A Diamond Guitar A Diamond Guitar "A Diamond Guitar" is a short story by Truman Capote, first published in "Harper's Bazaar" in 1950; it is noted as one of his better quality early short stories. The title refers to the prize possession of the younger man, a rhinestone-studded guitar; the guitar serves as the key image of the story. Capote wrote "A Diamond Guitar" in April 1950 during a three-week-long transatlantic freighter crossing from New York to Italy. It is one of three short stories normally published in the same volume as "Breakfast at Tiffany's", first released in 1958. The story is set
Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella) by a Manhattan resident named Bonnie Golightly who claimed that he had based Holly on her. According to the biographer of Joan McCracken, McCracken had a violent dressing room outburst after learning of the wartime death of her brother, while she was appearing in the "Bloomer Girl" (1944). McCracken's biographer suggests that Capote was inspired by this event as a model for a scene in which Holly reacts to her brother's death overseas. McCracken and her husband Jack Dunphy were close friends of Capote, and Dunphy became Capote's life companion after his 1948 divorce from McCracken. In the novella, Holly