Taki of the Town

“I don’t tread on many toes,” says Taki, peripatetic partygoer and poison-penned ego puncturer. Those made infamous in his columns compiled in Princes, Playboys, & High-Class Tarts (Karz-Cohl) might disagree. “I suspect the rich and famous,” he says. Of what? we asked. “Of duplicity, scheming, selfishness, greed, pedophilia, necrophilia—anything, everything. I hate the hypocrisy of their ‘stop it, stop it—I love it’ posturing.” The new collection, with an introduction by Tom Wolfe, features Taki’s observations on high-society machinations and mountebanks. The author’s own favorite is “Paris Without Tears” (surprisingly short on vitriol), a sort of “Babylon Revisited” take on his return to the streets of Paris, where, in his youth, he drifted from tennis matches to nightclub battles. Taki, who will be joining Vanity Fair next month as a regular contributor, can look after himself. “I don’t give out much shit. But I don’t take it either.”