Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1950). New York: Vintage, 1993.

Maybe it's because I just got back from New York or maybe it's because this is the most recent New York novel I've read but I want to declare this book my favorite New York novel. What's its competition? Catcher in the Rye? Fortress of Solitude? Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing? I like all those books well enough, but for a New York novel (a genre I'm not even comfortable characterizing) this one wins because underlying the story of Holly Golightly and the unnamed narrator is....

I'm without words this morning. This is a reading morning and not a writing one. Whatever it is I'm trying to talk about is here in the novel's final lines:

"Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, [the cat] was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too."

It's the kind of basic human desire I'm interested in these days: being in the place one is supposed by factors internal or external to be in, and the ways we can go about figuring out where that place might be.

It's a great ending because of course since the movie of this came out (which I haven't seen), Holly is so quintessentially New York. But she can't stay in New York. Maybe she only becomes quintessentially New York after she leaves New York.

God, what do these terms even mean?