by Reg Green (April 2024)
Comparisons, we’re told, are odious. I’ve always found them so. Even the most honey-tongued attempt to equate the merits of two people always offends one of them, sometimes both. Like the mother who, not being able to make up her mind, sent her son two ties for his birthday. To please her he wore one of them the next time they met. “What’s wrong with the blue one?” she asked.
And so, when Truman Capote set up a lunch for some of the most stylish people of his time and one of them was socialite Nancy “Slim” Keith (“a tall, coltish California-bred aristocrat with the most beautiful legs, ankles and feet extant”), Capote said another guest, the divine Elizabeth Taylor, was “a runt by comparison.”
Be careful, little man. That’s how the Trojan war started.
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Reg Green is an economics journalist who was born in England and worked for the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times of London. He emigrated to the US in 1970. His books include The Nicholas Effect and his website is nicholasgreen.org.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
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3 Responses
I’m sure a $2,000-per-bottle wine is better that a $1,000 one — but never had a chance to taste either. The privileged live the Olympian existence; we can only look up and sigh…
Sigh 😌
So true.