Random Notes

■ Saddam and Fish. New from Rizzoli, one of our premier art-book publishers, is Islamic Art and Patronage: Treasures of Kuwait, a lavish coffee-table catalogue (316 pp., $65) of an al-Sabah family collection of carpets, daggers, goblets, plates, vases, pendants, boxes, and bowls from the fifth through the eighteenth centuries. Your literary editor’s first thought was to call the Iraqi mission at the UN and suggest that the noted art lover, Saddam Hussein, annotate the book, indicating which pieces were pillaged during the recent unpleasantness. Perhaps Item #104, a seventeenth-century embroidered tent hanging from Mughal India, now graces a bedroom in the Baghdad Bunker. But no. The dustjacket reassures us that a traveling exhibition of these works “was outside Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion.” Too bad really. I’d have enjoyed hearing from the Iraqis.

Ah, but who am I kidding? Saddam wouldn’t have responded to my inquiry. Fidel didn’t; and my proposal to him might actually have made him some pin money. What happened (or, more properly, what didn’t) was this:

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■ Saddam and Fish. New from Rizzoli, one of our premier art-book publishers, is Islamic Art and Patronage: Treasures of Kuwait, a lavish coffee-table catalogue (316 pp., $65) of an al-Sabah family collection of carpets, daggers, goblets, plates, vases, pendants, boxes, and bowls from the fifth through the eighteenth centuries. Your literary editor’s first thought was to call the Iraqi mission at the UN and suggest that the noted art lover, Saddam Hussein, annotate the book, indicating which pieces were pillaged during the recent unpleasantness. Perhaps Item #104, a seventeenth-century embroidered tent hanging from Mughal India, now graces a bedroom in the Baghdad Bunker. But no. The dustjacket reassures us that a traveling exhibition of these works “was outside Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion.” Too bad really. I’d have enjoyed hearing from the Iraqis.

Ah, but who am I kidding? Saddam wouldn’t have responded to my inquiry. Fidel didn’t; and my proposal to him might actually have made him some pin money. What happened (or, more properly, what didn’t) was this: