[In the following essay, originally published in 1964, Malin contends that Capote's fiction has descended from Gothic supernaturalism into camp.]

Perhaps the best clue to Capote's talent is one line from “Shut a Final Door”: “All our acts are acts of fear.” In such early stories as “A Tree of Night,” “The Headless Hawk,” and “Master Misery,” he presents characters who are afraid to stare at their furious shadows. Why are they afraid? What causes their exaggerated, childish reactions? We don't know. Capote refuses to analyze his characters—it is hard to call them people—he takes their fear as a psychological axiom, not grounding it in classic Freudian theories. In a way this is his most significant insight: he realizes that fear, never completely understood, simply lies with us—waiting, like Henry James' Beast, to spring at our throats.

Of course, we can label Capote “exotic,” “infantile,” or “primitive.” But there is no doubt that he disturbs us. He weakens our daylight control by means of his ability to image fear—even to celebrate it. The high point of his Gothic art is probably “The Headless Hawk.” Here is one striking passage:

Here is a hall without exit, a tunnel without end. Overhead, chandeliers sparkle, and wind-bent candles float on currents of air. Before him is an old man rocking in a rocking chair, an old man with yellow-dyed hair, powdered cheeks, kewpie-doll lips: Vincent recognizes Vincent. Go away, screams Vincent, the young and handsome, but Vincent, the old and horrid, creeps forward on all fours and climbs spiderlike onto his back. Threats, pleas, blows, nothing will dislodge him.

This passage deliberately distorts reality; it marries the normal and the fantastic. Consider, for example, the use of “kewpie-doll lips” or the “artificial” sparkles of the chandelier. The hero—it is his dream—is as “unnatural” as his surroundings. He, too, is unstable; his identity is not fixed. Vincent is so broken, all his acts remain only acts of fear—that he becomes two creatures locked in never-ending, destructive embrace.

It is obvious that we cannot surrender to Capote's fiction unless we “suspend our disbelief.” Although we have grown up, we must believe once more in goblins and witches. Such belief is “religious.” Capote forces us to recognize the other world—as Vincent recognizes Vincent. We cannot remain here and now; we must go through this “hall without exit.” The Gothic supernaturalism is our substitute for traditional religion—our primitive ritual to ward off fear. It has not been noticed before, but Capote deals often with archetypal situations. “A Tree of Night” has a “false” Lazarus, risen from the dead. “Master Misery” has ironic confessions to a Christ-like figure. These stories may invert Christianity—they are superstitious, pagan, and nihilistic—but they also affirm the miraculous danger of life.

After his first two books—Other Voices, Other Rooms, and A Tree of Night—Capote fled from his true muse. He decided to become cute and glib. (Of course, he displayed these tendencies earlier, but he did not yield to them.) Instead of dark, “headless” truths he gave us sunny reportage. It is certainly surprising that various critics—including Mark Schorer and Alfred Kazin—applauded this transformation. They actually liked Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Muses Are Heard!

When we reread these works, we realize that Capote has joined the yea-sayers. He preaches LOVE. Holly Golightly may inspire others—she is wild and pathetic—but I think she is more artificial than Vincent. She says the oddest things and loves funny cats. The charming cast of our Porgy and Bess troupe in Russia is also excessively picturesque.

Can we account for the change? If we assume that Capote once believed in fear as the “aboriginal demon”—D. H. Lawrence's phrase—we can surmise that he found he could no longer control it. He ran away, covering his tracks. In Breakfast at Tiffany's fear lurks in the background, but it masquerades as superficial Angst. The following exchange shows us how far Capote has descended:

“You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what it is. You've had that feeling?”

“Quite often. Some people call it angst.”

“All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?”

“Well, a drink helps.”

“I've tried that. I've tried aspirin, too. … What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.”

Childish fear has become fashionable alienation. Incomplete exorcisms have become pleasure outings to Tiffany. Capote, in other words, is giving us false religion—one which soothes our souls with glittering generalities. Thus he is “popular”—he can sell this positive stuff to Hollywood.

Or he can write scintillating gossip for Holiday and The New Yorker: interviews with Marlon Brando—does he have a demon?—or travelogues on Ischia or Brooklyn Heights. His gift for dialogue remains; his poetic phrases still have “style.” But there is little substance in these essays. Only at rare times does fear enter to save the situation, to reclaim his deep, unwilling involvement. At the end of “A House on the Heights”—even the title is annoying—Capote pictures himself walking past the “turf” of the Cobras:

Their eyes, their asleep sick insolent eyes swerved on me as I climbed the street. I crossed to the opposite curb; then knew, without needing to verify it, that the Cobras had uncoiled and were sliding toward me, I heard them whistling; and the children hushed, the skip-rope ceased swishing. Someone—a pimpled purple birthmark bandit-masked the lower half of his face—said, “Hey yuh, Whitey, lemmeseeduhcamra.” Quicken one's step? Pretend not to hear. But every alternative seemed explosive.

The passage presents fear again, without explaining it. (Is he courting attack in this scene?) The rhythms quicken; the style moves—perhaps too decorously. But, ironically enough, Capote ends the essay with his safe return to the pretty house. It would be good to see him outside again, pursued by ominous footsteps—like Sylvia in “Master Misery.”

The narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany's says at one point: “the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul—desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.” I hope that Capote returns to his Gothic muse, especially if he can, once again, worship fear in complex and courageous rituals.