Breakfast at Tiffany's is a Rotten Crowd

 “The brownstone is midway in the block, next to a church where a blue tower-clock tolls the hours. It had been sleeked up since my day; a smart black door has replaced the old frosted glass, and gray elegant shutters frame the windows. No one I remember still lives there except Madame Sapphia Spanella, a husky coloratura who every afternoon went roller-skating in Central Park. I know she’s still there because I went up the steps and looked at the mailboxes. It was one of those mailboxes that had first made me aware of Holly Golightly” (4)

This book makes me appreciate The Great Gatsby because it is so much worse.

Both Fitzgerald’s classic novel and Truman Capote’s novela Breakfast at Tiffany’s are set in New York, and several similar characters appear in both—the judgemental queer narrator, the enchanting and misunderstood parvenu, the rich bigots, the “inferior” women, etc. Both are slim volumes about charming, awful people.

The difference is in how those people are framed. While Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway balances utter disdain with infatuation, Capote’s nameless narrator feels nothing but resentment. I get it, Mr. Capote. Rich men are dumb. Being a writer is hard. But calling your friend’s current beau a “preserved infant” and gossiping about his “plump and spankable bottom” isn’t going to make you feel better (15). 

To be fair, all the men in this book are trash. I asked my teacher about why this is, and she suggested that the narrator was an avatar for the author, and he initially takes his resentment out on every other man around him. The real story, then, is about Capote coming to terms with himself. If that’s the case: cool. Good luck with that. Your character is too forgettable to be despicable.

I don’t hate Holly Golightly, who has an actual character. She’s a very messy person: flighty, occasionally racist (as all the characters in this story are), but resilient and animated by a traumatic childhood. Her iconic portrayal by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film is probably better than the character on the page.

“Was my outrage just a result of being in love with Holly myself? A Little. For I was in love with her. Just as I’d once been in love with my mother’s elderly colored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named  McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy too” (34)

I don’t feel pure hatred toward this story, just disappointment and disdain. I expected a wonderful friendship and got 50 pages of rotten crowds and masculine angst. It took me four days to read because the tone was so vitriolic. If you don’t mind writer characters and biting quips, you might like Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I just got nothing out of it. 

Well, not quite nothing. There’s a cat in the story, and he’s worth the whole damn bunch put together.