Word: harped
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Truman Capote's stage adaptation of his novel, The Grass Harp, is a curious fusion of poetic sensitivity and imperfect theatrical technique. Clearly, Mr. Capote was hampered at the outset by the limited number of ways in which one can write a play. He had a quixotic plot and a tragic theme to work with, and inexplicably be chose straight comedy for his dramatic medium. Regrettably his continual resort to stock comic artifices detracts greatly from the important thematic development of the play...
...York Times reporter asked Author Truman (The Grass Harp) Capote, 27, to describe himself. Said Capote: "Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy. I think I have rather heated eyes ... I have a very sassy voice. I like my nose . . . Do you want to know the real reason why I push my hair down on my forehead? Because I have two cowlicks. If I didn't push my hair forward, it would make me look as though I had two feathery horns." What about the charge that present-day fiction is decadent...
...choose to live in a tree-house leaps into true life. Capote's success as a writer (really a poet at times) lies in his gradual revelation of the human soul through humorous colloquial expression and the simple language of the heart. The "Grass Harp", for instance, is a field of tall Indian grass which "sighs" the wisdom of people buried in a cemetery near by. Avoiding the heavy symbolism of Thomas Mann, the author shows simply how several eccentric individuals and an evangelical caravan are drawn to the tree-hut in the "Harp", handled brutally by the suspicious town...
There is nothing especially unorthodox in Maxwell's technique; the novelty is in what he uses his big harp for, and in his arrangements. "There just aren't arrangements for what I want to do, so I have to make them myself." Bronx-born Maxwell won a harp chair with the NBC Symphony at 17, quit after 18 months. Says he: "A harpist doesn't get to play any more often than the triangle-player. He sits there quietly for 684 bars, then plays two of his own. It's frustrating...
Maxwell took his harp and joined an eight-piece dance band, began working out some of the arrangements he needed. Then he joined the Coast Guard and got a chance to play for a while in Lieut. Rudy Vallee's bluejacket orchestra. Since then, he has been what he wants to be: a soloist. Some nightclub managers shudder at the thought of a swing harpist, but Maxwell is making inroads and good money. Income last year...