Tags
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Classics, Contemporary Fiction, Hollywood, Popular Penguins, Reading, Truman Capote
Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. First Published 1958.
I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighbourhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment…
One of my favourite films of all time is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I saw it and loved it long before I got around to reading the book. Which I also love. I find myself returning, like the story’s narrator, to those places where I first knew Holly Golightly.
Beautiful, fragile, fearless, desperate, calculating Holly. Living her life all at once precariously at the mercy of the men around her and also fiercely and independently on her own terms. I love the sweet, sappy, happy ending of the Hollywoodised film, and I love the wistful, hopeful, doubtful ending of Capote’s original work.
I love simple, stoic Doc and watchful, protective Joe and bemused, detached ‘Fred’. I love the no-name cat and the calling card that says “Travelling”. I love the apartment with its “camping-out atmosphere… like the belongings of a criminal who feels the law not far behind.”
I’ve nothing else to say. Wikipedia informs me that Norman Mailer said he “would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Neither would I.
Tea and Penguins 