Warhol and me and a double blind date

AREA CODE 212: New York Days, New York Nights. by Tama Janowitz (Bloomsbury, pounds 6.99)

THERE are some big claims made for Tama Janowitz on the cover of Area Code 212, most notably that she is "New York's wittiest social commentator". This, frankly, is pushing it. As far as witty commentary is concerned, she's not a patch on Tom Wolfe, Woody Allen or John Richardson.

Indeed, you could, I suggest, work your way through this book without requiring medical attention for helpless hysteria.

That, however, is not to say that it's no good. While Janowitz may not be a massive rib-tickler, she writes with a great deal of charm and honesty.

She's also possessed of a far-from-common characteristic in a writer - likeability. The various pieces collected here started life in magazines and are an amiably diverting, if often pretty inconsequential, bunch. One piece - more touching than funny - is about going to China to adopt a Chinese baby.

Another is about being sick on a boat while appearing as an extra in a ZZ Top video, and there are several bits and pieces on that perennial magazine favourite: dating.

One of Janowitz's strengths is that she doesn't strive too hard for laughs.

She just tootles along at her own eccentric pace, veering off on loopy tangents as she sees fit and throwing out observations as she goes.

Oddly enough, for someone who was once hugely fashionable - her second novel, Slaves of New York, was a big hit 15 years ago - and who still dresses as if she has just emerged from a wind tunnel, she turns out to be extremely conservative in her opinions. She disapproves of women stripping down to bras or bikini tops in public places - too provocative - and she pounces on any outbreak of bad manners with all the zeal of a finishing school headmistress.

PERHAPS the funniest piece here is about the time Janowitz was in college and suddenly started to pour with green sweat. She went to the medical centre and was told to fill out a form.

"In the space I wrote, 'I perspire green". The receptionist picked up my sheet and read it. Then she said in a loud, almost hysterical voice, 'You sweat green? You sweat green?' 'Um, yes,' I muttered, looking down."

Perhaps the most revealing is when she, Andy Warhol and another friend formed a Blind Date Dining Club in the 1980s. Each of them had to find the others a date. The big difficulty was finding someone for Warhol. There was no shortage of contenders, but conversation with him tended to be sticky, and awkward silences loomed.

On one occasion, due to a mix-up, both Janowitz and her friend ended up finding him a date. Warhol was confused to find himself confronted by two blind dates - a situation not helped by the fact that one of them turned out, quite by coincidence, to be an Andy Warhol lookalike.

On the last meeting together, Warhol took them out to dinner in a luxurious old car on New Year's Eve 1986. "As we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, fireworks began to explode all round us, directly over the car. It was exactly midnight. On the radio the Rolling Stones began to play Time is on My Side and the three of us began singing along and laughing." Fifty-three days later, Warhol was dead.

There is, however, a happy - as well as apt - ending to this story.

After Warhol's death a man from London came out to help settle his estate.

He and Janowitz were put together on a blind date.

And, yup - reader, she married him.

Copyright 2002
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