Forget for the moment that the novel (really, more of a novella) has no plot; forget also the fact that the first-person narrator is not really a character but, instead, more of a disembodied voice. The book is clearly meant to be a character sketch of Holly Golightly (an interesting name), and within the parameters of that sub-genre both of these flaws are accepted, perhaps even expected. However, there are certain other criteria that are relevant, and in my opinion the book failed to meet them.
The first and most important criterion is that the character must be plausible. To be plausible, the character's fundamental traits must be clear and comprehensible to the reader. But I found the character of Holly Golightly to be anything but clear and comprehensible. Capote paints her as a deliberately flighty character, deeply concerned about the narrator in one scene and then dismissive in another, cavorting with movie stars at one point and then fixated on the hubby of her roommate later on. Now, flightiness is definitely an appropriate character trait to emphasize: but even flightiness must have some rationale behind it, some deeper (perhaps unconscious) motivation driving the character's seemingly random actions. With Holly, on the other hand, I got the impression that Capote was simply stringing together anecdotes, random episodes of Holly's life in New York that failed to cohere into a solid character for me. Unlike the killers of Capote's fine In Cold Blood, no solid picture of Holly emerged from the morass of details. And in a character sketch, such a flaw is critical.
Second, the character must evoke the emotions that the author/narrator clearly wants to evoke. There are two reasons for this. First, the narrator is so undefined as a character that I can't interpret why Holly reacts to him in various ways. Second, Holly is a distasteful character. She's promiscuous, for one thing. Now, this isn't bad in and of itself (except for some people), but her promiscuity leads her to treat people really badly: ignoring or repudiating those who treat her well, and kissing up to those who treat her like crap but who are richer or more famous. She is also so intensely preoccupied with herself that she ignores the feelings of those around her. She doesn't even look that good: in fact, the passages describing her appearance have uncomfortably pedophiliac tendencies (comparing her to cute 12-year-olds and whatnot). Somehow we're supposed to believe that this unappreciative egomaniac is just a loveable young girl who should command the sympathy of every reader? Please. Just because everybody who meets her in the book is obsessed with her doesn't mean that the reader, who has the fortune of not being under direct control of the author, has to feel the same way.
There are other minor flaws in this work, mostly related to its age. Holly casually refers to "Japs" and "dykes," which Capote perhaps meant to be charming but which comes off today as being somewhat unsettling. She also fluctuates between cute epithets and actual swear words; the one time she rips off a "F***!" is jarring, to say the least, compared with the otherwise old-fashioned placidness of the narrative.
Capote is, as always, a fine writer, and except for some incongruous phrasing and word choice, which can probably be traced to the time Capote was writing in, his prose style seldom jars the reader. Still, as a character sketch, Breakfast at Tiffany's failed to capture both my attention and my admiration.
Copyright © 2001 Steven Wu 