Dear Mr. Capote

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Gordon Lish's first novel tells the story of a serial killer, who wants Truman Capote to write his biography. In the letter the killer writes to Truman Capote, the details of his life and his modus operandi are revealed.

"Gordon Lish is an important figure in American letters, and he has given us in this book a Lear as a middle-aged common man in his madness and rage, a murderous and murdered citizen: Lish gives us this in an absolutely unflagging accurate voice: the man's own common speech...." Harold Brodkey

"Lish's novel speaks in the contradictory cadences and from the skull-chambers of an underground mind. Sinister and vulnerable, lurid and tender, terrifying and pitiable, it is a voice that shocks with the shock of poetry. I felt stalked while reading — and wanted to run from the power of the abnormal. Who else but Lish has shaped the shapelessness of madness with such horrific artistry?" Cynthia Ozick

"...a real grabber, well able to stir your deepest wells of pity and horror... He wrings from his monster's suffering the special exhilaration that is hard to get from anything but the most exciting art." The New York Times Book Review