July 1992
How exactly does one find
the best $1,300 shoes?
Peter Mayle can help
Interview by Henry Alford
Those who have read Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence or its sequel, Toujours Provence, may remember the distaste engendered in their author by irksome individuals who insist on calling him up on the phone and rupturing the bucolic calm of his idyll in the south of France.
Thus it was with a feeling of trepidation and vague embarrassment that I recently set out to interview the British expatriate in order to discuss his new book, Acquired Tastes (Bantam, $20), a collection of humorous essays on the topic of expensive habits.
Indeed, so churlish and sociopathic has the best-selling author become that his publicist gives out only Mayle's fax number, not his phone number, explaining that Mayle will unhook the fax machine and talk over its phone. (I have come to the conclusion that Mayle is anxious about his privacy because he has seen Misery too many times and fears that a crazy fat woman is going to tie him up and force him to write more books about Provence.)
I recently called this fax number and, after a series of traumatizing squawks and beeps (the machine was clearly at odds with the fact that I am not a piece of paper), finally established contact.
HA: A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, Acquired Tastes -- it occurs to me that your three books are nothing but an excuse to eat a lot of expensive French food.
PM: Well, it's not always expensive, and eating is one of those things that you have to do every day, so you might as well do it as enjoyably as possible. I've been lucky with where I live. It would be quite difficult to have the same enjoyment in, say, Newcastle or somewhere like that.
HA: In the new book you outline the differences between grain whiskey, vatted malts, and the single malt. Does the newcomer to whiskey do best to work his way up the hierarchy, or is best just to plunge right on in?
PM: I found plunging pretty enjoyable.
HA: You also write that some cigar aficionados keep their cigars in reserved spaces in cigar stores' humidor rooms. I had no idea.
PM: I find it fascinating that some people have so many cigars that they have to keep them in some vault. It's rather wonderful -- tottering down from your club so you can go and say hello to your cigars. Taking one or two back for after lunch. It's marvelous. Those are the kinds of expensive habits that I think are totally seductive -- where there are a lot of people beavering away in the background to make your moments of pleasure last as long as possible. There's something terrifically heartwarming about it.
HA: However, you also write about the pitfalls of having servants.
PM: Yes. They're always hanging around for a start. You never get a moment to yourself. I haven't got any servants myself, and I'd never want any, although what they do is magical. But the thought of tripping over people as one is stumbling out of bed in the morning going to the kitchen -- or you've just put your feet up and are reading some really trashy novel and someone wants to come in and press your dressing gown or something like that. It's terribly inconvenient, and you never know when you're going to bump into them. You're tiptoeing home with a frightful hangover, and all of a sudden there's this beaming idiot wanting to give you a cup of tea and a poached egg.
HA: In the chapter in which you buy a pair of $1,300 hand-built shoes in London, you describe the service in the store by writing, "It isn't overly insulting. It's simply as if you were a deaf, inanimate, and inconveniently shaped object to be shrouded as tastefully as possible."
PM: They treat you very politely, but once they're working on you, taking your measurements and everything, they have this sort of shorthand, and they mutter at each other and say, "Well, we'll have to do something about that." You think, "God almighty -- I've sprung a growth somewhere." They get carried away with their professionalism, and they're deeply concerned with your contours. They're working, they're not actually talking to you -- you might as well have gone off and had a cup of coffee, except they happen to need your body for the process.
HA: Do you find that writing about extravagance and luxury makes you enjoy them more?
PM: I think it does. First of all, you're usually funding it out of someone else's money, which always makes it more enjoyable. And then you take a close look at it, because you've got to write about it, and you appreciate what it is that makes it such a sought-after thing.
HA: You've tasted the best that life has to offer. Is there a danger of ennui setting in?
PM: Not a bit. I can't afford to do it all the time, and I actually don't think I would want to. One of the great thrills of it all is its rarity. I think if you drank Chateau Lafite twice a day with your ham sandwich, there would be a danger of ennui. That's why we normally live a very simple sort of life, and occasionally we go off on one of these wonderful benders.
HA: If you could install one luxurious amenity into your house free of charge, what would it be?
PM: I think it would have to be a secretary. At the moment I answer all my own letters, all my own calls, and they tend to pile up and I'm very bad at them. What I would love is a secretary who's about 60 years old, trained in the Army, absolutely averse to speech before midday, waiting to be piled with masses and masses of work and chores -- a silent, completely efficient machine disguised as a human being.
HA: She could also fend off unpleasant phone calls.
PM: The right person could do everything. That would be true luxury.
HA: Would she also offer fawning praise upon request?
PM: No, no. I've got dogs who do that.
Humor writer Henry Alford has been a guest on "The Tonight Show." He is writing a book for Random House.
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