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CAPOTE | Breakfast at Tiffany's, revised typescript, 1958

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CAPOTE, TRUMAN

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, REVISED TYPESCRIPT

the setting copy with copious autograph revisions throughout in pencil, every page containing annotations, comprising revisions, meticulously erased deletions, and other substantive changes (the protagonist's name changed from "Connie Gustafson" to "Holly Golightly" throughout), as well as the correction of spellings and other accidentals, also with a small number of further corrections by the copyeditor, annotated in the margins for casting off into galleys and each leaf marked off with a tick, 84 numbered pages, 4to ("letter" size, 216 x 279mm), on three paperstocks (yellow Hammermill Bond, white Strathmore Bond, and an unwatermarked paper of lower quality), with typescript preliminaries ("About the Author", title page, half-title, contents, dedication, copyright page, list of other publications) all marked up for the press (7 pages), also an ink mock-up of the cover, printer's ink stamp ("Haddon Craftsmen") with receipt date to the verso of the contents page (27 June 1958), copyright page (5 August 1958), and mock-up cover (20 August 1958), each leaf with the printer's number stamp, also with the Random House address label for return ("Mr Truman Capote | 70 Willow Street | Brooklyn 1, New York"), altogether 93 pages, 1958; nicks and tears to a few leaves (especially pp. 1, 72, 84), printer's ink marks, a small number of leaves (unwatermarked paper stock) browned and somewhat brittle

"...It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of [rude - deleted] health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of [a - revised to: her] nineteenth birthday..." (The narrator's first sight of Holly Golightly)

CAPOTE'S FINAL WORKING TYPESCRIPT OF HIS MOST FAMOUS STORY, providing extensive and detailed insight into the working method of a writer described by Norman Mailer, when reviewing Breakfast at Tiffany's, as "the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm". This draft shows Capote finessing his inimitable style, which he himself placed at the centre of his art: "Essentially I think of myself as a stylist and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semi-colon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance." (interview with Pati Hill, Paris Review, 1957).

These revisions show exactly the obsession over detail that both frustrated Capote (after all, what author would not prefer to be the genius whose words flowed with immediate perfection) but were also key to his success as a writer. Many of the revisions in this typescript modulate the vocabulary - "mad" to "vexed", "touch" to stroke", and dozens of other such changed - or excise unnecessary words. Capote himself later reflected that Breakfast at Tiffany's marked a turning point in his style towards "a pruning and thinning-out to a more subdued, clearer prose." (interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoint, 1964). A characteristic example of how Capote revised his text towards a leaner prose comes when Holly reminisces about her brother Fred, with his slow mind and prodigious appetite for peanut butter. Where Capote had originally typed "Poor Fred, I'm surprised they took him in the army. Have you got anything to eat? I'm starving." This is improved with a handwritten revision to: "Poor Fred. I wonder if the army's generous with their peanut butter. Which reminds me, I'm starving."

The character of Holly Golightly is of course the heart of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the most striking change made by Capote in this draft relates to her. Capote's most enduring fictional creation, a charmingly contrarian free spirit in a little black dress (perhaps, indeed, the little black dress), Holly Golightly has bewitched and inspired for more than sixty years, but the character only reached her completed form in this final draft. The guitar-playing socialite who lives by her charms, is never seen without her dark glasses, spends her Thursdays visiting a gangster in Sing Sing, is described admiringly as a "real phony", and suffers from the "mean reds", was, until Capote took up his pencil for the final time, named Connie Gustafson. Whilst Connie Gustafson may be more plausible as a child bride from Tulip, Texas, she would never have had the impact on the world that she has had as Holly Golightly. Undoubtedly one of the great names of modern comedy, it is as magnificently implausible as its owner and connects to her character in a number of ways: "Golightly" reflects the lightness with...

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CAPOTE, TRUMAN

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, REVISED TYPESCRIPT

the setting copy with copious autograph revisions throughout in pencil, every page containing annotations, comprising revisions, meticulously erased deletions, and other substantive changes (the protagonist's name changed from "Connie Gustafson" to "Holly Golightly" throughout), as well as the correction of spellings and other accidentals, also with a small number of further corrections by the copyeditor, annotated in the margins for casting off into galleys and each leaf marked off with a tick, 84 numbered pages, 4to ("letter" size, 216 x 279mm), on three paperstocks (yellow Hammermill Bond, white Strathmore Bond, and an unwatermarked paper of lower quality), with typescript preliminaries ("About the Author", title page, half-title, contents, dedication, copyright page, list of other publications) all marked up for the press (7 pages), also an ink mock-up of the cover, printer's ink stamp ("Haddon Craftsmen") with receipt date to the verso of the contents page (27 June 1958), copyright page (5 August 1958), and mock-up cover (20 August 1958), each leaf with the printer's number stamp, also with the Random House address label for return ("Mr Truman Capote | 70 Willow Street | Brooklyn 1, New York"), altogether 93 pages, 1958; nicks and tears to a few leaves (especially pp. 1, 72, 84), printer's ink marks, a small number of leaves (unwatermarked paper stock) browned and somewhat brittle

"...It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of [rude - deleted] health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of [a - revised to: her] nineteenth birthday..." (The narrator's first sight of Holly Golightly)

CAPOTE'S FINAL WORKING TYPESCRIPT OF HIS MOST FAMOUS STORY, providing extensive and detailed insight into the working method of a writer described by Norman Mailer, when reviewing Breakfast at Tiffany's, as "the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm". This draft shows Capote finessing his inimitable style, which he himself placed at the centre of his art: "Essentially I think of myself as a stylist and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semi-colon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance." (interview with Pati Hill, Paris Review, 1957).

These revisions show exactly the obsession over detail that both frustrated Capote (after all, what author would not prefer to be the genius whose words flowed with immediate perfection) but were also key to his success as a writer. Many of the revisions in this typescript modulate the vocabulary - "mad" to "vexed", "touch" to stroke", and dozens of other such changed - or excise unnecessary words. Capote himself later reflected that Breakfast at Tiffany's marked a turning point in his style towards "a pruning and thinning-out to a more subdued, clearer prose." (interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoint, 1964). A characteristic example of how Capote revised his text towards a leaner prose comes when Holly reminisces about her brother Fred, with his slow mind and prodigious appetite for peanut butter. Where Capote had originally typed "Poor Fred, I'm surprised they took him in the army. Have you got anything to eat? I'm starving." This is improved with a handwritten revision to: "Poor Fred. I wonder if the army's generous with their peanut butter. Which reminds me, I'm starving."

The character of Holly Golightly is of course the heart of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the most striking change made by Capote in this draft relates to her. Capote's most enduring fictional creation, a charmingly contrarian free spirit in a little black dress (perhaps, indeed, the little black dress), Holly Golightly has bewitched and inspired for more than sixty years, but the character only reached her completed form in this final draft. The guitar-playing socialite who lives by her charms, is never seen without her dark glasses, spends her Thursdays visiting a gangster in Sing Sing, is described admiringly as a "real phony", and suffers from the "mean reds", was, until Capote took up his pencil for the final time, named Connie Gustafson. Whilst Connie Gustafson may be more plausible as a child bride from Tulip, Texas, she would never have had the impact on the world that she has had as Holly Golightly. Undoubtedly one of the great names of modern comedy, it is as magnificently implausible as its owner and connects to her character in a number of ways: "Golightly" reflects the lightness with...

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UK, London
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