At my age, I have made a return to my shelves to read books I may have been introduced to in college but really didn’t understand.  This time it’s Truman Capote’s novela Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  I’m not to sure I understand it any better forty years after the first time I read it, but I think that’s what makes it a FUN read the second time around.  This time, I’m not worried about literary analysis. The characters are confusing.  The action is limited. Most of the plot revolves around two young lovers who don’t understand each other and never will.   Jaja.  Maybe that’s why this novel is right in my present-day wheelhouse.

Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s near the end of the 1950s. The story, however, is set during World War II.  The narrator is gay and nameless.  He has come to New  York City to soak up the necessary experience and observation to become a successful writer.  From what I understand, this sounds just like Truman.  He may have been the same age, with the same goals and desires as the narrator in his novel, when he himself arrived in New YorkCity.   Later, in selling his novel rights to Hollywood, he suggested he play the main role in the movie version.  I don’t know if he could act or not, but he was probably rejected because he was too short.  (His part went to George Peppard. )  The story is short and sweet.  When  the young writer moves into a New York City brownstone and  meets the young woman who lives in the apartment below him, he doesn’t find the love most of the readers are looking for, but he finds something better: the idea for a classic novel. Truman’s success with this novel would put him in the pantheon of literary greats in this country.  The movie that followed became a classic in its own right.

Actually, the young writer in this novel had very mixed emotions about the young woman he would meet.  Her name is Holly Golightly.  We find later that the name is no joke.  That’s her real name.  She’s from Tulip, Texas, and was married to one Doc Golightly at age 14.  Doc was in his forties when he found her.  This sounds like a sick relationship.  That’s probably why Holly left him and his family behind to seek bigger and better things in New York City as soon as she was old enough to do so.  Seventeen.  Eighteen.  She’s nineteen in the story.  And you could probably guess what happens.  It just couldn’t have been that easy to find work in the Big Apple for a young, inexperienced, uneducated farm girl.  Truman never refers to her as prostitute in the story, but there are plenty of allusions where her money is coming from.  In making up this particular name,  Truman may have implied that Holly easily moved from one man to another; nevertheless, the young writer is entranced by everything she does and says.  Holly is  beautiful, confidant, and ambitious.  She radiates an independent spirit.

But, she is also a KOOK.  I mean, she does some crazy stuff.  When she comes home at night at the craziest hours, she has to wake up her neighbors to let her in the building because she can’t keep hold of her keys.  Apparently, this happens over and over.  She pays a weekly visit to Sing Sing prison to visit an old-school mafioso doing a a five-year stretch.  He is much older than she is.  There is nothing sexual here this time, but he pays her to say she is his niece so he could send her back to his gangster lawyer with cryptic climate messages for his friends, like, “It’s snowing in New Orleans,” or a “storm is coming to Cuba.”  Holly denies she understands what the messages mean, but she earns 100 dollars for each visit. The young writer begins to have a sense for who she is and what she is about when she climbs the emergency staircass to his apartment one night and enters through the window.  She’s half-naked and complaining about the bitemarks that she has received from the man she just left in her apartment.

I say she is a KOOK, it’s because I don’t know what else to call her.  Come on!  When  she is subequently arrested by New York City cops for her participation in a mafia drug conspiracy, she claims no knowledge of this man’s background or activities.  His name is Sally Tomato, and according to Holly, he just seemed like an lonely old man.  The keys, the bitemarks, the cocaine references: it’s like Holly is living on a different plane than everyone else.   The woman the narrator appears to fall in love with lives inside her own head.  This is probably what attracts me to the story – Where most people look at Holly and see a happy-go-lucky,  flamboyant, party girl; the narrator sees a young woman in distress.  To him, she is crying out for help, and he can’t get her out of his mind.

I’m not writing a book report here, but I liked this novel  so much, I went back to read it again a second time (no, a third time!)  Nothing in this book follows the rules of literature as I know them. Truman tells us very little about the narrator.  I don’t even know why I call him gay, but clearly he is attracted to Holly, but he never goes for it.  He stands forlornly  in the background watching other men enter and leave Holly’s apartment like they were passing through a revolving door. Holly admits she married Doc Golightly at age thirteen or fourteen.  She has a brother named Fred she cares for, and instead of calling the narrator by his name, she calls him by the name of her brother.   When Doc shows up in the middle of the novel, she gladly sleeps with him like she does with many of her visitors – although by this time, Doc must be fifty years old, while Holly is still nineteen.   Knowing this, the narrator seems to fall into a deep depression.   All the energy and emotion he has invested in Holly is thrown by the wayside.  He seems to get nothing in return.  Not yet anyway – I infer that he converts his dejection into a wonderful novel.  Long after Holly is gone, he converts his pain into his first novel, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s for two reasons: 1.) I had read it previously way back when I was teenager, but I really didn’t get it; and 2.) I was attracted to the New York City setting.   In a few of my classes we are reading another New York City novel.  At the end of the semester, I ask my students to share their newfound New York City knowledge in our final exam project.  On the last day of classes, they give oral presentations for a NYC idea, event, hisotrical figure, location, phenomenon of their own choosing. Recently, they have reported on topics like NYC street food,  the Statue of Liberty, the emerging punk scene of the 1970s, etc.    Because for most of us, New York City is so far away, it could be on another planet, I have chosen Breakfast at Tiffany’s as my personal choice for a sample presentation.  On powerpoint, I will take my students on a virtual tour.   We’ll follow the novel’s narrator and Holly Golightly on a date: Central Park, The New York Public Library, and of course, Tiffany’s!

The last time I tried my hand at a New York City warm-up exercise, I asked my students to send me a postcard that featured the NYC researc topic of their choice with a brief description on the back.  I modeled the activity with a photo of two of my favorite authors, Sam Shepard and Patti Smith, on the balcony of their New York City Chelsea Hotel.  I designed this assignment to enhance their semester novel reading experience. At the time, we were reading a novel about two young Colombian teenage lovers who came to New York City for much the same reason Holly Golightly does – to escape her dreary past.  I tell my students, the  more they know about New York City, the more they will get out of their novel.  For each class, I dedicate time plan to introduce a new New York City activity.  Their Final Exam will depend on their contributions – postcards and presentations – to a New York City Classroom Scrapbook. Below, I share the back of my Sam and Patti postcard:

Tiffany’s is a famous 5th-Avenue jewel store located in Manhattan.   I have to believe that Tiffany’s is a symbol of glamour and fantasy, not only for young women across the country, but for young men as well.  In the movie version, Audrey Hepburn shows up at Tiffany’s at 5:00 a.m.  She exits a taxi dressed in a black Givenchy cocktail dress and dark glasses.  This is her breakfast time after a drunken night out.  In front of the Tiffany’s shop window, she pulls a coffee and a croissant out of a white paper bag, and stares at the glitter and gold on display.  Audrey certainly doesn’t seem like a prostitute;  she’s appears to be right where she wants to be and doing exactly what she wants to do. She looks into the Tiffany’s window and sees a bright future for herself.  At the release of the movie in 1961, she represents a new independent female spirit that will capture the imagination of a new generation.