Saturday, September 19, 2020

Amiel"s Tale Of Decadence

Barbara Amiel has just published a memoir. Hadley Freeman writes that the book recounts life at the top in the glittering '90's:

The 90s was a golden era for alpha power players, and back then they seemed golden, as if they themselves were plated, though that may have been the glint from the riches surrounding them. The Blacks, the Trumps, Robert Maxwell: the men were called “charismatic” by people who confuse charisma with bullshit; the women (Amiel, Ivana, Marla Maples) were styled by the papers as monstrous, and at times they were.

The people who populate Amiel's pages lived high and wide, served themselves, and bathed in self-pity:

The book reeks of 90s pretension: “How poisonous must one be when even the New York vendeuses wish to distance themselves?” she muses of the period after Black’s conviction, sounding like the first draft of a character from Clueless. When she sells her flat, ostensibly to pay Black’s legal bills, she “sighed with relief. Here I come, Chanel, I thought.” (Alas, for her and Chanel, the FBI seized the money soon after.) HBO’s Succession – which riffs on the Murdoch family – recently showed how the super-rich spend their money today: on yachts, sure, but on clothes and homes that whisper their wealth far more discreetly. Against this, Amiel’s style, all screaming ostentation, looks anachronistic.

She frames her memoir as a work of literary revenge on the friends who stopped talking to her at the opera. “Once there is an accusation that you have ‘looted’ millions from your company, you’re done,” Amiel writes, overlooking the pesky fact that, as well as the accusation, there was a trial and an imprisonment. “It would take years for the allegations against Conrad to be revealed as false,” she continues, assuming that famous kama sutra position, the reverse ferret. But the allegations were very much not revealed to be false. Rather, he was pardoned by Trump, and the fact that the year before Black had knocked out a book about the president with its nose so determinedly up his arse it might have doubled as a colonoscopy was, surely, just a coincidence.

This was Donald Trump's world and Conrad Black's world. Black has faded from public notice. But Trump is still with us, twenty-four hours a day. Do we really want to continue this tale of decadence?

Image: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is a little strange Owen to perceive Amiel as self deprecating. She quite enjoyed the power and wealth in the company of a looter among a cadre of looters. It is just that Conrad was found guilty of malfeasance, where others have managed to escape being punished for their misdeeds. Conrad as foreign felon should have been deported a long time ago. RG

Owen Gray said...

Conrad knows nothing about modesty, RG. Amiel may claim modesty. But her actions speak much louder than her words.

e.a.f. said...

wouldn't talk to her at the opera. poor dear. now that is what I'd call a real first world problem.

who really cares what she has to say. the way she lived said it all. we don't need to hear her tale of bullshit. the woman doesn't have a clue of the real world nor does she ever appear to care.

The Disaffected Lib said...

They are a pair, Richelieu and Marie Antoinette. They are so elevated that what would be denounced as gutter talk coming from a pleb is pure sophistication when they delve into it. Conrad Black has written that he didn't know what a blowjob was until he met Babs. She writes of lavishing her oral skills on some rich ogre who was in a position to benefit her.

It's okay when they do it. Who are the great unwashed to judge them? It's okay when they help themselves to the company's cash also. Black is and shall always remain a convicted fraudster. Yes, he has been pardoned, but that doesn't erase his conviction.

Each disgusting in his and her own ways.

Owen Gray said...

Amiel has always been full of herself, ea.f. -- and other stuff, too.

Owen Gray said...

What is truly galling, Mound, is their utter shamelessness.

the salamander said...

.. 'the reverse ferret' ?????
That tops the 'reverse Mormon backflip'

the salamander said...

.. Sorry..
Its the 'invert reverse Mormon 360 backflip with toe grab

Stuff is complicated..

Owen Gray said...

It comes down to twisting yourself into a pretzel, sal. Sometimes justifying your own self-righteousness gets very complicated.