Harper Lee and Truman Capote

Oxford American’s latest issue — the Southern Lit issue –  lists, among other things, what a group of judges culled from 134 writers, scholars and editors (”we sought out people who seemed thoughtful and well-versed in Southern literature,” the editors explain in the forward) calls the ten best Southern novels of all time. Oh goodie. There’s only one thing I love more than Southern food, and that’s Southern literature.

Geez Louise. What a list to generate. And never mind that Truman Capote, William Styron, Thomas Wolfe and Alice Walker aren’t on it.  Let’s focus on what is — Faulkner, for one. His 1936 novel “Absalom, Absalom!” was chosen as the greatest Southern novel of all time. Three of the top ten spots belong to the Nobel Prize-winning Mr. William (the other two works are “The Sound and the Fury” at number three and my favorite of his, “As I Lay Dying,” at number seven).

My favorite book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” ranks fifth (my daughter’s name is Harper; I have a cat named Scout), and I am enthralled at the choice of Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” at number six.

At one time I was working on a regional cookbook that included quotes and recipe adaptations derived from some of my favorite Southern writers, and no one comes closer to typifying the Southern experience, especially through descriptive tales of eating and cooking, than Truman Capote. There are, of course, wonderful references throughout Southern lit — I love, for instance, the recounting of meals Harper Lee affords in the early scenes of her 1960 novel, when Scout would visit Aunt Alexandra during the holidays and eat ambrosia and coconut cake; or of her telling of icing melting off the ladies’ teacakes in the sweltering summer heat.

But it is Capote who, no matter how many times I read him, makes me cry each time. Take his short story, “A Christmas Memory” — I have a tradition of reading this with my daughter each Christmas, and we never make it through the last paragraph without balling our eyes out. His descriptive, delicious recant of he and his “friend” making fruitcakes for everyone from Mr. Haha Jones, who provides the forbidden whiskey, to President Roosevelt, is a reminder for me of my own childhood, though mine was far more modern. There is a common thread to fruitcake, and Capote reveals so much more than just the search he and his friend go through to obtain all the ingredients, their dog Queenie in tow.

Perhaps that’s because Southerners say so much about themselves with food: from funerals to holidays, food is a way in which we all share that common fruitcake thread. We use food to mourn; we use it to celebrate. We even use it to commemorate. When we lose a friend or relative, we bake a casserole. At Christmas, we celebrate with that last jar of pickled peaches and a coconut cream pie. It’s a way to say “I love you” or “I’m sorry.” And it’s a way to remind ourselves that no matter how fast, modern or small the world becomes, there will always be cherry pie.

Do you have food memories of your family you’d like to share? Or a favorite food passage from a book?

In the photo:  Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote standing in the Alvin Deweys’ Kitchen in Garden City, Kansas. (Truman Capote Papers, The New York Public Library). Taken From the book: Truman Capote by George Plimpton. Published by: Nan A. Talese Doubleday.