Search results
Semi-autobiographical short story
- "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote is a semi-autobiographical short story, recalling a period in the 1930s when the young Capote lived with his elderly, eccentric cousin in rural Alabama. The story is a nostalgic and tender portrayal of a unique friendship and the simplicity of life and traditions in the rural South.
www.enotes.com/topics/christmas-memory
People also ask
What is a Christmas Memory by Truman Capote about?
When was a Christmas Memory published?
What is a Christmas Memory about?
Why did Capote appreciate 'A Christmas Memory'?
Plot. Narrated by an unnamed, seven-year-old boy who is addressed as "Buddy" by his older cousin, "A Christmas Memory" is about the narrator's relationship with his older, unnamed, female cousin, to whom he refers throughout the story only as "my friend." (In later adaptations, she is called Sook.)
Dec 5, 2019 · A festive short story: A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Capote's 1965 autobiographical work describes his childhood memories of the real-life Sook, a distant relative who was 'the only stable person' in his life.
Jan 24, 2024 · “A Christmas Memory” is a short story by Truman Capote in which the narrator, Buddy, looks back on a particularly beautiful Christmas he spent with his much older cousin. Buddy and his...
- Events in History at The Time The Short Story Takes Place
- The Short Story in Focus
- Events in History at The Time The Short Story Was Written
- For More Information
The South during the Depression
In “A Christmas Memory” the Great Depression has taken its toll; Buddy and his friend fantasize about giving each other the expensive presents that they are too poor to buy. The Depression was precipitated by the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, also referred to as “Black Monday.” Two weeks after the crash, the value of stocks declined by more than 37 percent. Soon afterward, banks all over the country collapsed like dominoes. Industry slowed to a standstill, and by 1933, about a third...
FDR and the New Deal
In the story Buddy’s prized possession is a letter on White House stationery thanking him for the fruitcake that he sent to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a Democrat, was elected in 1932 on the strength of his determination to end the Depression. Roosevelt called his solution “The New Deal,” a plan that provided jobs through agencies such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and federal monetary relief to the states to help the unemployed. Despite Roosevelt’s innovative...
Prohibition: the “dry” years
In “A Christmas Memory,” the holiday fruitcake recipe includes a forbidden ingredient—whiskey. As Buddy explains in the story, state laws prohibited the sale of alcohol throughout the country. The passage in 1919 of the Eighteenth Amendmentto the Constitution had made the manufacture, sale, and transportation (but not the use) of alcoholic beverages illegal, instituting the Prohibition period, which lasted until 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment was the culmination of years of successful campaig...
The plot
The narrator, known only as Buddy, is a young student recalling a childhood Christmas memory. In the flashback, he is seven years old and lives with relatives in a house in the rural South. Buddy’s parents are conspicuously absent; his cousin, a woman in her sixties whom he calls his “friend,” is the closest thing to a mother he has. Buddy’s friend excitedly leads him in a series of traditional Christmas rituals, beginning on the cold November morning when she announces that it’s fruitcake we...
From the fictional to the real
In the story Buddy lives with a number of relatives but shares a special kinship only with the character he identifies as “his friend.” The friend is based on Sook Faulk, Capote’s beloved elderly cousin and surrogate mother. Buddy’s friend in the story exhibits many of Sook’s peculiar personality traits and superstitions. For example, she is so fearful of the number thirteen that she spends the thirteenth of every month in bed. Buddy’s description of his friend lends insight into Sook’s simpl...
DIPPING SNUFF
In “A Christmas Memory” Buddy makes a point of mentioning “dipping snuff,” the process of inhaling or chewing tobacco, as one of the things his cousin does. For pre-colonial Southern Indian tribes, tobacco’s medicinal purposes made it a sacred crop. When Columbus arrived on North American shores, the welcoming natives presented him with golden tobacco leaves, and, not knowing what they were, he threw them away. Eventually, the American colonists learned the native techniques of inhaling tobac...
The new South
By the 1940s, the decade in which “A Christmas Memory” was written, the arm of industrial wartime mobilization had stretched into the South. Sharecroppers and farmers—displaced by the new factories, plants, and military bases that the government constructed throughout the region—found higher-paying positions as unskilled laborers in the war industry. The South’s industrial boom was furthered by the outbreak of the Korean Warin 1950. By the 1950s, production work had replaced farming as the pr...
Reviews
“A Christmas Memory” prompted William Goyen in the New York Times Book Review to call Capote “that old Valentine maker” with a talent for “catching the off-beat nature of people” (Goyen, p. 5). Katherine Gauss-Jackson, writing in Harper’s Magazine (December 1966), favorably compared the story to Dylan Thomas’s classic “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” It became generally accepted as one of Capote’s finest short stories. Truman Capote himself considered “A Christmas Memory” his most perfect work...
Capote, Truman. A Christmas Memory.New York: Random House, 1956. Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography.New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Flynt, Wayne. Poor but Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites.Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. Goyen, William. “That Old Valentine Maker.” New York Times Book Review(November 2, 1958): 5. Grobe1, Lawrence. Conve...
Oct 29, 2020 · It is almost axiomatic that a Christmas story needs a moral. Here, Miss Souk is a gentle combination of Scrooge’s spirits, the Old Man from A Christmas Story, and Angel Second-Class Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life. The engine that drives Christmas – for those who celebrate it – is nostalgia.
- (4.9K)
- Hardcover
Is 'A Christmas Memory' a true story? A Christmas Memory is semi-autobiographical, drawing on Truman Capote's own childhood experiences and his relationship with his older cousin, Sook Faulk. While the events are fictionalized, they are inspired by Capote's memories and emotions.
Jul 2, 2019 · Capote said he liked “A Christmas Memory” because of the truth in it, but the story is actually an idealized and embellished portrait of his childhood and of his elderly cousin, Sook, who provided much of the warmth and companionship he knew as a youngster.
