Breakfast at Tiffanys: A Short Novel
and Three Stories (Modern Library)
by Truman Capote
Still Magic After All These Years
Contains:Breakfast at Tiffanys
House of Flowers
A Diamond Guitar
A Christmas Memory
Personal Review: Breakfast at Tiffanys: A Short Novel and
Three Stories (Modern Library) by Truman Capote
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958) was a novella I read when it first came out,
and this is my first rereading in low these many years. It has aged fairly
well. The style is simple, straightforward, almost Hemingwayish. As objects

of mirth, outlandish, eccentric, iconoclastic, bigger-than-life characters like
Holly Golightly, My Sister Eileen, and Auntie Mame may have gone out of
style and off the radar, or did they become clichés and stereotypes?
Holly has her dark glasses, her booze, her guitar, her cat, her messy
apartment, and her love for Tiffany's, the famous jewelry store.
It's a fast-paced story about the screwy young woman from
downstairs who befriends the lonely writer living in the apartment above
her. She calls him Fred after her brother. She is a "lopsided romantic" who
likes older men, doesn't like being pinned down, and lives like a wild
creature. Every Thursday she gets paid to visit mobster Sally Tomato in
Sing Sing. Men give her fifty dollars for the powder room or a cab, and she
has a slew of admirers, like Rusty Trawler or the dwarfish O.J. Berman
who could have gotten her in the movies. She has her own innate integrity
and honesty, even though she occasionally shoplifts.
When the husband she deserted shows up to claim his child-bride
and is rejected, she says, "Never love a wild thing." Light-hearted Holly
gets knocked around; friends desert her, she has a serious accident, a
miscarriage, and gets arrested as part of a dope ring. She refers to death
as "the fat woman." For a time she takes in an equally nutty roommate,
Mag Wildwood.
It's a book of great originality with a breezy style, about life in
Manhattan in the forties during World War II.
It's somewhat dated but not seriously so. It's a light weight story but one
with a flicker of genius, a jigger of wit, and a pinch of literary larceny.
Hollyisms:
"I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where
me and things belong together."
She puts down Fred and his writing by saying, "Everybody has to
feel superior to somebody. But it's customary to present a little proof before
you take the privilege."
"I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart."
"I may be rotten to the core, but: testify against a friend I will not."
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