A Veritable Feast (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

After recently seeing the award-winning film Capote, I made a conscious decision that I simply needed to read more of Capote's work. Philip Seymour Hoffman was absolutely brilliant as the tortured writer, and he made me realise that there was a lot more to Capote than In Cold Blood.
I read ICB in high school at a time when I was full of teenage conspiracy theories and thrived on books like Helter Skelter. Needless to say I was absolutely fascinated by Capote's investigation and obsession of a rural multiple murder that rocked America. However, after reading Capote's 'one great book,' I failed to read anything else by him.

Published in 1958, eight years before ICB, Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories is comprised of the main work as well as the less famous shorts "House of Flowers," "A Diamond Guitar" and "A Christmas Memory." Ashamedly, I have never seen the film version with Audrey Hepburn playing the lead role of Holly Golighty but, due to the sheer infamy of the film, as well as Hepburn's face adorning the front cover of the book, I couldn't have pictured the protagonist as anyone else.

Set in 1940s New York City, the book is narrated by an unnamed male writer (whom Golighty nicknames Fred after her estranged brother) who forges a friendship with society gal Holly Golighty whilst they are living in the same brownstone. As he descibes her antics, the narrator's naïveity is quickly erased by Golighty's bold, brazen lifestyle of men, martinis and money. The social attitudes that Capote expresses in the novel are way ahead of their time. In fact, certain details and ideas that must have been scandalous then still manage to maintain their shock factor 50 years on.

Although the writer's character in the film (played by George Peppard) is named Paul 'Fred' Varjak, the narration has an autobiographical feel to it. I drew many parallels between the narrator of the book and Capote himself (his childlike innocence, his escape to the big city, etc.) which caused me to envision Capote beside Hepburn's Golighty.

Although just over 100 pages, Breakfast at Tiffany's feels like an epic in terms of the strength and vividness of the main character. Holly Golighty literally jumps off the page. Like Scarlett O'Hara, she is a literary heroine of the 20th century and Capote's ability to bring her story full-circle in so few pages is truly amazing.

The shorts are very strong, as well, particularly "House of Flowers," which is set in Haiti and proves that Capote is just as comfortable writing in a relatively foreign setting as he is in his natural habitat.