Sex, lies and videotape
Taki
New York
Uxcept for the people, this is a wonder
ful of year to be in the Bagel. Summer's blistering heat has gone the way of Britain's Davis Cup hopes — tiny Austria, using natives, has just eliminated big-bully Britain, which was using Gurkhas like Ruse dski — the days are getting shorter but crisper, and Mother Nature is putting on quite a display of colours. Shades of yellow, red and gold, and orange are the order of the day. Autumn is by far the most colourful time of the year in the Bagel. It also inspires people.
Take, for example, Paris Hilton, the monosyllabic hotel heiress. She has just joined Flaubert, Charles Spencer (Diana's little brother) and Papa Hemingway as an author. The opus is titled Confessions of an Heiress, and its style makes it obvious that Paris had Teddy Kennedy take her English high-school exams for her.
'Never be too easy,' she advises; 'play hard to get.' This is excellent advice, reminiscent of that last, wonderful book of Lavrenti Beria How to Make People Love You. Alas, there are threats of a lawsuit. Paris has been videotaped doing what comes naturally, and some bore has brought up truth in advertising and all that.
Mind you. Paris is not alone. Gloria Vanderbilt, too, has joined the ranks of the immortals. (Eat your heart out, Michel Deon.) Gloria has written about her past lovers, who include many stars such as Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Claus von Billow, It Seemed Important at the Time is a better read than Hilton's, not that I've read either, Gloria is a 1940s creature, baffled by men, incapable of observing anything except a man's celebrity, remembering nothing of those she was intimate with except their press clippings. She is now an old lady, and hers is a sepiatinged melodrama of a life. Women writing about men whom they've bedded is not as bad as men writing about women, but, still, it is a slight shock to the system of a 68-year-old.
Which brings me to Christopher Buckley. No, Christo has neither been videotaped with Paris nor has he been one of Gloria's celebrity lovers. What he has in common with the two ladies is that he, also, has just published a novel, hut that is where all similarities end. Florence of Arabia is brilliant comic fiction by the funniest writer in America. (He must have had a hell of a sense of humour when he was my best man 25 years ago.) I won't give the plot away, but just for starters read this: Nazrah is one of the wives of Prince Bawad (read Bandar), ambassador to the United States from Wasabia (read Saudi Arabia). When Bawad is made foreign minister and prepares to return to Wasabia, Nazrah makes a break for freedom and asks her friend Florence, the American deputy assistant secretary of state, to help her get asylum. No go. Nazrah is returned to Wasabia and is put to death. Nothing funny about that — it happens all the time in Saudi — but that is when the fun begins in the novel. Florence does not take it lying down. She resigns her post, hires all sorts of funny characters from past Buckley novels, and starts a women's satellite TV station in nearby Matar (Qatar), a secularised state which Wasabia needs for its ports.
But enough said. The irony is that it's easier done than written. If the people who govern us were not as corrupt as they are, we would have told the Saudis where to get off long ago. Not only have we not, we also allow them to finance terror in return for their safe passage to Europe and America in pursuit of hookers and booze. Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Christopher Buckley also sets up an Oprah Winfrey show in Matar, which features a Wasabian female freak, a woman who has actually driven a car. Oh well, it ain't about to happen, but Buckley's novel might get people thinking.
If the Americans had any balls, they'd send a Paris Hilton type to Saudi Arabia as ambassador. Or perhaps Gloria Vanderbilt. Fidelity being the last refuge of a faded woman, Gloria would not get into trouble. Let's see what the elections bring and then I will publish my list of women who should be sent to various Arab lands as ambassadors. Starting with Monica Lewinsky.
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