| Breakfast at Tiffany's | |
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First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Truman Capote |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fiction, Novella |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback), e-book, audio-CD |
| Pages | 179 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0679745655 |
| OCLC Number | 964700 |
| Dewey Decimal | 813/.54 20 |
| LC Classification | PS3505.A59 A6 1993 |
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. The main character, Holly Golightly, is one of Capote's best-known creations and an American cultural icon.
Contents |
In autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator becomes friends with Holly Golightly, who calls him "Fred", after her older brother. The two are both tenants in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Holly (age 18-19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl. As such, she has no job and lives by socializing with wealthy men, who take her to clubs and restaurants, and give her money and expensive presents; she hopes to marry one of them. According to Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute but an "American geisha."[1]
Holly likes to stun people with carefully selected tidbits from her personal life or her outspoken viewpoints on various topics. Over the next year, she slowly reveals herself to the narrator, who finds himself fascinated by her curious lifestyle. In the end, Holly fears that she will never know what is really hers until after she has thrown it away. Their relationship ends in autumn 1944.
"Fred": The narrator, whom Capote acknowledged is gay, unlike the character in the film.[2]
Holly Golightly: The protagonist.
Joe Bell: A bartender acquainted with both "Fred" and Holly.
Mag Wildwood: Holly's friend and sometime roommate, a fellow socialite and model.
Rusty Trawler: A presumed wealthy man, thrice divorced, well-known in society circles.
Jose Yberra-Jaegar: A Brazilian diplomat, who is the companion of Mag Wildwood and, later, of Holly.
Doc Golightly: A veterinarian from Texas, whom Holly married as a teenager.
O. J. Berman: A Hollywood agent, who has discovered Holly and groomed her to become a professional actress.
Salvatore "Sally" Tomato: A convicted racketeer, whom Holly visits weekly in Sing Sing prison.
Madame Sapphia Spanella: Another tenant in the brownstone.
Mr. I. Y. Yunioshi: A photographer, who lives in the top floor studio in the brownstone.
In early drafts of the story Holly was named Connie Gustafson; Capote later changed her name to Holiday Golightly. He apparently based the character of Holly on several different women, all friends or close acquaintances of his. Claims have been made as to the source of the character, the "real Holly Golightly", in what Capote called the "Holly Golightly Sweepstakes";[3] including socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, Oona Chaplin,[4] writer/actress Carol Grace,[5] writer Maeve Brennan,[6] writer Doris Lilly [7] model Dorian Leigh (whom Capote dubbed "Happy Go Lucky"),[8] and her sister, model Suzy Parker. Capote’s biographer Gerald Clarke wrote "half the women he knew . . .claimed to be the model for his wacky heroine"[9] Clarke also wrote of the similarities between the author himself and the character.[10] There are also similarities between the lives of Holly and Capote's mother, Nina Capote; among other shared attributes both women were born in the rural south with similar "hick" birth names that they changed (Holly Golightly was born Lula Mae Barnes in Texas, Nina Capote was born Lillie Mae Faulk in Alabama), both left the husbands they married as teenagers and abandoned relatives they loved and were responsible for to go to New York, and both achieved "café society" status through relationships with wealthier men, though Capote's mother was born two decades earlier than the fictional Holly Golightly.[11][12] Capote was also unsuccessfully sued for libel and invasion of privacy by a Manhattan resident named Bonnie Golightly who claimed that he had based Holly on her.[13]
Breakfast at Tiffany's first appeared in the November 1958 issue of Esquire. Shortly afterward, a collection of the novella and three short stories by Capote was published by Random House.
The collection has been reprinted several times; the novella has been included in other Capote collections.
In "Breakfast at Sally Bowles'", Ingrid Norton of Open Letters Monthly pointed out Capote's debt to Christopher Isherwood, one of his mentors, in creating the character of Holly Golightly: "Breakfast at Tiffany’s is in many ways Capote’s personal crystallization of [Isherwood's] Sally Bowles."[14]
Truman Capote's aunt, Marie Rudisill notes that Holly is a kindred spirit of Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, the central character of his short story "Children on Their Birthdays." She observes that both characters are "unattached, unconventional wanderers, dreamers in pursuit of some ideal of happiness."[15]
Capote himself acknowledged that Golightly was the favorite of his characters.
The novella's prose style prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation," adding that he "would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany's".[16]
The novella was loosely adapted into the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn and directed by Blake Edwards. The movie was transposed to circa 1960 rather than the 1940s, the period of the novella.
Holly Golightly, a musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany's, premiered in 1966 in Boston. The initial performances were panned by the critics and despite a rewrite by Edward Albee, it closed after only four performances.[17]
Three years after the musical adaptation, Stefanie Powers and Jack Kruschen starred in another adaptation, Holly Golightly (1969), an unsold ABC sitcom pilot. Kruschen's role was based on Joe Bell, a major character in Capote's novella who was omitted from the film version.
Playwright Samuel Adamson adapted the novella into a play for a 2009 production at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, directed by Sean Mathias and starring Anna Friel as Holly Golightly and Joseph Cross as William Parsons.[18]
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