“Miriam” by Truman Capote: “…it is not always possible to show others ‘the whys and wherefores’ of something that one has experienced in the mind”

In today’s New York Times, there is an article about an exchange of letters between Truman Capote and a reader of his short story “Miriam,” in which a 61-year-old widow, Mrs. Miller, whose first name is “Miriam,” meets a strange young girl with the same first name (1,2,3,4).

The story’s surprise ending—in 1946 it earned an O. Henry Award in the category Best First-Published Story—is that nobody else can see the girl, who will apparently continue to be Mrs. Miller’s imaginary companion.

The play Harvey (about an adult’s imaginary companion) had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 (5), but Capote says that “Miriam” came from his own mental experience.

In Capote’s letter to the reader, he says: “Of course there are clinical terms for what is actually mentally wrong with Mrs. M.: Sleeping Personality, Schizophrenia, etc. But my story is an imaginary document, and it is not always possible to show others ‘the whys and wherefores’ of something that one has experienced in the mind” (1).

In adults, imaginary companions are called alternate personalities.

And writers may not always be able to explain their stories.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/nyregion/truman-capote-rare-letter-recently-discovered-explains-miriam-story.html

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_(short_story)

3. https://literaryfictions.com/fiction-1/miriam-by-truman-capote/

4. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/IFR/article/viewFile/13422/14505

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_(play)