Gianni Menichetti lived for 30 years with the Australian artist, witch and free-spirit Vali Myers in her mountainous retreat in Positano Italy. While Vali painted and worked her magic in a specially designed cage with her pet fox, Foxy, Gianni roamed the town looking for food to feed their huge pack of dogs and 
goats and various other animals. In Gianni’s revealing memoir, you’ll learn how he and Vali conspired to get rid of her husband, Rudi, so that their love could bloom unencumbered. You’ll also read about Vali’s lover, Caroline, who lived in a near-by cave. Find out if a fox can be house-trained, and what he’ll do to your Victrola if allowed the run of the place.
Vali didn’t spend all her time in Italy, but rather cycled back and forth between there and New York where she could sell her art. Read the book and find out what Stanley Bard did when she couldn’t pay the rent. That one is too explosive to print in this family-oriented blog, but here’s an excerpt that mentions two more of our fellow Chelseaites:
Someone Vali often spoke very fondly of was Mason Hoffenberg, who wrote the infamous novel Candy with Terry Southern. I never met him but Vali described him as a man of few words, very stocky, with a pigeon chest and a deep voice. She told me that he could drink a lot, and they did drink a lot together. The way she described him, he was hardly an Adonis, and yet, once, they made it together. At the end of it, Mason Hoffenberg said, “Well, that’s that.” Vali told that story over and over. She thought it was so funny! …
It was through her friends Ruth and Donny Shomron, from whom he was taking Hebrew lessons, that she first met Hoffenberg. Ruth and Danny had been living crammed into a tiny room at the Chelsea Hotel, and when someone moved out of a much larger one, they moved in without asking owner Stanley Bard’s permission. Lucky for them, he didn’t kick them out. Vali especially loved Ruth, who was very good to her during difficult times. Ruth and Danny acquired one of Vali’s original drawings, called Wala Wala.
For more on Vali, see my article in Chelsea Now. And, come to the book launch party to eat, drink, and be merry – and buy a book! Click through for the invitation:
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