Loving a "Real Phony"

            In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote tells the story of what it is like to experience someone like Holly Golightly….someone who is “a real phony,” someone who lives on what seems to be a completely different planet. Holly is a young, beautiful, and untamable young woman who is mistakenly believed to be only selfish, shallow, and crude. She appears to most of the people who surround her to simply be either delusional or phony, even to O.J (a man who really did care for Holly); but out of all the people who surrounded her, spent time with her, and came in and out of her life, few could see through to (and appreciate) the world as she saw it. Holly was misunderstood -to say the least- even to the narrator and reader for a good part of the book.

            The part of Capote’s story that made me truly love and appreciate Holly’s own personal brand of intelligence was when she said,

            "Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to."

This quote, I believe, will stick with me forever. It resonates with me in a way that few other quotes have. It perfectly summarizes the way that I feel about what is important in life; honesty to ones self and others, having the strength in the midst of struggle and hardship to deal with whatever life throws at you, and the strength to not sell yourself short or exploit yourself (which is a lot less common than people would like to think). Holly said that she would rob a grave if it would make her day more enjoyable, but she believes that one must be true to themselves in spite of everything and everyone, and she meets the criteria of her own code of ethics; she practices what she preaches, which is also a lot less common than people would like to think. It is because she meets her own criteria of what a good person is that others may come to agree that she is a person worth actually getting to know and not just spending time with.

            What I particularly liked about this book, was that it was a love story where two acquaintances grow to love each other as they are. The narrator never dates or sleeps with Holly, because the story is not about what it is like to successfully fall in love and have a relationship, it is about what it is like to fall in love with someone as wild and untamable as the sea and never asking for more, and never asking for them to change or be anything other than they are. It is about what it is like to love someone the way they are, and how love is not always instantaneous or suppressed and doesn’t always need to end with a relationship, marriage, or sex. Sometimes love between two people is strong enough that there doesn’t have to be, or even shouldn’t be, any ‘more.’ Joe Bell and the narrator had these feelings for Holly; they had a clean and honest love for her, just because of who she was.