Gore Vidal is probably America's most succint and erudite critic. He is also the celebrator of values which, in their best light, make these United States a fount of poltically democratic principles. In this huge tome of collected essays, spanning 40 years of cogent and very human observation, Vidal assumes the mantle of America's Boswell. a witty, urbane, sophisticated, knowledgeable biographer who writes as he thinks, as he feels, about the goings on of American politics, culture, and society in ways that charm, delight, shock, and ultimately appeal to the intellect and savvy of the reader.
Controversey is no stranger to him. From the beginnings in the 1940s, as a literary prodigy with Williwaw, through a somewhat confessional The City and The Pillar, on through the numerous books and writings of the ensuing half-century, Vidal has been at the forefront of ground-breaking events. He has known and written of the names that stand evocative in modern history's pantheon --- the Kennedys and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, Anais Nin and Amelia Earhart, Jack Kerouac and Andre Gide, Norman Mailer and Eleanor Roosevelt.
There is a great sense of living in these collected essays; the author
is there with us, the readers, in both the participant, and a back-and-forth-through-time
omniscient observer --- seeing event and personage in the scope of things,
present and past...and possibly future. You are drawn in, with Vidal,
to the betrayals, the behind-the-scenes manuevers, the petty scenes, and
the vast panoply of strivings that make us all human, fallaible, and pawns.
It is --- perhaps the most laudable of critiques --- a good read.
Order Gore Vidal's Essays