*Solar Ikon*

Capote is one of those people who soared into fame and fortune as though he was born specifically for that purpose; he was talented, ever-present, and as his fame arced upward, he became an aggressive broker of cool. He certainly had the goods: by the time he published his 1958 breakthrough novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's (Penguin Modern Classics), he had already received attention for his stories, screenplays, and a musical.

A small, fierce, funny, eclectically rich and gay man, Capote spent three years as s a sensation in the New York and Los Angeles arts scene when, in 1961, Audrey Hepburn brought his main character, Holly Golightly, brilliantly to life in the movie version of Breakfast at Tiffany's (Special Anniversary Collector's Edition). This made Capote even more cool, and his fame was white hot when he made a radical decision.

In 1962 he read a newspaper story about a family whose home was invaded by a mad man who proceeded to kill all of them. Something about this story captivated Capote on two levels: first, on the human level, he became overwhelmed with a need to know why and how such a thing could happen. And second, on an artistic level, his muse demanded that he leave the "soft life" and go pursue his writing for real. And so that's what he did: Capote essentially disappeared into the remote backroads of Kansas, to the town where the crime occoured. He stayed there for four years.

In Cold Blood was published in 1966, and became a national sensation immediately. He called it a non-fiction novel; generally it is considered the genesis of the modern "true crime" genera. Capote's artistry and grippingly relentless prose fed the flames of his fame. He used that fame, among other things, to throw parties, so he could lord it over everyone in the jet set, making them all wonder if they were going to get invited.

This real-life theater took an unfortunate turn when Capote began to use the secrets and personal pain of the glitterati he knew in the same way he had used the tragedy in Kansas -- to novelize real life, or to threaten to. This was construed as an abuse of the trust that some of the most influential and celebrated people in the country had put in him. To many, he crossed a line. This resulted in a dismal decade for him in the 1970s, full of drinking and drug use.

He recovered somewhat in 1980 when he published Music for Chameleons (Penguin Modern Classics) which was presented as a collection of short fiction and non-fiction pieces and which spent a surprising sixteen weeks on the New York Times Best-seller List. Unfortunately, it was also in this year that Capote's drug use caught up with him. Seizures, hallucinations, and other afflictions altered his life, and he passed away in 1984. Capote has become iconoclastic in the American pantheon of famous weirdos; practically any way you look at it, his presence took the form of an exposé.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (Penguin Modern Classics)

Published: 1958

If you've ever seen Audrey Hepburn's unbelievably perfect portrayal of Holly Golightly in the film classic, then her voice will read this book to you in your mind. At least, that's what happens to us, which is really very pleasant.

The story is simple: Holly Golightly ran away from a lonely Arkansas farm, leaving behind her husband and his three children from a previous marriage, to seek her fame and fortune in New York. She becomes a socialite and makes most of her money by dating very wealthy men, who give her tips when she needs to go to the washroom, and who occassionally accompany her home for the evening. Beautiful and crazy, most men desire her upon meeting her, and many of them fall hopelessly in love with her at the same moment. She knows this, and so she doesn't even bother to name her cat because she fully expects to marry one of her rich suitors and to live out her life in exotic luxury.

The story is told by a man who lives in Holly's apartment building. Holly names him "Fred", after her brother, and begins to make demands upon him immediately -- to open doors, to run errands, to keep her company, whatever she happens to need at the moment. Like every other man, he does whatever she wants -- because he is a writer who is fascinated by her, and because he is in love with her and hopes to "capture" her for himself. And also because he is afraid for her and wants to protect her, a sentiment the reader soon shares.

Capote creates the complete presence of this young girl and her dreams and aspirations while holding at the core of her being some mystery, some secret, that makes her even more alluring and interesting. The men all think, "My beloved Holly, whatever your secret is, it does not matter to me...I will be true to you forever." But, as Holly explains towards the end of the story, she is a "wild thing," a free spirit who can not live if she is trapped. You need to read the book to see how Capote leaves it at the end -- it is different from the movie, and evocative of a far more complex emotional response.

Dave McKeague

Introduction:

Capote's prose is so effortless it is easy to miss how he conveys the depth of characterization that he does. You sort of slide along with him, and without knowing how you got there, you find you know all sorts of things about his characters that he never told you. "Fred" finds Holly completely fascinating, but Capote lets us understand that there is something desperate and a little disturbed behind this fascination without explaining what it is. Deep down, Holly just wants to be happy and free and to be loved, but Capote doesn't say that, either -- he just shows how she can dance with people at any rung on the social ladder:

Passage:

...she had no qualms at what hour she got me out of bed to push the buzzer that released the downstairs door. As I had few friends, and none who would come around so late, I always knew that it was her. But on the first occasions of its happening, I went to my door, half-expecting bad news, a telegram; and Miss Golightly would call up: "Sorry, darling -- I forgot my key."

Of course we'd never met. Though actually, on the stairs, in the street, we often came face-to-face; but she seemed not quite to see me. She was never without dark glasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her, herself, shine so. One might have thought her a photographer's model, perhaps a young actress, except that it was obvious, judging from her hours, she hadn't time to be either.

Now and then I ran across her outside our neighborhood. Once a visiting relative took me to "21," and there, at a superior table, surrounded by four men, none of them Mr. Arbuck, yet all of them interchangeable with him, was Miss Golightly, idly, publicly combing her hair; and her expression, an unrealized yawn, put, by example, a dampener on the excitement I felt over dining at so swanky a place. Another night, deep in the summer, the heat of my room sent me out into the streets. I walked down Third Avenue to Fifty-first Street, where there was an antique store with an object in its window I admired: a palace of a bird cage, a mosque of minarets and bamboo rooms yearning to be filled with talkative parrots. But the price was three hundred and fifty dollars. On the way home I noticed a cab-driver crowd gathered in front of P. J. Clark's saloon, apparently attracted there by a happy group of whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing Matilda." As they sang they took turns spin-dancing a girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, Miss Golightly, to be sure, floated round in their arms light as a scarf.

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and melba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were always torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.

Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong, she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped torn, sit out on the fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard the music, I would go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimes sang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boy's adolescent voice. She knew all the show hits, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill; especially she liked the songs from Oklahoma!, which were new that summer and everywhere. But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from.

End Note:

hdurham

The mystery of her origins is ever-present in Fred's mind -- he is a writer, and so he needs to know everyone's secrets. But the more he learns about Holly, the less he knows, and the less he knows, the more desperate for knowledge he becomes. Capote sustains this without effort, giving us breakthrough after breakthrough without ever revealing who Holly really, truly is. That, of course, is why the book is a classic. For isn't this ultimately the case, he suggests, with everyone we ever know?