Of cabbages and kings
By Manohar Malgonkar

PAUL THEROUX is one of the major writers of our times, and so prolific, too; he is still in his mid-fifties and for the past 30 years, he has averaged a book a year.

But in 1968, when he wrote a book called Fong and the Indians, which was published in America by Houghton Mifflin of Boston, few people so much as knew Theroux’s name. Among those few was a writer he greatly admired and considered his friend, V.S. Naipaul. Theroux sent a copy of his Fong and the Indias to Naipaul and inscribed it: "For Vidia and Pat, with love. Paul". Pat was Mrs Naipaul

Fast forward to 1998. In the thirty years that have elapsed since he wrote Fong, Theroux has become a literary lion, if anything, more successful in a purely commercial sense, than Naipaul. Imagine his dismay and mortification therefore when, while scanning a "catalogue from a bookseller who specialised in modern first editions", he saw his gift copy being offered for sale at $ 1500, or about a hundred times its original price.

No matter how flattering this was, for few books by modern authors would be valued so highly — it was distressful, too, that his friend should have sold it all all, presumably to some second-hand bookshop and at a throwaway price. Did Naipaul think so little of his inscribed copy and of the friendship?

At that, if this particular copy of Fong and the Indians, is still in the market, the price must have zoomed even higher. For if it had been thought to be something special because it had been gifted ‘with love’ by one famous author to another equally famous one, now it had become even more precious because of the subsequent collapse of a famous and, if only on the part of Theroux, hugely publicised, friendship. Its climactic scene was acted out on the narrow pavement of a London street. The two ex-friends, coming from opposite directions, meet on the sidewalk. Theroux’s fumbling effort to make conversation are stonily, icily, rebuffed by Naipaul. That scene, described by Theroux, is both high drama and cold, razor-sharp, prose, calculated to make deep incisions. "Vidia was very small and shrinking fast," he tells us. And then, before our very eyes, as it were, makes him even more diminutive and insignificant. "So tiny, he cast no shadow."

What a chilling epitaph for so well-publicised a friendship. Fong and the Indians’, revised price: $ 3000.

But it had never really been a ‘friendship’ — a two-way relationship — it was more like an acolyte’s starry-eyed esteem for his guru, and Theroux himself acknowledges that it had been essentially one-sided, and that his role in their relationship was that of a "squire — driver, sidekick, spear-carrier, flunky, gofer..... Sir Vidia’s shadow."

So here we have a book, undistinguished in itself, which has become valuable because the man who had written it as well as the man to whom he gave it became famous writers, and now, because of their well-publicised falling out, it had become even more precious.

What does all this show?

It shows that things become valuable by association; that advertising sells; that scandal is always good for business. That copy of Fong which would have ordinarily languished on a shelf in some library or been pulped, was thought to be worth a hundred times its published price because Paul Theroux had given it "with love’ to his friend V.S. Naipaul and had now become even more valuable because the two were no longer friends. There was now a ‘story’ attached to the book. That is how quite common objects become what are seen as ‘collectibles’ — things to keep in your house for display, like paintings or bronze statues: Trophies.

A used tennis ball thrown into the crowd by Pete Sampras — or Boris Becker — or Steffi Graf —After winning a tennis championship. The Duke of Windsor’s darned handkerchiefs with their royal cipher. President John F. Kennedy’s Hermese briefcase. A smelly baseball mitten said to be used by Babe Ruth. All these items are now prized possessions. As a matter of fact, books are rated as among the least valued trophies, if only because authors, no matter how highly thought of, are never cult figures. Hemmingway’s bifocals are no match for Michael Jackson’s mirror glasses.

Fashions in women’s clothes in Europe and America change every year and what was thought to be stylish last year is no longer wearable. Yet women’s dresses, shoes, hats, which have long gone out of fashion bring staggeringly high prices at public auctions if they’re known to have belonged to notorious, or merely famous, women. Jackie Kennedy’s severely trim woollen suits found eager buyers as did Princess Diana’s flowing court dresses, and rightly, too, because highest price paid for a woman’s cast-off dress in recent times was for Marilyn Monroe’s body-fitting gown made in 1962: $ 1.26 million or five-and-a-half-crore rupees.

Monroe had become a cult figure, "the sweet angel of sex" as Norman Mailer described her and she led a hectic life in a blaze of publicity and died at a young age, and with shocking suddenness, because she had dosed herself with far too many sleeping pills — unless someone else had made her swallow those pills.

Her life had been a gutter-girl’s dream. Raised in an orphanage and said to have been sexually molested as a child, she had little enough education and no claims to culture, yet in her twenties she was the nation’s love-goddess and the object of desire of millions of men all over the world, including President John F.Kennedy and his brother Bobby and some of the Mafia dons, sports stars and Hollywood personalities.

And that dress was very much a part of the Monroe legend, especially made for her to wear at a party for President Kennedy’s birthday at which Monroe sang ‘Happy birthday tooooo youuuuu,’ a dress made provocatively close-fitting and studded with sequins so that it shone like a lamp.

America’s dream girl, sheathed in a gown that symbolised America’s infatuation for razzle-dazzle, sharing the stage with America’s Prince-Charming President. That sparkling dress said it all. At 5 crores it was a bargain.

But a pillow at least a hundred and fifty years old which had been used by a man who shunned luxury may be said to have been bought for even more money three hundred years ago.

That pillow belonged to St Francis Xavier, who died in 1552, and had been preserved in Goa along with the Saint’s other possessions. In 1695, and therefore nearly a hundred and fifty years after St Francis had died, the Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III, requested the Church authorities in Goa to send him the pillow. Perhaps with an eye on the reputation of Cosmo III as a big spender, they duly sent him the pillow. In gratitude, he ordered the best sculptors of the times in Florence to design a suitably impressive tomb for the Saint. That tomb which has numerous panels which show scenes from the Saint’s life, was somehow transported to Goa, and can be seen to this day in the trancept of the Bom Jesus Cathedral. A glistening, intricately carved marble monument which somehow seems too big even for the part of the Church which houses it.

No one knows just how much Duke Cosmo III spent on his gift to Goa in return for an old pillow but it is a safe bet that today you could not duplicate such a monument for the $ 1.26 million that Marilyn Monroe’s many-splendoured gown was knocked down for at a recent Christie’s auction in New York.