When [Capote] thinks, he is like nobody else—lapidary craftsman, master of nuance and detail. When he babbles, he is a nobody. Music for Chameleons displays the thinking Truman—with the customary intrusion of commonness that has marred much of his work.

Everything is displayed in this crow's nest of a book…. The title story is all the author claims for it…. The prose blackens, alters its tone, summons ghosts, and recalls Caribbean melodies and celebrations. (p. 30)

The High Capote returns in such pieces as "Dazzle," a Proustian recollection of the day he first wished aloud to be a girl, and when he sensed that for the rest of his life he would be haunted by the derision greeting his request. And I found a superabundance of moving tragicomedy in "A Day's Work."… Yet even here, Capote cannot resist low vaudeville Jew jokes—the Berkowitz parrot, named Polly...