Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the book, not the movie) was on the shelf at the Chamblee library. It is a short little thing, just like the author, Truman Capote. It is a 55 year old book, with the action taking place 70 years ago. It is a fun way to kill time waiting on the train.
The action takes place in New York City, in 1943. This is wartime. A telegram arrives, informing Holly Golightly that her beloved brother has died in action. The narrator, probably based on Truman Capote, is having problems with his draft board. A google search for the military record of Mr. Capote proved, pardon the expression, fruitless. Apparently, Mr. Capote escaped military duty during that conflict. In a war with major need for combat troops, being queer is not a good excuse.
The book is fun to read, even if it does have some issues. The central figure is Holly Golightly, a “cafe society celebrity.” Her zaniness makes for good story telling, but can seem a bit forced. There is an old saying, “Sooner or later you would have to kill her”. None of the men supporting her lifestyle seem to get close enough for that to be an issue.
Mr. Capote is at the peak of his creative powers here. The story is a page turner, with zingy quotes throughout. At some point after finishing this story, Mr. Capote became famous for being famous. A life of TV appearances, society lunch, and substance abuse followed. Were more stories like BAT drowned by the Justerini & Brooks downpour? We will never know.
There is one jaw dropping moment. A side character in BAT is Mag Wildwood, a model who stutters. She elopes with an heir, who many thought was going to marry Miss Golightly. When the marriage is announced, the full name of Mag Wildwood is in the story. Miss Margaret Thatcher Fitzhue Wildwood. This was twenty plus years before the iron lady took over England.
PG has never seen the movie. It seems a bit different from the book. The Capote charactar is given a name, and played by George Peppard. Doc Golightly, the husband of young Holly, is played by Buddy Ebsen. This was in 1961, just before the Beverly Hillbillies. Mickey Rooney plays a Japanese photographer, who lived in the same building as Truman and Holly.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
Alright, PG, you have GOT to start labeling & commenting on the pix! From the top I recognize the downtown Atlanta train station (where the World Congress Center is now I think), a trolley-car collision, downtown in the snow with trolley, Gov. Lester Maddox signing a bill, a jeep from Leb’s–downtown deli restaurant that featured oysters, good for your sex life (and that was picketed for refusing to integrate), Jimmy Carter in his peanut fields….
Gus, thanks for looking, and hopefully reading. Here is a link with more information about the pictures. https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/historic-pictures/
If you hover over the picture with your mouse, you can see a number. Ignore the Z at the end…this means the picture has been processed. Go to the link for the GSU collection, choose either Lane Brothers (LB) or O’Neal (N). You can enter the number in the search engine, and see where I got the pic. Sometimes, GSU does not provide much information. Also, the search engine is sometimes whacky. You sometimes have to add a zero in front of the number, and sometimes you don’t add the extra zero. It can be frustrating when downloading files.
[…] a bit of The Dharma Bums. At some point in the procedure, there was a collection of output from Truman Capote. Hank Chinaski might not like PG. There is the rhyming poetry. There is buying a book of repackaged […]
[…] a bit of The Dharma Bums. At some point in the procedure, there was a collection of output from Truman Capote. Hank Chinaski might not like PG. There is the rhyming poetry. There is buying a book of repackaged […]
[…] a bit of The Dharma Bums. At some point in the procedure, there was a collection of output from Truman Capote. Hank Chinaski might not like PG. There is the rhyming poetry. There is buying a book of repackaged […]