Author: Truman Capote
Year: 1972 (1951 & 1958)
Publisher: Czytelnik
Language: Polish (Translator Bronislaw Zielinski)
In 1868,
shortly after the civil war, the American journalist and writer John William
DeForest coined the term “the Great American Novel” and delineated it as “the
picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence”. Without
too much effort, some contenders for this esteemed distinction naturally spring
to mind. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one. Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer
another. The Old Man and the Sea, On the Road, Moby Dick, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
are but a few more monolithic examples of novels that catch defining aspects of
Americanism, and I have argued elsewhere that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great
Gatsby might potentially edge ahead of them all in the race for this prestigious
title.
One book of
equally unassuming proportions but comparable gravitas is Truman Capote’s “Sniadanie
u Tiffany’ego” (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”). It narrates the tale through a first-person
male protagonist who happens to reside in the same New York apartment building
as a rather frivolous, egocentric, and seemingly irresolute young woman by the
name of Holly Golightly whom he gets to know as she repeatedly rings his doorbell
when she returns from her nocturnal activities, having forgotten or lost her
keys. While other tenants in the building grow irritated and tired of the
reckless woman, the narrator develops a liking, akin to fascination, for her.
As the
story progresses, the narrator, and the reader through him, bit by bit assemble
the puzzle that is Holly Golightly. Through observations, conversations with
her associates, the gifts she offers and her distinctive behaviour, the
character is incrementally explored and new perspectives and dimensions
uncovered. We learn about her humble origins and the driving force behind her
erratic behaviour in the metropolitan environment.
In Holly
Golightly, the new America, or more precisely a re-invented American dream,
takes form. As the post-World War America underwent rapid transformation ultimately
extricating itself from the aftermath of its Civil War trauma, society was subjected
to considerable stress. Holly Golightly embodies the pursuit of material success
and social mobility, the bedrock of the American Dream. Everybody can make it
big. And to make it big means accumulating monetary wealth. But she also experiences
the solitude of the transition between social classes. A country girl traying
her wings in an unforgiving and unfathomable metropolis, Holly seems to reject
authority and conformism but at closer scrutiny, she is just as entangled in
the web of society as her new self as she was before. Only she lacks the tools and
experience to control it.
A comparative
analysis with the aforementioned The Great Gatsby may prove useful. Both novels
are of modest proportions and although they were published three decades apart,
they found their audience at about the same time in the years following the Second
World War. Both stories grapple with the issues of identity as each of them
portrays a character that arrives to the big city from the countryside to
confront the frenzy of material pursuit, posturing, and competition that make
up the American Dream.
While I somewhat
enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I was surprised to find the second story in the
volume, “Harfa traw” (“The Grass Harp”) significantly more gratifying. By all
standards it is a silly tale about two elderly sisters, Verena and Dolly Talbo,
embroiled in a dispute over the commercial exploitation for a medication that Dolly
has concocted. As a result of their rift, Dolly leaves the house where Verena
and she have lived together since forever and takes refuge in a tree house in
the woods not far from the town. Her maid and her and her sister’s nephew, who
is also the narrator of this story accompany her.
SPOILER
ALERT
Before long,
they are joined by others who for one reason or another find it prudent to move
in with them in the tree house, despite its unsuitability as a permanent
settlement. Verena, always the authoritarian of the two sisters, calls upon the
sheriff to track down her eloped sister and bring her back home again. Law
enforcement, of course, translates the mission into something they can
understand and after a confusing and wildly entertaining scene by the tree
house, arrests the maid.
“Harfa traw”
is a heartening tale of rebellion and personal integrity but also about reconciliation
and the futility of quarrel. Predating “Sniadanie u Tiffany’ego” by several
years it exudes a tone and environment entirely distinct. The characters are diverse
and intriguing and their interaction consistently entertaining. Although some
may find the ending somewhat anti-climactic, to me it harmonises with the story’s
overall tone and glides into the sunset with just enough sentimentality to make
it touching and enough screech to not make it sentimental. A sheer delight.
