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- Sun, 21:37: Started today and just finished reading "Breakfast At Tiffany's" by Truman Capote
- Sun, 21:39: Haven't seem the film version of it for ages.
Feb. 3rd, 2014
Sunny Walk
Feb. 3rd, 2014 07:15 pmThis morning I was in the Office and printed out 17 visits i am doing this month.I walked into Sittingbourne as the day had a cool dry sunny aspect to it. Without being in a hurry, i meandered down the main road and took in the sights. It only took around fifty minutes of pleasant walking .
I have finished reading the Truman Capote novella "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (read in one go) and started the introduction and first chapter of the MIchel Foucault book on the history of sexuality.
I have finished reading the Truman Capote novella "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (read in one go) and started the introduction and first chapter of the MIchel Foucault book on the history of sexuality.
Truman Capote "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (Essential Penguin)
It's no longer shameful to admit that you find a three-minute pop song to be profoundly moving, that you fell in love with a movie character, or even that you cried when a character died in a video game, even though these mediums still may not constitute what most people think of as high art. Truman Capote beat everyone to the punch by about half a century with "Breakfast at Tiffany's," in which substance, in the form of the young narrator, an aspiring writer, is beguiled by style, in the form of a beautiful, shallow and yet utterly bewitching escort, and makes no apologies at all. The novel's a delightful, deliberate inversion of traditional artistic values: Holly Golightly is interested in dating a writer or two, but doesn't read. She mocks her Brazilian boyfriend's political aspirations, but wants to be seen at the hippest cafés in town. Furthermore, she works hard to look her best and lies shamelessly about her past. Still, she must have something -- a talent for life, an appreciation of beauty, a spark -- or else our narrator wouldn't be so fascinated with her. It's the inexplicable, undefinable nature of this attraction that lies at the heart of this book, and Capote's capable of convincing even the most serious-minded reader that it's a matter well worth considering. Love, even puppy love, makes a mockery of our most careful judgments, then as now.
Holly seems to live a dream of her making and yet she is so aware of her loneliness. In her own words, she is a 'wild thing' longing to stretch he wings and fly into freedom:"Never love a wild thing, Mr Bell...you can't ever give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. ... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."But even 'freedom' is not complete happiness, for while Holly never wants to belong to anyone or anything, ultimately she realises that she really does want to belong. "...it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."She is a 'phony', a pretender, and she knows it. She is aware of the kind of person she is even though she does not know what she wants and what she feels. But she is brave. She says with that quaint streak of practicality in her:Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical.It was towards the end of the novella that something struck me. Could it be that the facade Holly Golightly shows can only be a cover for a lost and frightened soul? When she receives a letter from the man she was to marry, saying that he had to cut off any connection with her, she is in hospital. She first puts on her make-up, her dark glasses and then she is ready to face anything the letter might have to say. Could it be that her whole lifestyle in New York is a way to disguise the past she has come from? Holly Golightly intrigued me as she did the narrator. She is an enigma. But she cannot change. At the end we go back to the beginning - the place she was last spotted at. You know...I think I loved this book as much as I did the movie.
There's more to the book, of course. Capote's writing is unbelievably clean and fresh, a pitch-perfect evocation of a time and place -- New York City in the optimistic fifties -- and his characters are instantly, indelibly memorable. The novel also serves as a reminder of the power of good casting -- it's hard not to picture Audrey Hepburn as the gamine at the center of the book. The other stories here, one of which is set in Haiti, the other in a Southern prison, are also exquisitely composed and serve to show the breadth of Capote's interests and experience.
It's no longer shameful to admit that you find a three-minute pop song to be profoundly moving, that you fell in love with a movie character, or even that you cried when a character died in a video game, even though these mediums still may not constitute what most people think of as high art. Truman Capote beat everyone to the punch by about half a century with "Breakfast at Tiffany's," in which substance, in the form of the young narrator, an aspiring writer, is beguiled by style, in the form of a beautiful, shallow and yet utterly bewitching escort, and makes no apologies at all. The novel's a delightful, deliberate inversion of traditional artistic values: Holly Golightly is interested in dating a writer or two, but doesn't read. She mocks her Brazilian boyfriend's political aspirations, but wants to be seen at the hippest cafés in town. Furthermore, she works hard to look her best and lies shamelessly about her past. Still, she must have something -- a talent for life, an appreciation of beauty, a spark -- or else our narrator wouldn't be so fascinated with her. It's the inexplicable, undefinable nature of this attraction that lies at the heart of this book, and Capote's capable of convincing even the most serious-minded reader that it's a matter well worth considering. Love, even puppy love, makes a mockery of our most careful judgments, then as now.
Holly seems to live a dream of her making and yet she is so aware of her loneliness. In her own words, she is a 'wild thing' longing to stretch he wings and fly into freedom:"Never love a wild thing, Mr Bell...you can't ever give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. ... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."But even 'freedom' is not complete happiness, for while Holly never wants to belong to anyone or anything, ultimately she realises that she really does want to belong. "...it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."She is a 'phony', a pretender, and she knows it. She is aware of the kind of person she is even though she does not know what she wants and what she feels. But she is brave. She says with that quaint streak of practicality in her:Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical.It was towards the end of the novella that something struck me. Could it be that the facade Holly Golightly shows can only be a cover for a lost and frightened soul? When she receives a letter from the man she was to marry, saying that he had to cut off any connection with her, she is in hospital. She first puts on her make-up, her dark glasses and then she is ready to face anything the letter might have to say. Could it be that her whole lifestyle in New York is a way to disguise the past she has come from? Holly Golightly intrigued me as she did the narrator. She is an enigma. But she cannot change. At the end we go back to the beginning - the place she was last spotted at. You know...I think I loved this book as much as I did the movie.
There's more to the book, of course. Capote's writing is unbelievably clean and fresh, a pitch-perfect evocation of a time and place -- New York City in the optimistic fifties -- and his characters are instantly, indelibly memorable. The novel also serves as a reminder of the power of good casting -- it's hard not to picture Audrey Hepburn as the gamine at the center of the book. The other stories here, one of which is set in Haiti, the other in a Southern prison, are also exquisitely composed and serve to show the breadth of Capote's interests and experience.
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