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rfmcdonaldThe Toronto public library system sent me a copy of Truman Capote novel Breakfast at Tiffany's that was published in 1958. It's a sturdy Random House hardcover, smelling only faintly of age despite bearing the impratur of the now-assimilated Scarborough library system.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a story that exists in two distinct forms, the novel and the movie that was produced from the now. I saw the movie in November 2004 and was impressed by the importance of self-construction for the odd couple of Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak. In Capote's novel, this is accentuated to a still greater degree.
Capote's original Holly and Paul never connect at any level deeper than friendship, perhaps because Paul seems to be a version of the young Capote, at least to the extent that he's a young ambitious writer who's not demonstratively heterosexual. The overall queerness of Breakfast at Tiffany's is something that surprised me, a theme permeating the entire novel starting from Holly's confession that she's partly a dyke like almost all women to Holly's replacement, a young man apparently into rough trade. It's also a rather darker novel--in the end, Paul isn't able to convince Holly to stay, or able to retrieve Cat before that animal is taken up. The setting of the novel in the Second World War rather than in the cosmopolitan post-war metropolis of New York City also does interesting things, accentuating the transitory eroticism that was just barely perceptible in the movie.
I like this. The three short stories packaged with Breakfast at Tiffany's don't particularly attract me, but I do like this book's title collection. I think I'll have to look for more Capote fiction.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a story that exists in two distinct forms, the novel and the movie that was produced from the now. I saw the movie in November 2004 and was impressed by the importance of self-construction for the odd couple of Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak. In Capote's novel, this is accentuated to a still greater degree.
Capote's original Holly and Paul never connect at any level deeper than friendship, perhaps because Paul seems to be a version of the young Capote, at least to the extent that he's a young ambitious writer who's not demonstratively heterosexual. The overall queerness of Breakfast at Tiffany's is something that surprised me, a theme permeating the entire novel starting from Holly's confession that she's partly a dyke like almost all women to Holly's replacement, a young man apparently into rough trade. It's also a rather darker novel--in the end, Paul isn't able to convince Holly to stay, or able to retrieve Cat before that animal is taken up. The setting of the novel in the Second World War rather than in the cosmopolitan post-war metropolis of New York City also does interesting things, accentuating the transitory eroticism that was just barely perceptible in the movie.
I like this. The three short stories packaged with Breakfast at Tiffany's don't particularly attract me, but I do like this book's title collection. I think I'll have to look for more Capote fiction.
