A Book Review: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), by Truman Capote

 On first impression, Holly Golightly seems shallow and scatterbrained.  While she says things that are sharp, intelligent, and full of life, they don’t seem to follow any expected or logical pattern.  She lives in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan, on East 70th Street by Lexington Avenue, and her main antagonist and foil is the unnamed first-person narrator who lives in the apartment above her. Capote presents an idyllic ambiance of 1940s New York–Tiffany’s, landmark hotels, spacious apartments, and upscale neighborhood bars with the characters speaking in the euphemisms and vernacular of the period.

Holly is 19 and comes from a broken family in Arkansas. At fourteen, she married a widower, a middle-aged veterinarian from Texas, but ran away.  The beautiful Holly connects with well-off or influential men from every walk of life, age, and country of origin, but she always does something to make them flee.  But even after condemning and rejecting her, some part of each man still loves her and will help her if needed. 

For a while, the narrator takes Holly and her antics at face value, that is, without judgment or emotional reaction, until he gets fed up, snaps, and decides she is “a crude exhibitionist, a time waster, an utter fake: someone never to be spoken to again.”  Of course, like all the others. When he eventually gets over it, he too realizes he loves her.

Holly dreams of marrying a wealthy man with whom she will have many children. In describing how she copes with romantic failures, she says:  “Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.  If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!”  

She knows or quickly learns who and what she does not want in life; however, she isn’t stable or unconflicted enough to constructively pursue what she does want.  Having been on her own since childhood has forced her to develop a creative wit and certain behaviors as survival skills, but the same behaviors ruin every relationship.

In the narrative, note the recurrence of the image of a cage.  To one suitor, she says:  “You mustn'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. And then to a higher tree and then to the sky.”   Despite being desired by wealthy or powerful men, Holly does not want to be put in a cage.  Near the end, one of her male acquaintances, the mobster Sally Tomato opines, “Yes, she was a phony but a real phony.”  She is real for sure but destined to repeat the same behaviors over and over again.  

Capote’s light and easy style, plus endearing imagery, made this an enjoyable read.   The novel is a character study supported by a great setting, storyline, and narrative voice.  Holly’s dialogue made it the perfect subject for the movie and stage adaptations. Knowing it was famous, I tried to watch the movie once but found it boring and couldn’t follow it. However, now that I have read the book, I will try it again. 

Reading Habits

 When I was a child, my mother did not allow me to have comic books.  I had neighborhood friends who read comic books. Their parents bought them or gave them the money to buy.  Not my mother.  She did not consider them edifying. To her, they had no redeeming value.  She inherited this attitude from my grandfather.  Yet my mother never applied the not-edifying rule to watching cartoons or Superman on TV. 

Just as inconsistent, despite the sanction on comic books, my father always enjoyed reading “The Funny Papers” that came with almost every newspaper.  (What was my mother going to say to my father?)  Every Sunday after Mass, my parents bought the Sunday editions of the New York Times and the New York Daily News. The New York Times never had “funny papers,”  but the Daily News did, and their Sunday edition had a whole section for comics that I looked forward to reading, as did my father.  They had Dick Tracey, Joe Palooka, Li’l Abner, Little Orphan Annie, and everything else on down.

Being deprived of the pleasures of comic books, I was also never allowed to read science fiction for similar reasons. More to the point, I never knew it existed.  When my grandfather and mother were growing up, science fiction was generally considered pulp, that is, junk fiction.  O.K.--I get that.  However, on one visit to my grandparents’ house, on their small bookshelf, I discovered a book called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a few other novels by Jules Verne. I sat on the living room rug and read 20,000 Leagues until it was time to go home. It was utterly fascinating.   

My grandfather also had a beautiful edition of Moby Dick, which I read cover-to-cover when I was 12.  He also had Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which is on my bucket list to read. My grandfather also subscribed to Reader’s Digest, which I devoured. They used to have a section called “It Pays To Increase Your Word Power,” a vocabulary quiz. I did all the vocabulary quizzes, but my grandfather always got a perfect score.  He also had Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Daniel Defoe’s The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his bookshelf, which I also read.

I was never introduced to the literary genre of fantasy. Again, I was unaware that it existed. Nevertheless, like the paradox of comic books vs the funny papers and TV cartoons, my mother would plop me down in front of the TV every year to watch The Wizard of Oz.   

In high school, we read some John Steinbeck and Nathaniel Hawthorne, not to mention Edgar Allen Poe, Saki, Jack London, etc.--the usual adolescent boy stuff.  As an adolescent, on my own, I read every book I could get by Herman Hesse.   I started with Beneath the Wheel, then Damien, then about half a dozen others. My favorite novel is Hesse’s Steppenwolf.  I tried re-reading some of Hesse’s books in midlife and found they no longer resonated with me.  Se la vie. You have to read him in adolescence.

At some point in my life, I heard of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  I knew they were popular among young people during the time I was in college, as were the books of Carlos Castenada, but I never ventured to read them. I only discovered The Narnia Chronicles after my two sons were born.  When my children were old enough to read, I asked my mother why she had never introduced us to the stories of C.S. Lewis or J.R. Tolkien. She shrugged and said she didn’t know.  I interpreted that to mean she never had an inkling that they existed or were exceptional. (Sorry, I couldn’t help the pun!).

Years later, my mother and father did watch the movie adaptions of The Lord of the Rings.   My mother always expressed awe for the creativity of great books and movies, including the movie adaptions of The Lord of the Rings once they came out, as she did for The Wizard of Oz from decades prior.

Of course, I haphazardly read many other books (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance anyone?), including biographies and memoirs by various sports heroes (Instant Replay, for example), plus things like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.     

In my twenties, I read every book by Thomas Merton (a Trappist Monk) I could find. A gifted spiritual writer, he was and is inspirational.  His essays on social justice, about the social justice movements of the 1960s, are exceptional but a little dated now. 

As a young adult, I discovered Louis L’Amour, a wonderful and entertaining author famous for writing (well-researched!) pulp fiction novels about the Old West.  Moreover, in a college literature class, I was introduced to the hard-boiled detective novel, which was also once relegated to the pulp, that is, junk literature category.  Somewhere in my young adulthood, I read A Confederacy of Dunces (not pulp fiction!), a unique and under-appreciated book. 

Today, I read a lot of nonfiction, especially American History, biography, autobiography, select religious or philosophical books, and the Bible. I rarely read self-help books. I will read memoirs of pop/rock stars (like Testimony, by Robbie Robertson) and movie stars (Madonna).

I like any good fiction.  If I were to imagine someone suddenly asking me to name a novel I have read, I would say The Life of Pi, because it’s different. I like style,  imagery, and a good narrative.  I’ll try any author, but I still don’t read science fiction or fantasy.  I tried reading The Hobbit and found it boring. I love a good detective novel, police procedural, or spy novel. So-called post-modern literature requires too much mental calistenics.  I love early-American literature–Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  

I know there is a “Shit-ton” of excellent, literary women writers out there.  I just haven’t bothered to read any of them. I generally don’t read mid-listers.  I don’t bother reading horror, pure thrillers, or best-selling pot-boilers (Stephen King, James Patterson, John Grisham).  Though there are exceptions, they tend to be all form and no substance.  I prefer books with genuine human drama, existential dilemmas, exciting adventure, or unique writing style.  My grandfather would approve.

Words of Remembrance - Nicholas Sagliano, PhD (May 16, 1955 - Dec 1, 2022)

Nick and I first met at Cypress Road School, on the first day of kindergarten.  I was crying and miserable with homesickness.  Or teacher, Mrs. Miles gave up trying to console me and sat me down at a table.  A boy sat across from me putting together a wooden puzzle.  He told me his name was Nicholas.  He was not crying or upset, and I consoled myself by watching Nicholas calmly assemble that puzzle with confident, methodical resolve.   

At Sacred Heart grammar school, I had no idea what Nick’s grades were–I assume they were mostly ‘A’s.  But about seventh grade, a rumor spread that Nick had read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. The Sisters must have told Fr. Joyce because he came into our class with a goofy smile, asked where Nick was, and exclaimed to the class, “He read the whole encyclopedia!”  On the bus ride home, Nick volunteered to me that he had not read the entire encyclopedia, only a couple of sections. To his credit, I never, ever heard Nick brag, gloat, or try to take credit for something he didn’t do.  

By the eighth grade, Nick knew he wanted to become a chemist, a career choice he pursued with the same single-minded resolve with which he put that puzzle together in kindergarten.

From our class at Sacred Heart, eight of us went to Don Bosco Prep, including Nick, and in hindsight, we were a pretty smart bunch of guys.  Nick knew he was smart.  Once, while coming home on the bus, something possessed Nick to estimate each of our IQs.  He estimated his own IQ as very high, and I remember this because he ranked me about 10 or 15 points below himself.  I didn’t take offense, I just never forgot.  Characteristically, Nick did not rate himself as having the highest IQ.

Nick commuted to Manhattan college driving a Dodge Dart.  One day over lunch, at the McDonald’s on Hemion Road, Nick told me that his car had suffered a blown engine, and the cost of a new engine or to repair the old one was more than the car was worth.  Solely for the purpose of dramatic irony, I told Nick that, coincidentally, my sister Jean had been driving a Dodge Dart and had gotten into a wreck, and the estimate to repair the body and frame was more than the car was worth.  Nick questioned me about the engine.  Having been in an accident, he feared it was damaged or leaked oil.  I assured him the engine was undamaged and in perfect condition.  So I sold my sister’s car to Nick.  But here’s the thing:  Nick swapped out the engine himself, right on his parent’s driveway!  That blew my mind.  To him, it was just another kindergarten puzzle.

While Nick was in graduate school at Rutgers, he worked at Sears Automotive in Nanuet, swapping out batteries, tires, and whatnot.  Around that time, I bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputer.   I told Nick I was dissatisfied with it. It had no software. I couldn’t do much with it.  Nick expressed envy, telling me how much more productive he could be in the chem lab with a microcomputer.  So I gave it to him.  This was about 1978.   A year or two later, Nick expressed his gratitude and confirmed how useful it was in the lab.  Note that PCs, as we know them, didn’t exist yet and neither did the Internet.  Once Nick got his PhD, he worked as a chemist for a series of pharmaceutical companies where he continued to leverage his computational and mechanical talents, to their benefit.

In recent years, we occasionally got together for dinner, both of us being partial to the Mason Jar in Mahwah.  Whenever we ate, to start, Nick always ordered a club soda and fried calamari, and I always ordered a Jack Daniels on the rocks, to celebrate the occasion.

We spoke on the phone occasionally.  Among other things, we compared notes about what we knew about old friends. Nick had knowledge about so many things–anything related to pharmaceuticals obviously, but also climate change, fracking, and anything mechanical, especially, cars, and even tanks, which were a special interest of his.  More recently, he spoke at length and in detail about his medical maladies. In hindsight, I realize that what was just as impressive as his knowledge was his ability to articulate what he knew clearly and concisely. He could explain anything to anybody. 

We talked about politics only a little. Nick was a hands-on, practical guy; whereas, I tend to be more abstract and philosophical.  Politics was the one subject about which he never elaborated. Nick was deeply conservative. He knew what he believed, and that was it. No need for discussion. Whenever I expressed anything the least bit liberal, which I sometimes did, if just to draw him out, he would dismiss it with a stubborn grunt or a snort.  And I say that with affection.  

We never talked about sports.  We never discussed religion.  Someday, when we’re both hopefully in heaven, I suppose Nick will be driving a Dodge Dart with Abba or Arrival playing on the radio, and I’ll be driving a Volkswagon Beetle with Bob Dylan or Led Zeppelin blasting away.  We’ll meet for dinner at the Mason Jar equivalent in Heaven.  To start, he’ll order a club soda and fried calamari. I’ll order a Jack Daniels on the rocks.  We won’t talk politics or religion, but we’ll have plenty of other things to talk about.

Franny of "Franny And Zooey," by J.D. Salinger (1955)

Franny:

It is a vivid snapshot of a specific time, place, and social class.  Like a hard-boiled detective novel, Salinger confines himself to what his characters say and do. The characters never directly express their inner life. Initially, I found Salinger's constant mindless enumerating of visual details pointless and annoying.  I wondered if this was merely a story of the manners and customs of affluent college students in the early 1950s.  We learn that Franny is dissatisfied and frustrated with her life.  Perhaps exasperated would be a better adjective.  Moreover, she is apparently in a spiritual crisis.  But oh, the 1950s!  Everyone smokes. They have snails, frog legs, and multiple martinis for lunch.  Franny's fascination with the Eastern religions she has studied echoes a dissatisfaction with herself and her life.  It foreshadows the emergence of the Beats, with Zooey making ironic, sarcastic allusions to her becoming a bohemian.  While the depth of Franny's spiritual crisis slowly emerges over lunch, Zooey does not have the slightest interest, let alone empathy.  Indeed, he cannot think beyond the forms of manners and social manners.  But of the Jesus prayer and the end of the story, I didn't see it coming, didn't see it coming.

Side note:  I never liked Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye.  We learn nothing of the inner life of Holden.  If Salinger's point is that Holden doesn't have an inner life, God save us.  When he grew up, he became Donald Trump.

The Future of the Catholic Church in the United States

My oldest son, though an atheist, does not scorn Catholicism or any other religion.  He has a fairly disinterested, that is, objective view of religion.  He thinks Catholicism in America is shot, has no future.  Indeed as Bishop Barron says, of each religion in America, we have the highest rate of people leaving.  My son says I underestimate the impact of the priest pedophile crisis.  He observes that the religious groups that are currently thriving in America are tribal--the Mormons, Orthodox Jews, the Amish, and the evangelicals.  He notes that Catholicism is the least tribal religion.  But tribalism is not an option for Catholicism, and rightfully so.   

Mercy

Except when confessing my sins, I never understood the concept of mercy. As such, it always intrigued me.  I read Pope Francis's book about mercy; and yet, I still wasn't able to get my mind around it.  I used to ask, what about repentance, don't we have to first repent in order to receive mercy?  But it says in the Bible that mercy is a gift, freely given--unconditionally--no strings attached. Mercy exists first. It is mercy that enables repentance, not the other way around. Repentance can occur only if mercy exists beforehand. My understanding of this only came after listening to a witness by someone who was sentenced to sixteen years in jail in North Carolina.  People like Nomi Network and The Sisters of Life are agents of mercy.

Chehkovian Christianity?

 Michael Sean Winters on Cornell West:

West has styled himself a “Chekhovian Christian.” He wrote that he was inspired by Chekhov because his “magisterial depiction of the cold Cosmos, indifferent Nature, crushing Fate and the cruel histories that circumscribe desperate, bored, confused and anxiety-ridden yet love-hungry people, who try to endure against all odds, rings true to me.” What that has to do with Christianity is anyone’s guess – and West gives no clues. For the Christian, the Cosmos are not cold, they are created and Nature is not indifferent, it is infused with the love of the Creator. But, never mind all that. It sounds so authoritative, doesn’t it?

Michael Sean Winters quoting Cornell West:

“Despite my Chekhovian Christian conception of what it means to be human - a view that invokes pre-modern biblical narratives,” West writes. “I stand in the skeptical Christian tradition of Montaigne, Pascal and Kierkegaard …My Chekhovian Christian viewpoint is idiosyncratic and iconoclastic. My sense of the absurdity and incongruity of the world is closer to the Gnosticism of Valentinus, Luria or Monoimos ... My intellectual lineage goes more through Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Rilke, Melville, Lorca, Kafka, Celan, Beckett, Soyinka, O'Neill, Kazantzakis, Morrison and above all, Chekhov ... And, I should add, it reaches its highest expression in Brahms's ‘Requiem’ and Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme.’”

-from The National Catholic Reporter, "Cornell West: Idiot-in-Chief."  Michael Sean Winters May 19, 2011.

I am not posting this because I believe in it.  Rather, it sounds rather contrary to the idea that all of reality is a positive.  (Luigi Giussani / Communion and Liberation). But it bears thinking about.