By Morgan Skovich
The best way to summarize Truman Capote’s 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s would be to refer to it as The Great Gatsby’s partner text – full of wealthy and careless individuals. People throughout the world have viewed Blake Edwards’s 1961 film based on the novel countless times, but do they realize or even wonder how the man who wrote In Cold Blood became the inspiration of an Audrey Hepburn movie?
In short, the answer is the film is nothing like the book. There are definitely plot points in common and of course the infamous character Holly Golightly. Even 50 years after Capote wrote the novel, Golightly is still a bit shocking, yet relatable in ways such as her feelings on buying furniture and giving cat a name, other than Cat.
Unlike the movie, the book is not a romance. Avoiding any spoilers to the novel, we’ll leave it at. Truman saw Holly as a Marilyn Monroe rather than an Audrey Hepburn, and also the the narrator (known only as ‘Fred’ in the book) is gay.
The novel begins with the narrator and an old acquaintance, Joe the barkeeper, getting their first news in years of a Holly Golightly. It is Fred’s former neighbor Mr. K. who has picked up rumors of Holly traveling in Africa. The scene is literally brilliant; it’s set with three men consuming themselves with this woman whom the reader hasn’t even met yet.
“Truman Capote I do not know well, but I like him. He is a tart as a grand aunt, but in his way is a ballsy little guy, and he is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which will become a small classic,” said Norman Mailer (an American novelist / journalist) when asked about the book in an interview.
Later in life, Capote noted that his character Holly Golightly was his favorite. In an earlier version of the book he gave her the inappropriate name of Connie Gustafson, but later gave her a more fitting and symbolic name – Holly Golightly: for she’s a woman who makes a holiday of life, but treads through it lightly.
