Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories [Paperback]

Gore Vidal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2006

Celebrated for more than fifty years as a world-renowned novelist, essayist, and political figure and commentator, Gore Vidal is less known for the exquisitely crafted short fiction he wrote as a young man. Like the work of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, his stories have been overshadowed by the author's triumphs writing in other genres. Still, Vidal's short fiction offers us a portrait of the young artist in the 1940s and 1950s. His subtle and comic tales often center on adolescence and homosexual themes. In Three Stratagems, a middle-aged gay man encounters a male prostitute while vacationing in Key West. In The Zenner Trophy, the star athlete at an elite boys school is expelled for sexual relations with a classmate. These stories were gathered along with five others into a 1956 volume, A Thirsty Evil, and for decades were thought to comprise Vidal's complete short fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The rediscovery of the previously unpublished title work is the occasion for collecting Vidal's short stories—all eight of them—for the first time. That piece, which closes the collection, features an episode from Tennessee Williams's childhood in which the young playwright decides to pre-empt sin through suicide, a decision complicated by knowledge that his uncle is being blackmailed for sexual misconduct with a minor. Discretion kept this story from Vidal's 1956 collection A Thirsty Evil, but it's clearly continuous with the seven others, many of which also contain homoerotic elements and a tone of tart disillusion: in "Three Stratagems," a suave young man suffers an epileptic seizure before he can sell his body; in "The Zenner Trophy," a prep school athlete is expelled for an affair with a male classmate. Mortality and shades of E.B. White's famous distortions of time enter as well, as a middle-aged man runs into himself as a boy ("A Moment of Green Laurel"), and another spends a night in his childhood bedroom ("The Ladies in the Library"). Vidal's short-form execution is strangely ineffective: he often locates action off the page, then labors to bring the information into the story cleanly. But readers will recognize the frosty vision and frequently artful prose of the essayist of United States and the novelist of Myra Breckinridge. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

These eight short stories from one of the most highly regarded contemporary American writers, who is, however, much better known as a historical novelist and provocative essayist, represent--present--Vidal's obvious capability in the form. This is the first time all of his short pieces have been published together. In his trademark highly polished style, burnished to a fine sheen, Vidal shows an acceptance of and even dexterity in facing the requirement of being brief. Whether he is writing about older men picking up younger ones in Key West, private-school adventures, or what expatriates in Rome are up to, his tone is sophisticated, his stories informed by an all-the-right-places kind of sensibility. A certain Somerset Maugham urbanity imbues every piece, injected with such lines as "By the time I was ten I do recall that I talked almost entirely in sonorous cliches and I had begun to demonstrate an alarming talent for didactic poetry." Vidal is, of course, cosmopolitan to his fingertips, and this is a book for comprehensive public library fiction collections. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718102
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718108
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,492,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gore Vidal has received the National Book Award, written numerous novels, short stories, plays and essays. He has been a political activist and as Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat in a half-century.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven, January 24, 2007

By 

algo41 "algo41" (philadelphia, pa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (Paperback)

I enjoyed the short preface very much, but the stories were of uneven quality. "Erlinda and Mr. Coffin" is exotic, fun, and while some social observations are made, it is a story written for the pleasure of spinning a tale. "Pages from an Abandoned Journal" is interesting and offers some insight into the lifestyle of a segment of the gay population. "Clounds and Eclipses", the hitherto unpublished story based on a childhood recollection of Tennessee Williams, is without merit, and the first story of the collection should be skipped.

3.0 out of 5 stars Very unreliable, January 25, 2011

By 

Mark McLaughlin "pop culture junkie" (Deerfield Beach, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (Paperback)

Some of these stories are good; The Robin, Pages from an Abandoned Journal. Some have potential; Three Stratagems and some are dead on arrival or feel like a sketch for a story that was never completed. Overall worth reading if you've never read Vidal, at least to pique your interest to read his novels or non-fiction but not something that is important for a collection or necessary to own.