It was somewhere in the middle of Truman Capote’s brilliant novella - "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" that it suddenly struck me how similar the novel seemed both structurally and philosophically to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby, which is one of my all-time favorite novels. I guess having recently re-read and watched the new "HDR version" (all color, no soul) of the film had Gatsby in my consciousness which probably helped make that connection.
Once I saw it - it was hard to believe how obvious it was. Clearly I couldn’t have been the first to notice. A quick internet search revealed that indeed I was NOT the first. There are many essays on this topic. The one particularly prominent is an article in The Guardian by Wayne Gooderham, who incidentally links to another fantastic article by Sarah Churchwell on Breakfast and Tiffany’s in general and casually mentions the unmistakable similarities with Gatsby.
So what to make of it? Well, there are clearly intersting similarities (as detailed in Gooderham's article in The Guardian) and Truman Capote was too smart to not know this. He moved in too literary a circle to not realize what he was doing or the crushing importance of The Great Gatsby that was relatively recent novella (1925), enjoying a huge revival in post world-war-II America of Truman’s time. I think Truman was nothing if not deliberate in writing Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This is clearly evident from the heavily edited, highly economic writing style. Truman new exactly what he was doing. His work is derived but not derivative, re-imagined but not reduced. In many ways, Holly is a clearer, more realistic version of the Jay Gatsby. Despite clear similarities, the bigger and important difference is that Holly Golightly is a far more self-honest character. An honesty that eventually leads to the final escape, a luxury that Gatsby is so painfully denied. If Gatsby is the disillusionment of post-WW1 the Holly is the euphoria of post-WW2. Both end badly but the degrees vary.
While both are denied love, Truman’s version is still far more reassuring than Fitzgerald’s. While you as Truman’s Paul feel like there is still hope for a Holly if you hang around long enough, you as Fitzgerald’s Nick are ready for an institution.
More importantly for us, both are great reads.