance to rethink what society has prescribed for him as a young man, and by identifying with the queer personalities of his new friends and family, Joel has the opportunity to embrace his own sexuality in a more open environment.

IDABEL

As the previous sub-section has illustrated, two principal story lines (and their related shorter plots) are part of the portrayal of Joel's coming of age: (i) his experiences with Idabel Tompkins, and (ii) his cousin Randolph (to be discussed in the next sub-section). Idabel's place in the text serves a faux-heterosexual story line, where the traditional reader is fooled by Joel's interest in Idabel. This is not to say that Joel has no legitimate feelings for Idabel; however, his feelings need to be considered within the concerns of this reading. Idabel may fill the gap of supposed crush for Joel, but as Capote reveals and as I shall argue, Idabel functions as a signifier for queer identification, for both herself and for Joel. As tomboy she breaks free from the stereotypical limitations of the little girl, and discovers her own sexuality. This is critical for Joel; with Idabel Joel witnesses first-hand homosexual identification, love, and coupling, as portrayed through Idabel's liaison with Miss Wisteria. Joel does not trail behind Idabel with a secret romantic interest, but identifies and bonds with her as a homosexual counterpart. Capote makes this clear when Joel first sees Idabel:

The skinny girl with the fiery, chopped-off red hair swaggered inside, and stopped dead still, her face was flat, and rather impertinent; a network of big ugly freckles spanned her nose. Her eyes, squinty and bright green, moved swiftly from face to face, but showed no sign of recognition; they paused a cool instant on Joel, then travelled elsewhere.

(18)

It seems highly unlikely that the above description is meant to imply any sexual fascination with Idabel. Rather, Joel focuses on Idabel's non-conventional appearance, specifically the way her presentation is very different from a conservative description of an adolescent girl. The attention given to Idabel's gender difference and the strength of her demeanour signifies Joel's attraction to her, and represents Joel's desire to establish a friendship with someone like himself. Capote places particular emphasis on Idabel's boyishness to counter Joel's girlishness. Joel instantly recognizes this gender insubordination. Subtly, yet clearly, the author creates an association between these young characters and the common queer-kinship that links them.

Idabel is portrayed as not attractive in a traditionally girlish manner, and like Joel she shares a type of androgyny. Her description is the counterpart to Joel's appearance. Like Idabel, Joel has been perceived as a queer boy by Radclif, the redneck truck driver. This happens when Joel first arrives in Noon City and is searching for his father's mysterious abode:

He [Radclif] eyed the boy over the rim of his beer glass, not caring much for the looks of him. He had his notions of what a “real” boy should look like, and this kid somehow offended them. He was too pretty, too delicate and fairskinned; each of his features was shaped with a sensitive accuracy, and a girlish tenderness softened his eyes, which were brown and very large.

(6)

Like Idabel, Joel's description is emphasized through the impression he makes on the other people of the town, specifically the androgynous qualities of his appearance. His lack of gender conventions and the absence of specifically masculine traits are like Idabel's absence of exclusively feminine characteristics. Both Idabel and Joel embody both forms of opposite gender conventions, from Joel's girlish completion and gaze, to Idabel's boyish hair and stance. Capote specifically marks these characters' queerness through the series of visible traits, which signify their homosexual natures. Capote creates the principal characters of Other Voices, Other Rooms as reactions to gender norms, and Idabel and Joel's lack of traditional gender traits are important literary accomplishments. The confident gender rebelliousness of these characters and the homosexual natures which are subsequently disclosed is not done on a regular basis until the 1960s: with the exception of Capote, major American writers, such as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, have employed gothic motifs to represent the homosexual as a dangerous, fatally destined contemporary monster. Not until the 1960s would another major author confidently portray young homosexuals with the open, creative style that Capote does in 1948. In this text, the naturalness of Idabel and Joel's own gender differences challenge conventional gender norms. The pairing together of these two should not be read as a type of freaky romantic liaison, rather, Idabel and Joel's friendship illustrates the mutual attraction between sexual others and their ability to gather personal strength in the company of one another. As a modern, Southern American approach to gender inversion, Idabel is similar to Radclyffe Hall's Stephen Gordon from The Well of Loneliness, as Joel is a version of a young Dorian Gray. Capote thus borrows not only from traditional nineteenth-century gothic tales, but, his principal characters echo the very queer constructions of Hall and Wilde, characters and stories that crystallized queer representations until the 1960s. Most of all, Capote's characters live in a much freer and more colourful environment than either of their English ancestors.

Capote introduces his commentary on traditionally masculinist typology through Joel's early interactions with Radclif the truck driver. As Joel and Radclif get acquainted, “Joel imagined a queerness in the driver's tone” (11). Capote's text instantly signifies that either Joel's perception of Radclif or the driver himself is queer. Moreover, Joel's consequence for not being boyish enough and for desiring the mysterious Landing and its implications comes from the aggressive Radclif, fully equipped with sexual undertones: “Yessir, if I was your Pa I'd take down your britches and muss you up a bit” (8). To compliment Capote's use of parody, the butch behaviour of his characterization of Radclif comes across as equally strange, satirical, and queer. The author displays the excessive unnaturalness of extreme masculinity; to emphasize this critique, Radclif's comment signifies a satiric hint of pederastic, homoerotic “punishment.” What is supposed to be straight is seemingly not, as this sequence introduces and foreshadows the queerness to come.

In the spirit of reversing traditional gender roles, it is not Radclif but Idabel who musses Joel up, a little later on in the story. This takes place during Joel and Idabel's outing to the bathing pond, a sequence which marks the signalling moment of their homosexual natures: Joel tries to kiss Idabel, and winds up in a fight with her. The sequence begins with Idabel washing Joel's hair, “without clothes,” and to Joel “her figure was, if anything, more boyish” (133). Even though Idabel is a girl, Capote plays with undercurrents of male-male erotics through a description of Idabel which marks her form and her mannerisms as conventionally boyish. Idabel proceeds to tell a joke, one Joel has to inquire about as he can not understand the meaning, and Joel feels that Idabel “was imitating someone” (134) and asks her who. She tells him her masculine model is “Billy Bob.” Along with Idabel's boyish physique, she reveals her masculine prototype, someone she attempts to manner herself after. Idabel then tells Joel about her softer side, that she does cry, but instructs Joel not to tell anyone. Joel feels close to Idabel, understands a kinship has formed and thinks, “I am your good true friend,” but instead of saying it he “kissed her cheek” (134). Opposed to stating his appreciation towards Idabel, Joel conveys his feelings in a more traditionally feminine exchange of a friendship kiss, which Idabel reacts against with more of her little-boy angst. Idabel grabs Joel by the hair and they begin to fight:

The dark glasses fell off, and Joel, falling back, felt them crush beneath and cut his buttocks.

“Stop,” he panted, “please stop, I'm bleeding.”

(75, 76)

As Joel assumes a submissive position to Idabel and gives up, she ends the confrontation and cleans out his cut as she states rather flatly, “You'll be alright” (76). Joel passively apologizes about breaking the glasses and Idabel replies, “It's not your fault […] Maybe someday I'll win another pair” (76). Strangely, Joel's first “sexual encounter” is part of his coming of age and results with his bloody buttocks; Capote is making a crude-Campy mockery of the loss of gay male innocence. As well, the gender conventions are aptly established as Idabel states how she “won” her glasses, much like a boy would at a fair.

What Capote manoeuvres in this section is a very careful and clever manipulation of gender-role play. The traditionally fixed binary categories of masculine and feminine are overthrown with these diverse heroes, as stereotypically aggressive and passive roles alternate: what is considered as masculine behaviour is attributed to Idabel and what is deemed feminine is executed through Joel. Joel is sentimental, he thinks about his devotion to Idabel and finally summons up enough courage to compliment her with a light kiss. Rather than asking what the kiss was for, she presumes it is her cue to rough Joel up, and does. Capote highlights Joel's bloody buttocks as a mocking gesture towards virginity or purity, something Idabel taints with her aggressive physical interaction. Capote makes abrupt statements on gender boundaries through the representation of boy and girl, as he mocks heterosexual courtship and physical violation. By reversing the gender roles, Capote demonstrates the difficulties with regimented constructions of male and female, and the complexities that these limited gender norms initiate in a homosexual rite of passage. Through Idabel and Joel, Capote illustrates how gender typology just doesn't work, and how heterosexist restrictions have no place between these characters. The author ridicules gender roles through Camp, where excess, absurdity, and humour overthrow what is supposedly fixed and unchangeable.

The Campy descriptions of physical appearances and related personalities can be read as a well thought-out reaction to the limitations of conventional gender representation. Capote's carnival of characters have distinct physical attributes and mannerisms which emphasize post-gothic grotesqueness with a humorous Camp excess: introduced as lurking night-time figures, the text reveals that the sea of misfits are far from dangerous. Moreover, the Camping of the gothic and the subsequent characterizations in this text exhibit the queer personalities and allows the author to further develop certain characters—principally Joel and Idabel—as lesbian and gay. The distortion of the physical appearances and the excessive mannerisms is Capote's particular Camp sensibility. Through his Campy style, Capote emphasizes the sexual diversity of his characters, thus marking the pre-Stonewall political consciousness of the text.

Capote introduces lesbian rivalry through Miss Roberta's scornful approach to Idabel. Roberta is very masculine, introduced early in the text with mannish movements and “dark fuzz” covering her arms (16). She is always furious with Idabel. Towards the end of the novel Capote further mocks her physical appearance when she kicks Joel and Idabel out of her diner. The author describes Roberta, “toying with the long black hair extending from her chin-wart […] scratching under her armpits like a baboon” (105). Capote draws particular attention to Roberta's unusual behaviour and appearance not to simply poke fun at her, but to demonstrate that Roberta has no shame in regard to her unladylike appearance. Moreover, the descriptive insult—her ape-like conduct—is also a signifier of primal desires: she is un-evolved, she can embrace the instinctual and as such her hostility towards Idabel can be read as her own, internalized homophobia. Other Voices, Other Rooms does not try to explain or excuse gender insubordination. Rather, this text embraces gender difference and exhibits its queer personalities with confidence.

What happens after the scene when Idabel and Joel have their fight is the disclosure of Idabel's sexuality. Capote demonstrates this through her attraction to Miss Wisteria. When Joel and Idabel leave the diner they go to the fairgrounds and meet Miss Wisteria. Joel asks Miss Wisteria to join him and Idabel for soda, Miss Wisteria replies with a whole lot of Southern Camp, as the author emphasizes as she lisps (rather than declares), “Well, this is surely a treat” (106). As Miss Wisteria takes out her lipstick to freshen-up her appearance, we find out that the treat isn't just for Miss Wisteria. Curiously, “a queer thing” happens to Idabel:

borrowing the lipstick, [Idabel] painted an awkward clownish line across her mouth, and Miss Wisteria, clapping her little hands, shrieked with a kind of sassy pleasure. Idabel met this merriment with a dumb adoring smile. Joel could not understand what had taken her. Unless it was that the Midget had cast a spell. But as she continued to fawn over tiny yellow-haired Ms Wisteria it came to him that Idabel was in love.

(106, 107)

For Idabel, Miss Wisteria is as a type of good lesbian witch who “had cast a spell” on Idabel (107). This spell is successful since Idabel has been queer all along; the type of spell which ignites her homosexual desire is triggered by the outlandish, overdone Camp charm of Miss Wisteria. As the mysterious spell results with Idabel's lesbian desire she crosses the threshold between little girl and adolescent: as her appearance is never girlish—even with lipstick—her desires are never heterosexual. It takes the bizarre, Campy, and strangely glamorous Miss Wisteria to inflame Idabel's passions. Once the spell has been cast, Idabel is sent into a tranquil state of delirious love (107). Unlike Joel's attempt to kiss Idabel, there is no hostile approach to Miss Wisteria, and contrary to her previous characterization, Idabel has become sheepish under Miss Wisteria's spell. Throughout this section Miss Wisteria repeats “charmed” a number of times, and indeed, Idabel is charmed. However, through this sequence something happens to Joel, and Capote makes an interesting comment on Joel's sexual identity as well. Although Joel wants Idabel to come back to him, thinking “I love you” (108), he does nothing about this urge, and, for a brief moment he finds himself the subject of Miss Wisteria's desire, something he does not react to. Consequently, Miss Wisteria not only demonstrates Idabel's lesbian desire, but through Joel's rejection of her advances the text implies Joel's sexual orientation.

COUSIN RANDOLPH

Once Joel witnesses Idabel's crush on Miss Wisteria he flees to Skully's Landing in search of his eclectic cousin Randolph and the mysterious Lady: who is, presumably, Randolph and/or Edward in drag. Through Joel's interaction with Randolph, Capote demonstrates Joel's liaison to his cousin, gesturing towards Joel's own homosexual nature. Although one can argue that Joel is queer throughout the text, his queerness and the possibilities of his latter homosexuality is confirmed by cousin Randolph, as the novel ends. The many adventure-like story lines can be read as Idabel and Joel's coming of age, and due to their young ages, each of these characters establishes their sexual identity through a queer adult. As Idabel's lesbian awakening takes place through her attraction towards Miss Wisteria, Joel's sexuality is confirmed at the end of the text with his cousin Randolph. Throughout the story his friendship with his cousin signifies his sexual orientation: in an early scene when Joel and Randolph are in the privacy of Randolph's boudoir, the narrator explains how puzzled Joel is with the mysteries of the Lady in the window. What “she” means and who she is, as the author also demonstrates, is cleverly manipulated through Randolph's ambiguous response (or lack of response) to Joel's questions. Joel asks Randolph, “I saw that Lady, and she was real, wasn't she?” Randolph replies with “his loose kimono swaying about him”; “[a] matter of viewpoint, I suppose” (52). These words are some of the most striking words in the text, for as much of the criticism has revealed, viewpoint has a lot to do with reading this novel. The early critics label this book gothic and “terrifying”; however, Other Voices, Other Rooms is hardly scary, as the text mocks style, language, and human behaviour to illustrate diverse sexual awakenings. Through the intensity of Capote's Camp style, readership dictates viewpoint, as well as interpretation; to the unwilling reader Joel may not be that queer, and certainly not gay, and Skully's Landing might somehow be frightening, the Lady in the window with the kimono and the yellow wig may indeed be a “ghost” (52). However, to the inquisitive reader Joel has to be queer, the Landing can't be anything but a Camp parody, and, accordingly, the “lady” in the window must be Edward Samson in drag (52).

Rather than absolutely homosexual, I would like to emphasize Joel's queerness is a signifier of his still developing homosexuality. Joel's lack of typical boyish mannerisms coupled with his fascination with Randolph and the mysterious lady of Skully's Landing allow for Joel (and the text) to be read as queer: by queer I am implying that many aspects of this book are simply not straight, and like the unknown lady, sexuality is in disguise. As such, the uncertainties of this text are subject to readings which explore homosexual themes. It seems harder to say that Joel is gay all the time, but it is a little more accommodating to focus on Joel as different, as queer, and, in my consideration, as a young homosexual. When Joel wakes up during the last morning of the text, the narrator exclaims that Joel “was in love” (2–26). However, the reader is never privileged with the subject of Joel's love. “He hugged himself,” writes Capote, confirming that Joel has found happiness in the drag house of his cousin and absent father (125). Unlike Idabel who falls in love with Miss Wisteria, we do not know who Joel is in love with: maybe Randolph or perhaps Joel is in love with his own self, alive and awake, celebrating himself in a Whitman-like manner, or a type of narcissistic self-fascination.

Although Joel has finally accepted Randolph, Capote advises the reader that Randolph will have “no part of him [Joel]” (125). Randolph's affections for Joel are consistently ambiguous. Perhaps the above reference is meant to imply that Randolph will not turn Joel into a Baroque lady, that Randolph will not seduce Joel, and transform him into a drag queen. Nonetheless, and perhaps most importantly, Randolph's double identity complicates Joel's position and his sexual awakening. Randolph and Joel have different types of sexualities, although both are presumably queer. Due to the evasive and illusive language of the last pages of Other Voices, Other Rooms, pinpointing what exactly happens (and what will happen) to Joel is difficult. However, it appears that this mysteriousness is part of Capote's narrative technique: through the ambiguity of the mysterious Lady, the absent father, and Randolph's strange mannerisms, Capote draws a differential separation between Randolph's queer transvestism and Joel's homosexuality. In Randolph Joel does not necessarily find a homosexual big brother. As Capote demonstrates through Joel's comfort in his new home and his relationship with his cousin, it appears that in Randolph and the mysterious Lady (Randolph and/or Edward in disguise) Joel finds a subject of Diva admiration. As such, Randolph represents a moment in the contemporary homosexual's rite of passage and the subject of gay fascination is found in a thrilling, glamorous, mysterious and often pathetic woman.

More than experienced friend, Randolph can be read as Joel's Louise Brooks, his Marlene Dietrich, his Joan Crawford, his Marilyn Monroe, his Liza Minelli, or his Madonna. Therefore, Capote gives birth to the discovery of homosexual identity, rather than the tradition in pre-Stonewall fiction which almost predestines the discovery of homosexuality with despair or death. Capote implies an interesting comment on homosexuality in the twentieth century: the male homosexuality is not only played out through sexual discovery but at times through the admiration of the gendered performances of the fabulous and glamorous (wo)man.

“I am me,” says Joel to Randolph, “we are the same people” (125). Randolph has no response, and instead walks in circles as though he “were in a trance of some kind” (227).

And Joel realized then the truth; he saw how helpless Randolph was: more paralyzed than Mr. Sansom, more childlike than Miss Wisteria, what else could he do, once outside and alone, but describe a circle, the zero of his nothingness?

(125)

In the text's style of partially disclosed homosexuality the narrative further demonstrates its paradoxical nature: if Joel is happy with himself, a self which is reflective of his cousin, why is Randolph in a gloomy state and why does Joel consider Randolph a zero? This point is responded to when Amy arrives, furious with Randolph, but, of course, not stating why. Arguably, Amy considers the relationship between Randolph and Joel as the development of cross-dressing identification, something she obviously scorns. Amy wants “the truth” to be known (126) and she plans to do anything to reveal the truth. Her threats are severe and hysterical, “I'll go to the sheriff, I'll travel around the country, I'll make speeches” (126). And what will such tactics resolve, wonders the puzzled reader, what would the flaky Miss Amy tell the Sheriff and how would her complaints be interpreted? Does Capote respond to any of the mysteries he introduces throughout the text? In response to Idabel, Capote reveals a lot more than with Joel and his absent father. However, with Joel, our answers must be derived from the complex, illusive language: the evasive, suggestive language hints at interpretative solutions, attracting a particular reading by a specific audience who can read between the lines and come up with a queer theory about Joel's journey.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The novel, rather appropriately, does not have a conventional—hence final—ending; it is up to the reader to isolate, speculate and question, and arrive at only partial responses. As well, both Joel and Idabel identify with a queer adult, but neither receive support. Miss Wisteria and cousin Randolph remain distant from their young proteges. Nonetheless, in Other Voices, Other Rooms the homosexual characters live and there is no dark, sinister, morally conscious death or killing. Through this text, Capote gives birth to queer representation, related homosexual themes and homosexual developments: the author thereby demonstrates his reaction to the type-casted melo-traumas of his contemporary portrayals of homosexuality in literature. Throughout this novel Capote plays with ambiguity, illustrating a lack of specificity in the queer, homosexual, and drag-like personalities. As Idabel Tompkins is most definitely a young lesbian, Joel Knox is just as different, certainly queer, and for the correct audience, a little homosexual and possibly a soon to be drag queen.