High life
Hype hop
Taki
t is now two whole weeks since I started the book tour, and I'm beginning to take myself extremely seriously. Not a day goes by without seeing myself on the idiot box, while every day I read yet another item about Nothing to Declare, obviously the greatest book ever written.
Mind you, the Americans really know how to publicise even as small a book as the greatest ever. Lynn Goldberg's firm has put me on more shows than Lord Good- man has had two dinners, and still it goes on. Tomorrow I leave for San Francisco and then Los Angeles, where I hope to sell the video of my book.
Needless to say, I'm getting better at sell- ing myself and my opus. The questions tend to be the same — why did you give yourself away? have you learned your les- son? what was bad about Pentonville? did you make any friends in there? — and of course my pat answers are now just about perfect.
There have been some exceptions. Ironi- cally, the first was from a downtown give- away weekly called IVY Press. The writer, John Strausbaugh, not only had read the book but also reads the Speccie. In fact, NY Press named The Spectator the 'best trendy magazine of 1990'. It wrote that people are skipping lunch in order to wait for the air- mail packages of the Speccie, and that the sainted one has injected just the right touch of controversy into the weekly's 'extraordi- narily written but staid pages'.
The other real interview came from David Freedman of Newsday, and a beauti- ful girl from the mendacious Washington Post.
But it's television that sells books in the land of the free (much too free for me). Here I've been writing away like a slave for nearly a quarter of a century, and the only time I'm recognised is when I go through British Customs. After appearing on Good Morning America and the Joan Rivers show this week, I was mobbed by coke-seeking crazies as soon as I ventured outside my house.
What I don't mind, however silly it sounds, is the make-up. American televi- sion uses lots and lots of make-up, and if one doesn't wash it off afterwards, one looks decades younger in the dark disco that evening. Taki wearing make-up, how- ever, is a bit like putting whipped cream on a hot-dog, but what the hell. It took me five years to write my opus, so I might as well enjoy it.
Travel has been the only pain. As Robert Benchley pointed out once upon a time, 'In America there are two classes of travel, first class and with children'. I've been trav- elling alone, but it seems with school out everyone else is flying with the kiddies. American children are among the worst behaved in the history of mankind. They want noise the way a hog wants slop. It is impossible to read, write or, heaven forbid, sleep within 50 feet of an American below the age of 14. I've had two altercations already, and expect my trip to the west to reach a new low in Taki v. American juve- nile relations.
The great sales pitch ends next week, and I fly directly to the Big Olive from Holly- wood. There will be no culture shock. The smog, the phoniness, and the backbiting will make sure of it. The only difference will be in the women. Electrolysis has not as yet been discovered in the birthplace of Hippocrates.
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