Yes, I did spell that right, not 'tacky' but 'Taki', as in Taki Theodoracopulos, the Greek/American author of the High Life column in The Spectator for the last ... well, more years than either I, or he, apparently, wish to dwell upon. Taki is a notoriously tough writer who once nearly reduced the 'Graun' to tears, poor things. But then he is a fairly tough character himself. Alas, the details escape me now but there was a time, in Greece, I think, when he was threatened by some rather heavy criminal types and he let be known through private channels that if they even scratched the paint on his yacht he would unleash a 'nuclear' retaliation that would leave them, their families and their businesses in need of considerable repair. No more was heard of the matter!
He is usually described, accurately as he, himself, would proudly admit, as an international playboy. Today, the very term 'playboy' has a dated, dusty, somewhat fin de siecle feel to it. Perhaps, having recently celebrated his 70th birthday, he is conscious of the passage of years because he has written, for him, a rather moving and almost elegiac essay on les temps perdu. In it he describes the 'Noo Yawk' brownstone he has used as a family home for over 30 years. During that time he has seen, across the street, a baby son born to a young couple and watched on an intermittent basis over the years this little boy grow up, mature and leave home. 'Noo Yawk', being a big city, he never did find out the name of the family opposite or their son. Like old men everywhere, including this neck of the Dorset/Somerset woods, he deplores the changes he sees around him. I, to coin a ghastly phrase, 'feel his pain'! When he talks of Times Square and 42nd Street, I feel I know them from those old black and white movies of my childhood, and from my addiction to pulp fiction so much of which is set in 'Noo Yawk'. But then he becomes a little more cheerful when he tells us that the Upper East Side (I know it, I tell you, I know it, it's just that, well, I couldn't actually point to it on a map!) has remained unchanged. Similarly:
"For those of us raised on movies of the 1930s and 1940s, Central Park West's beautiful beaux-arts and art-deco apartment towers were the backdrop to our vision of urban glamour. Every time I walk by on my daily constitutional round the park, I look at the buildings and I think I can hear the witty badinage, the music of Cole Porter and faintly see Fred Astaire in his white tie and tails."
Yes, I can see it all - and the nearest I've ever been to it is the tip of Cornwall!
My father saw Fred and Adele dance in the West End and still raved about it three decades later. What I learned on my first trip to the States was how generously hospitable our American cousins can be. Dry Martinis at a Manhattan rooftop cocktail party - yippee!
Posted by: dearieme | Monday, 19 May 2008 at 00:06
Aha, now I can offer you a book recommendation. Even two.
Jack Finney, Time and again. And the sequel, From time to time.
The book that made me fall in love with NY 5 years before I emigrated - and I 'm still on honeymoon.
Posted by: Tatyana | Monday, 19 May 2008 at 02:58
Actually to see Fred stepping out - awesome! Mind you, I'm surprised you can remember that much of your Manhattan roof party.
Tatyana, thanks for your recommendation and I have checked him out on Amazon. I will make a note and see if he's in our library - I dare not buy lest my pile of 'To-Be-Read' books topples over and injures me!
Posted by: David Duff | Monday, 19 May 2008 at 15:51