easy riding. for a guy who's never read any of capote's works before (such as me), he has some dna in common with salinger, fitzgerald, segal, kesey and steinbeck, but without a shred of any of those guys' humour.
as for the star of the print, breakfast at tiffany's, well, i think it really shows the author's grief and despair, right around the middle of the damn story, when he bursts out and gives the reader the entire morale, written in plain blunt words, like a machine gun, in about half a page.
Joe Bell disdainfully settled the fresh martinis in front of us."Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it 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 a taller 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.""She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me."Moderately," Holly confessed. "But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to him very carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and held on to each other and he wished me luck." She glanced at the clock. "He must be in the Blue Mountains by now.""What's she talkin' about?" Joe Bell asked me.Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and 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 problem is, one had figured this part out from the first pages. and, since holly golightly (lulamae barnes) is not really an archetype that can suffer any changes, why strip the meagre pleasure of keeping this conclusion for oneself, after one had stumbled upon it from the very beginning.
and i think i know why. truman, you little bastard, you wrote this book for the women, didn't you. it's your way of telling them in their faces to fuck off, you figured them out, they're as complicated as a dripping olive from a martini. there isn't, actually, and morale to this story, is it. and, aside from the obvious oedipian complex, there's just some slipstream lesbian attraction between holly and her almost twin-named sister, your biological mother, lillie mae faulk. well, there you have it, your brochure for my brochure.
yes, well. next two stories: house of flowers and a diamond guitar - nice stories. human nature caught in a little momentum. truman places his bets on the most probable case scenarios in (his) reality (probably also inspired from his own life, but i'm too lazy to find the connections here), and that's what makes the reading just a tad surprising.
but enough of that. my favourite was, definitely, a christmas memory. that's the story you need to read. because that's where his real mother and friend is depicted, sook. and that's the story that keeps you on your soul's toes to the end and after. you can find the entire text here. i'd recommend copy-pasting it into a word file.
p.s. it's been æons since i last logged into my shelfari profile..
