BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S & THE GRASS HARP

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.