Deep Blue Something

There's a certain excitement I feel when I watch a movie that takes place long ago in New York City.  Well I can get the same feeling from a book.  I live for those moments in The Great Gatsby and House of Mirth when the author describes some aspect of the city that is strikingly similar to the present.  The familiarity of streets and neighborhoods gives me a small thrill.  I just finished reading Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.  Holly Golightly is not a likable or sympathetic protagonist as far as I am concerned. Nevertheless, I enjoy imagining her apartment in the east seventies around the corner from Lexington, not far from where I live now in the east sixties.  It was easy to picture her riding a horse through Central Park and down Fifth Avenue.  I found Capote's description of my old neighborhood, Spanish Harlem, as "[a] savage, a garish, a moody neighborhood garlanded with poster-portraits of movie stars and Madonnas.  Sidewalk litterings of fruit-rind and rotted newspaper were hurled about by the wind" apropos. 

I enjoyed the book so much more than the movie.  Not one of my favorite Audrey Hepburn movies, I was always confused about how beloved this character was for women.  I think I get it now.  They are just enamored with the style and glamour of Audrey Hepburn in the movie.  From what I can remember Holly Golightly is far less crude in the movie and they almost skim over her back story quickly from what I can recall.  As much as I can't relate to its heroin, Breakfast at Tiffany's setting made it worth my time.