In an episode of Seinfeld, the abominable George was trying to fake it at a book society, falsely claiming to have read Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He says he loved best the bit where the cat got the two lovers back together. I must admit I might have made that mistake, had I only seen the quite delightful film with its lovely theme song, but, shortly before, I read the book. Now, while the homosexuality did nothing for me, I was amused to note that in the 1960s, queers were intolerable but male prostitutes were okay. Holly could not be seen to take money from her men (although it was heavily implied, joked about and played upon), but Fred—converted by the scriptwriters into a heterosexual—blatantly receives cash for sex from his patroness. It doesn’t matter, book or film, Holly is an outstanding portrait of a lady. And all in one hundred pages. Capote’s masterpiece.
Billy Liar was a book that I might have written, had Keith Waterhouse not already done it for me. It is about a young bloke who lives entirely in his imagination, imposing exotic and adventurous lives on the drab suburban people around him and extrapolating any actual events out to their highest dramatic possibilities. If I were to write an honest book about my childhood and youth, this would be the way it would go. Curiously, Waterhouse said he based his character on Walter Mitty. I suspect he was still lying. He might just as easily have based the character on me, and, I suspect, himself. Additionally, he wrote it as a book, a play and then a screenplay and it was very successful and popular at the time in all three mediums. So I reckon there’s a fair few other similar dreamers out there like Keith and me.
