London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Taki on the Sun

In this week’s Spectator, the ‘poor little Greek boy’ Taki informs us of a feud between the Dorothy Parker Society and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Apparently the DPS invited the FSFS to a big to-do at the Algonquin and the FSFS didn’t even respond. “I get all this info from my favourite Big Bagel paper, the Sun, or the Sharon, as I call it, because of the line it follows where Israel is concerned.” I love the Sun, and I’m very glad Taki has discovered our favorite New York daily. He continues:

Middle East politics aside, the Sun is the best read in town where culture is concerned. Gary Shapiro on literary matters, Jay Nordlinger on classical music, the only one missing is Dorothy Parker herself. Mind you, her society did not take no for an answer. In a jiffy it invited the Robert Benchley Society for drinks at the Algonquin, leaving the Fitz types to contemplate onanism in their quads.

Benchley, like Parker, was a founding member of the Algonquin round table, and was known to have spilled more booze than F. Scott ever downed. Unlike the latter, he could hold it. Emerging once from the Waldorf Astoria, he commanded a doorman to get him a taxi. ‘How dare you, Sir,’ came the answer. ‘I am a United States admiral.’ ‘Well, in that case,’ said the well-oiled Benchley, ‘get me a battleship.’

Moving along…

Over on this side [Taki writes from New York this week], there is still a search for cultivation and refinement, at least where some serious magazines are concerned. Take, for example, the stroke of genius of the Atlantic Monthly, which commissioned the brilliant gadfly and pop French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy to repeat Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey through America 170 years after the French aristocrat’s travels. BHL, as the Frenchman is referred to by his countrymen, is a hell of a fellow. He has a beautiful actress wife, matinée idol looks and brains to match.

I have not read his book, which is coming out sometime next year, but press reports have it that he was delighted by what he discovered. His accounts apparently have no condescending references to the kitsch or to materialism, which so many of us Europeans refer to every time we write about or mention America. That’s because he went to places like Cooperstown, New York, where the baseball hall of fame museum is located, or to Pennsylvania, among the Amish. (Not much materialism among that lot, that’s for sure.) And a poignant moment, when he is accosted by a Michigan policeman and told to stop loitering and to keep moving — BHL is relieving himself in a field — and he informs the cop that he’s a Frenchman and that he’s following Tocqueville’s footsteps, which results in a pleasant conversation.

Yes, Americans are nice people who want to be nice and do not understand why the Europeans hate them so. Our own Paul Johnson explained it all some weeks ago when he said that, if he were younger, he’d move to the land of plenty. Sure, manners are not an American strong point, nor is its taste for music and movies. But the natives are friendly, vulgar and nice, which is a lot more than I can say for some of us from the old continent.

I seem to have misplaced or thrown out (shudder!) the Speccie with Paul Johnson’s salient words urging and young people with talent in Britain to move to America, but if I do find it, I shall post his words of hope.

Published at 10:00 am on Friday 22 April 2005. Categories: New York Newspapers Tags: , , .
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