VANISHED EMPIRES
Dedicated to classics and hits.
Monday, March 18, 2024
The Blackboard Jungle (1954) by Evan Hunter
Posted by catdirt at 9:53 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1950s literature, American Literature, book review
Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1970s literature, book review
Friday, March 15, 2024
You Glow in the Dark (2024) by Liliana Colanzi
Posted by catdirt at 12:20 PM 0 comments
Labels: book review, Latin American Literature, new release
Foxfire 5 (1979) by Eliot Wigginton
Posted by catdirt at 11:49 AM 0 comments
Labels: American Literature, book review
The Catfish Man: A Conjured Life (1980) by Jerome Charyn
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1980s literature, American Literature, book review
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Spidertown (1996) by Abraham Rodriguez Jr.
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1990s literature, book review
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Show Review: Angie McMahon @ The Crocodile Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA
Posted by catdirt at 3:59 PM 0 comments
Labels: show review
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent (1991) by Julia Alvarez
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1990s literature, American Literature, book review, Latin American Literature
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Trust (2022) by Hernan Diaz
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA
Monday, March 11, 2024
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) by Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)
by Truman Capote
Holly Golightly is one of the original Manic Pixie Dream Girls, she is even listed on the wikipedia table which contains examples. Audrey Hepburn played in her in her iconic turn in the movie version of the book, and it is fair to say that it some version of the picture above that leaps to mind when I think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, either film or book version. The book is a novella, maybe one hundred pages long. It's told from the perspective of "Fred" a Capote-esque narrator struggling as a writer in World War II era New York City. His downstairs neighbor is Holly Golightly, who like many other Manic Pixie Dream Girls is both irresistibly attractive to a wide variety of men, but who has more fraught relationships with members of her own gender. This characteristic of hers is manifested in the parties she throws in her apartment, which typically have only one female guest (Golightly).
Breakfast at Tiffany's has a reputation as being a work of light fiction, but the book is darker than that reputation. As is gradually revealed, Golightly is a former child bride from Arkansas, who fled her (admittedly not terrible under the circumstances) "probably illegal" wedding for Hollywood, then wound up in New York City. She is enmeshed in a conspiracy to allow a jailed mobster to run his rackets from inside Sing Sing. In the end, she flees indictment for South America, never to be seen again.
Capote was already famous before the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but his critical reputation wasn't truly cemented until after his magisterial true crime opus, In Cold Blood. In Cold Blood would also be his last decent book. Like his contemporary J.D. Salinger, the lack of finished works turns Capote into another mid century "What If", firmly ensconced in the canon as the result of one masterpiece and another less masterpiece, but not a top flight author for the ages.
Posted by catdirt at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 1001 novels USA, 1950s literature, American Literature, book review
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