
For reasons of personal and intellectual biography, I am intrigued with the novella, even more than the film. The literary version reveals Capote's original Holly Golightly to be a character of rough edges and gritty language, more like a beautiful street punk. The movie is much straighter in most every way. While the movie version updated the original to 1961, Capote's story is set during World War II, a time that makes the 18-year-old Holly a poor child of the Great Depression. Now, that's interesting.

I also think about my mother. My mother's maiden name, Gellatly, is a variation of Golightly, and my mother was a descent of a Scottish family that settled in the piney woods of East Texas in the middle of the 19th century, the time of the earliest Anglo settlers. A family cemetery in Geneva, Texas bears the family name. My mother loved the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's and relished the fact that she was a Golightly, but the real reason she loved the movie was that she loved the glamor of New York. After my father died, we started taking trips to the city, and I think she always envisioned me living here one day. My mother was far different from Lulamae Golightly of Tulip, Texas, but she did raise me to assert some of Holly's independence, versatility, and playfulness. She also had a thing for Chanel.

The forthcoming New York walks inspired by these stories could lead down several paths. We could walk around the east 70s, especially east of Lexington, stopping to pay our respects at No. 169 E. 71st St., the location used for exterior shots of Holly Golightly's brownstone in the movie version. The novella, on the other hand, suggests many other walks. Capote cites several specific locations including an antique store on Third and 51st Street, P. J. Clarke's at Third and 55th, and of, course, Tiffany and Co. at Fifth Avenue at 57th Street. At one point, the writer-narrator and Holly walk from the neighborhood all the way to Chinatown. That's a long, but manageable walk. We could also visit a few places special to Truman Capote, including his last residence at United Nations Plaza. We'll just see where our feet take us.
Images of 727 Fifth Avenue by Walking Off the Big Apple.
See Mapping Holly Golightly for map and more posts.
well, you seem "in love" with new york as much as holly... that is another thing you too have in common, not only possibly relatives :D
ReplyDeletei am hungry for more stories