“She spent whole hausfrau afternoons slopping about in the sweatbox of her midget kitchen: ‘José says I’m better than the Colony. Really, who would have dreamed I had such a great natural talent? A month ago I couldn’t scramble eggs.’ And still couldn’t, for that matter. Simple dishes, steak, a proper salad, were beyond her. Instead, she fed José, and occasionally myself, outré soups (brandied black terrapin poured into avocado shells) Nero-ish novelties (roasted pheasant stuffed with pomegranates and persimmons) and other dubious inventions (chicken and saffron rice served with a chocolate sauce: ‘An East Indian classic, my dear.’) Wartime sugar and cream rationing restricted her imagination when it came to sweets — nevertheless, she once managed something called Tobacco Tapioca: best not describe it.”
– Truman Capote, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
One of the biggest questions posed in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is whether or not Holly Golightly, central darling of our nostalgic narrator’s recollections, is a phony. Hollywood insider OJ Berman claims during a party scene that Holly’s at least a real phony – that is, she truly believes “all this crap she believes.”
At first read, Berman’s analysis might ring true. But after a closer gaze at the the above excerpt, in which Holly braves cooking to better embody her latest role of a Latin American politico’s future wife, it’s clear that Miss Golightly is less likely a contrived phony and more certainly an honest-to-goodness dreamer. “Really, who would have dreamed,” indeed. But her dishes contain too much genuine nerve and whimsy to belong to a mere forger: phoniness seems too lazy a mark for the food she has the audacity to concoct.
If Holly is a dreamer, it’s no wonder she can’t scramble eggs, grill steak or toss a salad. Such basic cooking skills are part of the general foundation she lacks – how could she possibly have culinary roots when she herself is rootless, a mere chimera created by Lulamae’s tirelessly artful hands?
And so, instead of sturdy, grounded fare, Holly whips up dishes fit for Nero, Capote says. No coincidence there; Nero was known for his extravagance, and how else could one describe the hoity Colony, and descriptions of pheasant and wasted avocadoes in the bloody midst of wartime? Holly’s cooking only serves to illustrate that she, though charmingly capricious (at least at first), is deeply out of touch with reality both on the dining table and in her own overly fashioned life.
After all, what confectionary creations, in a time of rations, does her illusion-addled brain create? Oh, Holly, poor Holly. Tobacco Tapioca, that’s what – a recipe so unfit for consumption that even Capote won’t deign to describe it.
It’s that word, “unfit,” that’s key here. It’s so like and of Holly, despite her tinkling laugh, grand hat and sleek black dress. They’re all façade, like our girl (and like her cooking). In reality (well, at least in the novella version – the movie turns it into more of a love story), she doesn’t belong anywhere or to anyone for long.
And so, despite her fanciful and even entertaining culinary efforts, she still loses José, just as she loses her various selves and as our narrator loses her: she’s simply too fleeting to keep, herself an impeccably chic and impossible dream.
Reading is Eating: A Guide to Fictive Food 