Customer Reviews

Palimpsest: A Memoir

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Gore Vidal is brilliant, witty, clever, irreverent and a marvelous writer but I was a little disappointed with this first installment of his autobiography. His life has been more multi-faceted and exciting than almost anyone elses, but in some inexplicable way the telling of his story falls short. There was adequate amounts of "juicy gossip" and the obligatory details of many sexual exploits, but true revelation and introspection is lacking.

That is curious, considering Vidal has never been shy about speaking his mind and airing his (and everyone else) dirty laundry in public. He remains one of the most gifted American writers, but his true brilliance is in writing essays, not autobiography.

Anyone who retains an interest in the era that spawned the Kennedys, the Jet Set and the 'Beats' will enjoy Palimpset. Gore Vidal had one of the world's worst mothers; drunk, vicious and hilarious- the less related you got. She was the gorgeous daughter of a prominent Senator named Gore. After divorcing Gore's father, Gene, she married the Hughdie Auchincloss who later would wed the equally frozen and gold digging mother of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Indeed Gore and Jackie shared the same bedroom (at different times) as Hughdie's prominent but and penniless stepchildren. It was from Hughdie, according to Vidal, that he developed his lifelong passion (against?) bores. The memoir is filled with Jackie and Jack stories, that are less worn for their genuine, eye witness
accounts. Gore recalls something of the private life of those two; at Palm Beach, having cocktails after the beach, and speaks a bit of how Jackie's value had become enhanced with her husband and her raucus in-laws as she more and more captured the attention and heart of the and some would argue, the world. Previous to her rising star, we are told, Jack virtually ignored her. So much for the glamour of the mythic couple. Jackie and Gore, one-time stepsibs, would later part ways. This enmity arose from the consuming hatred between Gore and Bobby Kennedy- so combustible that a violent episode was just barely avoided at a White House official dinner.

Vidal's ill-fated runs for political office are the most boring parts of the memoir; however they're well compensated by his reminiscences over Tennessee Williams called affectionately, Bird. With his aristocratic disdain, Vidal's eye as well as his pen cut satisfyingly throughout his well-attended and celebrated life.
Frequent references to an alcoholic and promiscuous life are not, tastefully followed by countless depraved incidents- the few liasons and debauches detailed belonged more to the story than a tabloid. He waxes funny on Anais Nin, who bore a remarkable likeness to his mother histrionic, self-obsessed and a great fraud.

Allen Ginsberg is well drawn here, less of the Buddhist, suicidal, Beat poet than as a promoter. Kerouac, himself a mother-obsessive, and one night stand of Vidal, is seen as more tortured. His last days, were not spent on the road, but in an alcoholic psychosis in his mother's home where he spent the final days of his life running at her and ranting anti-Semetic epithets. Shut away with his mother, impotent and symbiotic- powerful- eh? As to Vidal's personal sexuality, he does not appear to wish to fit into a compact mold. He ascribes his long, successful relationship with another male as platonic, and therefore longstanding. Vidal has a political prescience that I regret I have only learned of recently. He is no friend of the National Security Agency and claims that even Truman was aware that the CIA was its own government and that Kennedy's assasination was validation of that. However, one need not share his liberal viewpoints to enjoy this biography.
It is first and foremost a love story. A teenage introduction to romantic sex and a marine dead at Iwo Jima, the love that has been his life. It is through this refrain that he winds and returns, this was the central organizing factor of his life, and one that he never advanced far from. It is an evocative and bittersweet saga.

What's a man to do when he's more talented than everyone else? Vidal's answers, told through the lens of his old age, are fascinating if only because the world has no other figure whose work bridges literature's twilight, pop culture's dawn and a political past when our leaders didn't seem so patently ridiculous. Gossipy, yes, but in an idiosyncratic way that lends credibility. I mean is it really malicious to have include a scene with Jackie giving douching instructions? I think not. The Truth? God knows, but that much-abused word is given a breather in this memoir, relieved of the pressure by memory's sleights of hand, readily admitted to throughout the book. Without the pressure to create an encyclopedic autobiography, Vidal leisurely rambles through his first 39 years, pausing to gaze upon an astounding collection of acquaintances. Details in the book but the effect produced is saddening on both a cultural and personal level. Culturally becuase in our compartmentalized age of "experts", wise folks with Vidal's breadth of talent can not flourish. Personally, because he feels his strength diminished, his time ending as he struggles to come to terms with a lost boyhood love. For what it's worth Gore, take your vitamins, strap on your six shooter and keep firing away

We may have thought we had a fairly clear idea of who Mr. Vidal was from his astonishing novels, essays, plays, screenplays and TV plays. We were wrong. In this memoir, Mr. Vidal lifts the veil, so to speak, and gives us a birds eye view into the first three decades of his life. This book is peopled with the very talented and the merely famous. Mr. Vidal does not always have a kind word to say, which why I'd like him to sit right next to me.

Gore Vidal has written one of the most honest, revealing and entertaining memoirs I've ever encountered. It's a book that can be dipped into casually or, preferably read from the beginning to the all too soon end when he reaches the age of 39. It's full of insights into the various people he has met during those years such as Tennessee Williams , John and Jackie Kennedy, Truman Capote and other figures in the literary and entertainment world of the forties and fifties. He talks of his family, his mother whose attitudes he had to jettison; and his grandfather, the blind Senator Gore from Oklahoma of the 1910's. (He and Al are cousins) He talks of his relationships with all of these people in an almost stream of consciousness style that jumps back and forth from the distant past to the more recent past to the current writing of the book (1994). All of this comes with comments, observations and anecdotes that illumine his attitudes then and now in a way that makes the reader, who knows little or nothing of these people, a part of the audience of his experience. While that description, might sound unappealing to the regular reader of more straightlaced memoirs; rest assured that it is a formula for a most entertaining read. Of course the name-dropping can't be helped as he is part of that circle (and that's one reason we read books like this). One of the interesting aspects of his book is that he tells us what happens when he gets back in touch with people he used to know (like Allen Ginsburg), or people that knew the same people who were important to him, like the 91 year old mother of his first love. Great stuff. The leitmotif of the book is the first love of his life who was killed at Iwo Jima in 1945. What might seem to some people a maudlin display of nostalgia, is in actuality a very human story of something that was lost and never recovered, if indeed it was ever possesed at all. It is a sort of a Citizen Kane mystery that has continued to haunt and influence Vidal's life, providing a counterpoint to everything that was done and experienced ever after. Through it all the wit and personal wisdom of Vidal shows itself . Not merely a famous author, but another Rider on the Storm of life. Recomended even if you don't know who Gore Vidal is.

Gore Vidal's life is interesting enough in itself to assure a good read: grandson of blind senator Thomas Gore; stepbrother, or almost, of Jackie Kennedy; acquainted with Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, etc; famous novelist, playwright, screenwriter. However, one does get the impression that he's slipping into name-dropping at times. He clearly stretches his relationship with the Kennedys - which Vidal himself seems to regard as the most important aspect of that period in his life - almost to the breaking point. This is partially redeemed, however, by his critical (jealous?) view of JFK. His troubled relationship with his mother is given a proportioante weight. The most annoying thing in this book, though - maybe noticed only by Vidal fans like myself - is how he shamelessly reproduces whole paragraphs, verbatim, from other writings of his, like his comments on Richard Nixon and his apartment in Rome. He also re-tells for the nth time his role in re-writing the script of "Ben-Hur", still not revealing if he wrote anything for that film besides the famous Ben-Hur/Messala relationship. Those who are not as familiar with Vidal's work, though, and who read those stories for the first time, will certainly enjoy them. But I did find disappointing that the book is more like a "Who's who" of famous people whom Vidal met than a critical self-portrait.

As you would expect, this book is very well written, as anything else that Vidal writes. But if you are looking for an insightful book, this is not a book for you. His life has been, doubtless, an extraordinary life, from sitting at the opera as a child next to Mussolini to being connected through a stepfather to Jackie Kennedy-Onasis.

At the end of the day, I found this to be an anecdotical as oposed as insightful autobiography, and it seems to me, the reason for this is his lack of emotional insight in his every day life. Nothing wrong with that, but is not something I like to read.

Every society needs a gadfly, and Gore Vidal is ours. The grandson of a U.S. senator, related by marriage to Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Vidal has lived all his life near this country's seats of power, and what he has to say about those seats--and the people who occupy them--has curdled the cocktails of the Capitol Hill party crowd for half a century. His animadversions against the military-industrial complex are salutary reading, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum; and as for his denunciations of the "sky-godders"--well, let's just say I always admire his wit and erudition, even when I want to strangle him. I was hoping for more meat in "Palimpsest," his memoir of his early life, but too much of it is just a catty settling of scores, although it's always fun to read. Here are the people he loved (Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles, the Sitwells) and those, more vividly, whom he hated (Truman Capote, E.M. Forster, Anais Nin, and--most of all--his alcoholic, passive-aggressive mother, Nina Gore Vidal). There are fascinating anecdotes of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the last living gasps of the ancien regime, and of the Kennedys, about whom he has a bracing ambivalence. The most poignant parts of the book deal with Jimmie Trimble, his prep-school classmate and the great love of Vidal's life, who was killed at Iwo Jima. But even this story line peters out in the constant flow of gossip, I only wonder when--or if--Vidal will publish a second volume of memoirs, dealing with the latter part of his life. Perhaps that will give us more depth.

A must-read for Gore's fans. He knew many of the important figures of the 20th century personally, and has a more brilliant and insightful mind than most of them. This book, written from the point of old age, is a hodge-podge of reflections, and frank reminiscences. Includes many gossipy tales; his account of verbal battles with Truman Capote in front of an alarmed Tennessee Williams are priceless.

..a line from one of his earlier books, which perfectly describes Mr. Vidal. I give Palimpsest a mere "9." Entertaining as this book is, Mr. Vidal leaves out the best parts, those being what he did AFTER he turned 40. What a magnificent life he has led, and I hope he's pounding out the second volume instead of wasting his time and ours on silly fantasies like "Smithsonian Institution." Mr. Vidal is far too young, mentally and chronologically, to devolve into such goofiness. Write more essays, please! We fans can't get enough of his dead-on social and political analyses layered with his wicked and terrible wit and his "been there, done that" crankiness. Mr. Vidal is the only living celebrity I'd love to have lunch with, but would wager my 401(k) plan that he is THE orneriest person on the planet and not much fun to talk to. Reading him is another story -- he is simply the best, no matter what he is writing about. READ Palimpsest, READ Burr, Lincoln, Hollywood, Washington DC, READ Myra Breckenridge, Live from Golgotha and Duluth and even Smithsonian Institution. Especially check out Mr. Vidal's essays. His body of work is amazing; you WILL learn something of yourself in every paragraph. Palimpsest tells you where Mr. Vidal came from -- his books and essays tell you who he is, and what we Americans should be thinking about. Go and READ! You will not be disappointed. Palimpsest is the very best introduction to Gore Vidal -- it will make you run to the library and devour everything he's ever written.