Conception
Not wanting to take up his incomplete first novel, Summer Crossing, Capote began writing The Grass Harp in June 1950 and completed it on May 27, 1951. The novel was inspired by memories of his Alabama childhood, specifically a tree house constructed in the 1930s in a large walnut tree in his cousin Jenny's backyard. This large tree house, accessible by an antique spiral staircase, featured cypress wood construction, a tin roof and was furnished inside with a rattan sofa. Capote would spend time in this tree house with his cousin Sook, or other childhood friends such as Nelle Harper Lee. The novel was additionally inspired by his cousin Sook's dropsy medicine, which she made yearly until the age of 62, and whose recipe she took with her to the grave, despite Jenny's wanting first to patent, and then to sell the recipe to a manufacturer.
The Grass Harp was entirely written while Capote vacationed in Taormina, Sicily. The last section was airmailed to the publishers just days after he finished his writing, but it was not published for four months because the Random House editors, specifically Bob Linscott, did not care for the ending of the novel. Specifically Linscott thought the ending was weak because once the characters were up in the tree house, Capote "didn't know what to do with them." He asked Capote to rewrite the ending, and he made some changes, but did not concede to completely rewrite the ending.
Truman Capote initially wanted to title the novel Music of the Sawgrass, but ultimately it was Bob Linscott who named it The Grass Harp.
Read more about this topic: The Grass Harp
Famous quotes containing the word conception:
“Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Into all that becomes something inward for men, an image or conception as such, into all that he makes his own, language has penetrated ... logic must certainly be said to be the supernatural element which permeates every relationship of man to nature, his sensation, intuition, desire, need, instinct, and simply by so doing transforms it into something human, even though only formally human, into ideas and purposes.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)