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 well-known popular magazines, including "The Atlantic Monthly", "Harper's Bazaar", "Harper's Magazine", "Mademoiselle", "The New Yorker", "Prairie Schooner", and "Story". In June 1945, "Miriam" was published by "Mademoiselle" and went on to win a prize, Best First-Published Story, in 1946. In the spring of 1946, Capote was accepted at Yaddo, the artists and writers colony at Saratoga Springs, New York. (He later endorsed Patricia Highsmith as a Yaddo candidate, and she wrote "Strangers on a Train" while she was there.) During an interview for "The Paris Review" in 1957, Capote said this of his short story technique: Random House, the publisher