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Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling
She is no phony, Miss Holly! She is for me one of the most fascinating and authentic symbols of the modern era. That last word that was missing from the famous movie version with Audrey Hepburn: 'Traveling'. That's the word that describe her best. She is running away from the 'mean reds', from a childhood of poverty and abuse. She is running towards something beautiful, something true, something better than the phony New York night life with its huge crop of mega rats who wouldn't even give a girl a fifty dollar note for the powder room. Holly dreams of something decent, clean and bright, something polite and respectful, something peaceful and beautiful. She calls it Tiffany and in her songs it sounds just like home:
Don't wanna sleep,
Don't wanna die,
Just wanna go a-travellin'
through the pastures of the sky
To be alive is to be a traveler, to fight back against the mean reds, to dream about that early morning in front of the sparkling window display at Tiffany's, about that horse farm in Mexico or about a log cabin by a stream somewhere high up in the Rocky Mountains. I think it is much better to be a Holly Golightly than to settle down early, marking time until you get a pension and a gold watch, wondering where did your life go so fast. Some people call her a phony, irresponsible, unreliable, silly and self-serving (as with her involvement with Sally Tomato), but I prefer that little line the narrator throws away somewhere in the middle of the novella, calling her : a lopsided romantic, gluttonous for everything on the menu . Holly's greatest achievement is that she doesn't become a cynic in the midst of all the rats of New York's high society. She cares sometimes too much, about her brother Fred, about Doc Golightly, about her writer buddy upstairs, about her cat without a name and about her dreams of Tiffany's. Would you settle in her place for a marriage of convenience and a simple role of housewife? Holly even gave up a possible successful career in Hollywood, another dream factory where the gold is made of tinsel paper:
If I do feel guilty, I guess it's because I let him go on dreaming when I wasn't dreaming a bit. I was just vamping for time to make a few self-improvements
Self-improvement is another quality to add to the list of Holly Golighty accomplishments. She got dealt a bad hand in the beginning of her life, but she refused to stay down, even when a kind man offered her shelter (Doc). She had a goal and she decided to work hard to get there, refusing to settle down for less.
I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like. It's like Tiffany's.
Some people might get trampled underfoot when coming across such a determinate young woman. In many ways, the novella is better than the movie (in almost all ways, except for missing the extraordinary presence of Audrey Hepburn), and I'm thinking here of the risks and compromises one has to make in life if he or she wants to succeed. In the movie, Holly settles down for marriage. In the novella she flies off, still chasing her dream. Here is the best passage from both versions:
Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell. That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time is was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't 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 the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
What many people fail to notice is the small addendum to the famous quote, the confession and admission that Holly knows what the price of her freedom is, and what a lonely, possibly disappointing destination waits for her at the end of the journey:
Believe me, dearest Doc - 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.
The novella ends without giving a clear answer to the final destination of Holly Golightly, and I prefer it this way. This way I can imagine her still traveling, in the hot jungles of Central Africa or across the ice covered peaks of the Himalayas, partying with the jet set in Gstaad or living quietly on a ranch in Argentina, singing that Mancini tune on guitar as she watches the sunset.
>><<>><<>><<
Sometimes one piece of work is enough to decide on the talent of a writer, and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is such an accomplishment. Norman Mailer said it best when he exclaimed that he wouldn't change two words from it. With the other three short stories included in the present volume, Truman Capote demonstrates that he is not a one-hit-wonder, and he weaves the magic of words again and again, with beautiful, eloquent and concise prose, creating memorable characters with incredible ease .
House of Flowers is the bittersweet story of a young peasant girl from Port-au-Prince. Ottilie is so beautiful and cheerful, she becomes the most sought after whore in town, but her heart yearns for the simple pleasures of life away from the big city and from its dubious pleasures. She runs away with a dirt poor young boy from nowhere, and learns to find beauty and pleasure in her new home. Some fun interludes showcase the ways Ottilie deals with her cranky mother-in-law.
Diamond Guitar reads like the basic template from which years later Stephen King will cast his novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Replace the poster of the diva with a cheap guitar decorated with glass beads and you have the same basic story of life inside a prison, about people who prefer to remain inside instead of facing the dangers of the world outside, and about people who would do anything to be free. Mr. Scheffer is the man condemned to life behind bars, Tico Feo is a young Cuban immigrant who plays music and dreams of becoming a sailor.
The stars were his pleasure, but tonight they did not comfort him; they did not make him remember that what happens to us on earth is lost in the endless shine of eternity. Gazing at them - the stars - he thought of the jeweled guitar and its worldly shimmer.
A Christmas Memory should be as famous as "Breakfast at Tiffany's", it's incredibly powerful and true. And it is mostly autobiographical, a way for Capote to pay homage to the best friend of his childhood:
In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believed in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the receipt for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.
She doesn't have a name in the story, she doesn't need one, she is simply called 'my friend' and these become under the pen of Truman Capote the most beautiful words in the English language. This last novella is one that should be read to kids and family around the Christmas dinner, just before you cut the whisky fruitcake .
She is no phony, Miss Holly! She is for me one of the most fascinating and authentic symbols of the modern era. That last word that was missing from the famous movie version with Audrey Hepburn: 'Traveling'. That's the word that describe her best. She is running away from the 'mean reds', from a childhood of poverty and abuse. She is running towards something beautiful, something true, something better than the phony New York night life with its huge crop of mega rats who wouldn't even give a girl a fifty dollar note for the powder room. Holly dreams of something decent, clean and bright, something polite and respectful, something peaceful and beautiful. She calls it Tiffany and in her songs it sounds just like home:
Don't wanna sleep,
Don't wanna die,
Just wanna go a-travellin'
through the pastures of the sky
To be alive is to be a traveler, to fight back against the mean reds, to dream about that early morning in front of the sparkling window display at Tiffany's, about that horse farm in Mexico or about a log cabin by a stream somewhere high up in the Rocky Mountains. I think it is much better to be a Holly Golightly than to settle down early, marking time until you get a pension and a gold watch, wondering where did your life go so fast. Some people call her a phony, irresponsible, unreliable, silly and self-serving (as with her involvement with Sally Tomato), but I prefer that little line the narrator throws away somewhere in the middle of the novella, calling her : a lopsided romantic, gluttonous for everything on the menu . Holly's greatest achievement is that she doesn't become a cynic in the midst of all the rats of New York's high society. She cares sometimes too much, about her brother Fred, about Doc Golightly, about her writer buddy upstairs, about her cat without a name and about her dreams of Tiffany's. Would you settle in her place for a marriage of convenience and a simple role of housewife? Holly even gave up a possible successful career in Hollywood, another dream factory where the gold is made of tinsel paper:
If I do feel guilty, I guess it's because I let him go on dreaming when I wasn't dreaming a bit. I was just vamping for time to make a few self-improvements
Self-improvement is another quality to add to the list of Holly Golighty accomplishments. She got dealt a bad hand in the beginning of her life, but she refused to stay down, even when a kind man offered her shelter (Doc). She had a goal and she decided to work hard to get there, refusing to settle down for less.
I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like. It's like Tiffany's.
Some people might get trampled underfoot when coming across such a determinate young woman. In many ways, the novella is better than the movie (in almost all ways, except for missing the extraordinary presence of Audrey Hepburn), and I'm thinking here of the risks and compromises one has to make in life if he or she wants to succeed. In the movie, Holly settles down for marriage. In the novella she flies off, still chasing her dream. Here is the best passage from both versions:
Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell. That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time is was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't 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 the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
What many people fail to notice is the small addendum to the famous quote, the confession and admission that Holly knows what the price of her freedom is, and what a lonely, possibly disappointing destination waits for her at the end of the journey:
Believe me, dearest Doc - 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.
The novella ends without giving a clear answer to the final destination of Holly Golightly, and I prefer it this way. This way I can imagine her still traveling, in the hot jungles of Central Africa or across the ice covered peaks of the Himalayas, partying with the jet set in Gstaad or living quietly on a ranch in Argentina, singing that Mancini tune on guitar as she watches the sunset.
>><<>><<>><<
Sometimes one piece of work is enough to decide on the talent of a writer, and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is such an accomplishment. Norman Mailer said it best when he exclaimed that he wouldn't change two words from it. With the other three short stories included in the present volume, Truman Capote demonstrates that he is not a one-hit-wonder, and he weaves the magic of words again and again, with beautiful, eloquent and concise prose, creating memorable characters with incredible ease .
House of Flowers is the bittersweet story of a young peasant girl from Port-au-Prince. Ottilie is so beautiful and cheerful, she becomes the most sought after whore in town, but her heart yearns for the simple pleasures of life away from the big city and from its dubious pleasures. She runs away with a dirt poor young boy from nowhere, and learns to find beauty and pleasure in her new home. Some fun interludes showcase the ways Ottilie deals with her cranky mother-in-law.
Diamond Guitar reads like the basic template from which years later Stephen King will cast his novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Replace the poster of the diva with a cheap guitar decorated with glass beads and you have the same basic story of life inside a prison, about people who prefer to remain inside instead of facing the dangers of the world outside, and about people who would do anything to be free. Mr. Scheffer is the man condemned to life behind bars, Tico Feo is a young Cuban immigrant who plays music and dreams of becoming a sailor.
The stars were his pleasure, but tonight they did not comfort him; they did not make him remember that what happens to us on earth is lost in the endless shine of eternity. Gazing at them - the stars - he thought of the jeweled guitar and its worldly shimmer.
A Christmas Memory should be as famous as "Breakfast at Tiffany's", it's incredibly powerful and true. And it is mostly autobiographical, a way for Capote to pay homage to the best friend of his childhood:
In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believed in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the receipt for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.
She doesn't have a name in the story, she doesn't need one, she is simply called 'my friend' and these become under the pen of Truman Capote the most beautiful words in the English language. This last novella is one that should be read to kids and family around the Christmas dinner, just before you cut the whisky fruitcake .
