At Tiffany's

Truman Capote and Harper Lee

Forgot to mention that I finished reading Truman Capote's New York city novella ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ recently. I'd been wanting to track down a copy as I'd read Carol Matthau's autobiography (Among the Porcupines) earlier this year and she knew Capote and was the inspiration for the Holly Golightly character. (see my earlier post) Very much a tale of the 40's or 50's, Breakfast is a lovely story of 100 pages in a novella format with succinct, short sentences and every word placed thoughtfully on the page. Most of the details about each character are left to Capote's well written New Yorker dialogue that allows the reader to hear the angst, dreams, and fears in a very real and tangible way. This character driven tale has the delightful Holly Golightly radiating at the centre of the smiles, frowns, excitements and despair. 


I was surprised at how much of the dialogue remained in the actual film script, but the tale is dialogue driven so I shouldn't have been. Some changes for the movie of course with Holly's "profession" cleaned up a little and the inclusion of the Hollywood happy ending, but an enjoyable read and it made me wonder at Capote's ability. It seemed entirely appropriate with it being his birthday this week and a friend currently visiting NY. (I've been hearing about Central Park and Knishes this week and I hope she finds time to dress in black and be photographed outside Tiffany's eating a bagel in sunglasses - a must do for any woman visiting NYC). So, an enjoyable read and one I was pleased to track down and have read in the break. The book I bought has two other short stories in it which I'm hoping to polish off in the next few weeks -  Capote's writing is excellent!


Burn brightly, Pete