Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella) debt to Christopher Isherwood, one of his mentors, in creating the character of Holly Golightly: ""Breakfast at Tiffany's" is in many ways Capote's personal crystallization of Isherwood's Sally Bowles." Truman Capote's aunt, Marie Rudisill notes that Holly is a kindred spirit of Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, the central character of his short story "Children on Their Birthdays". She observes that both characters are "unattached, unconventional wanderers, dreamers in pursuit of some ideal of happiness." Capote himself acknowledged that Golightly was the favorite of his characters. The novella's prose style prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of
Truman Capote him she had arrived while he was sleeping, did not want to wake him, and that she would see him at home. The aftermath of the publication of "La Côte Basque" is said to have pushed Truman Capote to new levels of drug abuse and alcoholism, mainly because he claimed to have not anticipated the backlash it would cause in his personal life. In the late 1970s, Capote was in and out of drug rehabilitation clinics, and news of his various breakdowns frequently reached the public. In 1978, talk show host Stanley Siegel did an on-air interview with Capote, who,