Breakfast at Tiffany’s: The Cure for Synesthesia
Holly Golightly Was an Emotion to Color Synesthete
In 1958 when Truman Capote published the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Time magazine declared its heroine Holly Golightly, “the hottest kitten ever to hit the typewriter keys” of Mr. Capote. “She’s a cross between a grown-up Lolita and a teen-age Auntie Mame …alone and a little afraid in a lot of beds she never made.”
Holly was afraid and she didn’t know why. She called the state of discomfort “the mean reds” — a very synesthetic emotion to color declaration.
The scene in which she explains the mean reds comes rather early in the written story as well as the 1961 movie by Blake Edwards starring Audrey Hepburn. She is explaining to her new friend, Paul, a writer and neighbor she nicknames “Fred,” how she hasn’t named her cat because they don’t belong to each other.
From the book:
“I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like…It’s like Tiffany’s,” she said. “Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. but it’s tacky to wear diamonds before you’re forty; and even that’s risky. They only look right on the really old girls. Maria Ouspenskaya. Wrinkles and bones, white hair and…
