Editing Truman Capote (section)

=== ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'' ===
[[File:TrumanCapote1959.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Truman Capote in 1959]]
''[[Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella)|Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories]]'' (1958) brought together the title novella and three shorter tales: "[[House of Flowers (short story)|House of Flowers]]", "[[A Diamond Guitar]]" and "[[A Christmas Memory]]". The heroine of ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'', Holly Golightly, became one of Capote's best known creations, and the book's prose style prompted [[Norman Mailer]] to call Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation".

The novella itself was originally supposed to be published in ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]''{{'s}} July 1958 issue, several months before its publication in book form by Random House. The publisher of ''Harper's Bazaar'', [[the Hearst Corporation]], began demanding changes to Capote's tart language, which he reluctantly made because he had liked the photos by [[David Attie]] and the design work by Harper's art director [[Alexey Brodovitch]] that were to accompany the text.<ref>Clarke, Gerald, Capote: A Biography, 1988, Simon & Schuster: p308.</ref> But despite his compliance, Hearst ordered Harper's not to run the novella anyway. Its language and subject matter were still deemed "not suitable", and there was concern that [[Tiffany's]], a major advertiser, would react negatively.<ref>Plimpton, George, editor, Truman Capote, 1997, Doubleday: p162-163.</ref> An outraged Capote resold the novella to ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'' for its November 1958 issue; by his own account, he told ''Esquire'' he would only be interested in doing so if Attie's original series of photos was included, but to his disappointment, the magazine ran just a single full-page image of Attie's (another was later used as the cover of at least one paperback edition of the novella).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://hmfa.libs.uga.edu/hmfa/view?docId=ead/ms1612-ead.xml|title=Truman Capote's Papers|access-date=September 9, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180622220347/http://hmfa.libs.uga.edu/hmfa/view?docId=ead%2Fms1612-ead.xml|archive-date=June 22, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> The novella was published by Random House shortly afterwards.

For Capote, ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'' was a turning point, as he explained to Roy Newquist (''Counterpoint'', 1964):

{{blockquote|I think I've had two careers. One was the career of precocity, the young person who published a series of books that were really quite remarkable. I can even read them now and evaluate them favorably, as though they were the work of a stranger&nbsp;... My second career began, I guess it really began with ''Breakfast at Tiffany's''. It involves a different point of view, a different prose style to some degree. Actually, the prose style is an evolvement from one to the other – a pruning and thinning-out to a more subdued, clearer prose. I don't find it as evocative, in many respects, as the other, or even as original, but it is more difficult to do. But I'm nowhere near reaching what I want to do, where I want to go. Presumably this new book is as close as I'm going to get, at least strategically.<ref>Roy Newquist, Counterpoint, (Chicago, 1964), p. 79</ref>}}