In 2012, Vidal died and, one hopes, went to heaven, where he would no doubt be condescending to God. Yet whatever vulnerability he displayed in the green room disappeared on camera where he seemed as confident and omniscient as the narrator of a novel by one of his literary heroes, Henry James. And what I remember most about meeting the writer in the flesh is how nervous, even wounded, he seemed.
Or, more likely, Vidal, an immense snob, considered a mere TV producer of no greater interest than the butler in a friend’s house. On each occasion, Vidal looked through me as if we’d never met before. This is the biography Gore Vidal-novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, historian, wit, provocateur, and pioneer of gay rights-has long needed.“Shoot me from this side,” Gore Vidal always told me, as if despite having produced four or five of his interviews with his friend Dick Cavett, I was too dense to remember which profile he preferred. Provided with unique access to Vidal’s life and his papers, Parini excavates many buried skeletons yet never loses sight of his deep respect for Vidal and his astounding gifts.
Jay Parini crafts Vidal’s life into an accessible, entertaining story that puts the experience of one of the great American figures of the postwar era into context, introduces the author and his works to a generation who may not know him, and looks behind the scenes at the man and his work in ways never possible before his death. The life of Gore Vidal teemed with notable incidents, famous people, and lasting achievements that call out for careful evocation and examination. Buckley, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and The New York Times, among other adversaries. Also a generous helping of feuds with the likes of William F. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well-a virtual Who’s Who of the twentieth century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Johnny Carson, Leonard Bernstein, and the crème de la crème of Hollywood.
An intimate, authorized yet totally frank biography of Gore Vidal (1925–2012), one of the most accomplished, visible, and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini’s Empire of Self digs behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal’s colorful career to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truths underlying his celebrity-strewn life.
0 kommentar(er)
