This week’s Shelf Life stars our very own Taki, the Spectator’s infamous High Life correspondent. As you’d expect, he has a clear idea of which literary party he attend, and who he’d try to deflower when he got there.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
At the moment I am simultaneously reading Paul French’s Midnight in Peking and Anthony Beevor’s History of WW 2.
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
As a child I did not read dirty books under the covers — I had a very strict German nanny — but adventure stories, mostly Greek mythology.
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
I suppose Uncle Tom’s Cabin made me cry, but I was very young.
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
In solitary? Easy. Anthony Powell’s complete Dance, Wells’s Outline of History and Barzan’s History of the World.
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
If I could I would choose Nicole Diver to go to bed with from Tender is the Night.
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
“How to Enjoy Yourself At All Times While Alone.”
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
The English syllabus should include Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
I would have loved to have been at the Riviera party where Tommy Barban and the Divers and Rosemary Hoyt all get together at the start of Tender. I actually got to the same spot described by Fitzgerald only 16 years after he had written the book, and had read it eight years after his death. Close but no cigar.
9) What would you title your memoirs?
My memoirs are called On Gossamer Wings, but they are not as yet finished.
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
Dick Diver is my favourite character because he had everything and blew it.11) What book would you give to a lover?
I suppose A Moveable Feast is as good as any book to give to a lover, none of that poetry bullshit. It doesn’t work.
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
There are no literary dealbreakers, except for Benjamin Netanyahu’s memoirs.
Comments