Beware of Greeks.

Taki Theodoracopulos is the author of Nothing to Declare.

IN the autumn of 1972, NR's founder and then - editor-in-chief thought it a good idea to turn me into an intellectual and let me loose among the expatriate literati of the City of Light. I had reported for NR from Hue that spring, and had assured our readers that the little men in black pyjamas had been thoroughly beaten once and for all. What I hadn't figured on was Watergate, and the way those nice guys who destroyed Richard Nixon's Presidency would manage to get two birds with one stone. South Vietnam went down when the Commies realized the American cavalry was not about to come to its rescue.

In October of that year, however, things still looked good. Nixon was about to be re-elected in every state but the one that keeps sending Ted Kennedy to drink in Washington. And I was in Paris playing Papa Hemingway. Bill Buckley's idea was for me to interview American writers like Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and Janet Flanner, all three living in Paris. I was excited at the idea and for once went to work immediately.

In fact, I rang James Jones, the author of From Here to Eternity, Some Came Running, and Thin Red Line, from the bar of the Plaza-Athenee, where I was living in great comfort after my al fresco stay in Hue. He answered the phone himself, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hello, Mr. Jones, my name is Taki Theodoracopulos and I write for NATIONAL REVIEW and would like very much to interview you."

JJ: "I am sorry, but I do not give interviews. Sorry."

Me: "This is very bad news because I'm a struggling writer who just returned from Vietnam and need to feed two children and a wife."

JJ: "Well, we are all struggling writers, what can I say?"

Me: "Some more so than others."

JJ: "What did you say your name was and who do you write for?"

Me: "Taki Theodoracopulos, and it's NATIONAL REVIEW, the William Buckley fortnightly."

JJ: "You poor guy. You better come around."

And around I went, to his beautiful house in the Left Bank, where he and his wife, Gloria, treated me with great kindness and generosity of spirit. Jones, in fact, revealed to me that Paris was over for him, that he was returning to his roots, and -- repeating a Hemingway theory -- that Paris was for the young and had been irreparably damaged by the modern architecture that was sprouting all over the city. "If I want modern I'll get it at the source, my own country," was the way he put it. A butler served us a wonderful lunch, and then we talked about writing. Time magazine had just published some rubbish -- Henry Luce had been dead five years, and the rot had set in almost immediately -- about how Jones and Shaw were passe because they were simple story-tellers. "Yes," said Jones. "Both Irwin and I write books that have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we try to entertain our readers."

This was before unreadable and unspeakable individuals such as Salman Rushdie and Jacques Derrida had confused the issue of literature with their Satanic verses and deconstructionist criticism. Still, we found plenty of ammunition against the modernists. Having taken copious notes, which Jones helped me clarify, I bade him and Gloria adieu and thanked them for everything. I had spent six hours with them but it felt like much less.

A couple of weeks later the Joneses and the Shaws were having dinner in a bistro when the Time magazine article that had proclaimed the two men dead as novelists came up. Shaw, with whom I skied and played tennis in Gstaad and in Antibes, was outraged. "Who the hell are these no-talents to pass judgment on us?" He then made a few choice remarks about the press.

That is when Jones told him that despite Time, they were quite fortunate. "A kid [I was 35] came to see me last month, and he had a family to support on $8,000 per year that Buckley paid him. He had a strange and very long name, a Greek one."

"That's funny," said Shaw. "I know somebody like that. His name is Taki Theodoracopulos."

"Yeah, that's him," said Jones.

"Well," said Shaw, "Taki is not married, has no kids, does the occasional article for NR, and in case you're interested I am going on his yacht in the south of France next week."

"Son of a bitch," spluttered Jones. "I've been had by a fascist."

Years later, in Bridgehampton, at a wonderful Fourth of July luncheon given by Liz Fondaras, Shaw recounted the story to me. He was his usual amiable and wonderful self, and couldn't stop laughing. Gloria Jones, too, thought it rather funny. James Jones had sadly passed away. Shaw himself died soon after, but I shall always remember both men's kindness, although I would not have wanted to be near Jones the night he found out that more often than not struggling Greek writers have shipowners as fathers.