High life
Writer's block
Taki
I've been a good boy all week, laying off the booze and staying away from Annabel's and Tramp, but the Ballad of Pentonville Gaol is doing a Schubert's Ninth on me. However much I torture my mind and body by waking up early, drink- ing beer rather than whisky and keeping company with pederasts and intellectuals, it now looks certain that the only prize I shall be winning this year is the coitus interruptus one. Since I've come to Lon- don I've managed to put down as many words'on paper as that mustachioed clown in Managua has instilled reforms.
But never mind. There are more impor- tant things in life than prison diaries, such as television programmes about ... books. In America, where people have the right priorities, the only book show is on cable television, in French, and it's shown on Channel J, the pornographic channel. It's called Apostrophe, and in New York it claims a wide audience of rapists, flashers and a myriad of wankers.
Over here, however, things are diffe- rent. This week I appear on Cover to Cover, the BBC's book review programme chaired by Jill Neville, whose audience is slightly different than the one I mentioned above. On Tuesday, Professor Malcolm Bradbury, Michele Roberts, Tom Wolfe and I sat down and discussed Tom's great novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.
I first read The Bonfire late last year and thought it was the best book ever written about life in the Big Bagel. While leafing through it again, I came to the conclusion that Wolfe is as likely to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature as Kurt Waldheim is to become president of Israel. First of all the novel reads as if one is on uppers, a cardinal sin as far as the prize-givers are concerned. Secondly, Wolfe is simply too honest and far too accurate about such unmentionable subjects as class warfare, liberal hypocrisy, black and Jewish greed and the motives of those who defend the underclasses of Noo Yawk. Telling it like it is might sound good, but it won't get a writer far with the American intelligentsia. At least not if the writer is male, white, heterosexual, and a political moderate. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, also without a record like mine.
Typically, the reviews of the book over here have been much better than over there. And I must commend the Observer's reviewer who was the only one to spot the incredible faux pas of calling a knight's daughter a lady. Bravo; it proves to me that social status consciousness is alive and well among Tiny's minions. For a while I was worried, especially once they moved close to Harrods.
Although I never thought I'd say it in print, one can have a wonderful time at parties while staying off the booze in order to write. Last week I went to a party for Anne Somerset and drank water through- out. The results were quite startling. Not only do I remember everything people said, I also have total recall about what I did. The trouble is that nobody else does.
I had dined at Marianne Hinton's and driven to Elgin Marbles road with my friend Mark Getty. Once inside the house I spotted some literary heavyweights like Emma Soames and Geoffrey Wheatcroft and made a beeline for them in order to show off the new, improved Taki. Emma, who is the only editor-in-chief of a maga- zine that is bonkable, cut me dead. Some- thing to do with the troubles in Cyprus back in 1959, I presume. Wheatcroft ditto. So I walked around the house trying to make friends with upper-crust people who eat food rather than throw it, but to no avail. I soon gave up and headed home, having learned a good lesson. Which is that staying sober at parties makes one as fascinating to the fair sex as Jesse Jackson is to the Ku Klux Klan.
Next week I fly to the Big Olive to try yet again to put Oscar Wilde to shame.
Jeff, in the meantime, is taking book at the Coach and Horses that I'll never finish, and offering 50-1 odds.
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