‘Master Misery’ follows a character named Sylvia, a typist at a New York underwear company. She lives with her friends Henry and Estelle, who are ‘so excrutiatingly married… [that] everything had a name; the telephone was Tinkling Tillie, the sofas Our Nelle, the bed, Big Bear; yes, and what about those His-Her towels, those He-She pillows? Enough to drive you loony!’. Sylvia has taken the job merely to escape their apartment during the day. The main thread of the story comes when Sylvia discovers that there is a man in the city whom it is possible to sell dreams to, and how this affects her in consequence. The storyline is quite lovely, I think, despite the chilling aspects of it which begin to creep in as it goes on. The tale is incredibly character focused, and the thing which I first noticed about it was that characterisation is most interesting, particularly from a psychological standpoint. Mr Revercomb, the buyer of dreams, for example, is described as follows: ‘All mothers tell their kids about him: he lives in hollows of trees, he comes down chimneys late at night, he lurks in graveyards and you can hear his step in the attic. The sonofabitch, he is a thief and a threat. He will take everything you have, and end by leaving you nothing, not even a dream’.
Author
Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays. He was born as Truman Streckfus Persons to a salesman Archulus Persons and young Lillie Mae. His parents divorced when he was four and he went to live with his mother's relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. He was a lonely child who learned to read and write by himself before entering school. In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her new husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born businessman. Mr. Capote adopted Truman, legally changing his last name to Capote and enrolling him in private school. After graduating from high school in 1942, Truman Capote began his regular job as a copy boy at The New Yorker. During this time, he also began his career as a writer, publishing many short stories which introduced him into a circle of literary critics. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks and became controversial because of the photograph of Capote used to promote the novel, posing seductively and gazing into the camera. In the 1950s and 1960s, Capote remained prolific producing both fiction and non-fiction. His masterpiece, In Cold Blood, a story about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, was published in 1966 in book form by Random House, became a worldwide success and brought Capote much praise from the literary community. After this success he published rarely and suffered from alcohol addiction. He died in 1984 at age 59.
