Review by Choice Review
In this loosely structured memoir charged with his iconoclastic wit, Vidal leads readers on a journey through his first 39 years. Glimpses of his present, however, in which the author grapples with aging and the autobiographical act, are as interesting as his chilly but penetrating recollections of a Washington upbringing among the powerful and wealthy. As grandson of a US senator and son of a socially ambitious and alcoholic mother, Vidal demonstrates how he was privileged, burdened, and well positioned as a future writer and politician. Traversing the midcentury political, social, and literary landscapes of his early career(s), Vidal offers tantalizing glimpses of an eclectic and mobile world inhabited by some of the most famous figures of the times--the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tennessee Williams, and Jack Kerouac among them. Disappointing for students of literature, however, is Vidal's lack of reflection on his development as a writer: he duly notes stages in and detours away from his literary career, but his memoir's thrust is not compellingly literary and offers limited insight into his aesthetics. General and graduate collections. J. K. Weinberger; Central Connecticut State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
/*STARRED REVIEW*/ Gore Vidal is a mass of delightful contradictions: a man who has devoted a good portion of his life to same-sex erotic encounters but who professes not to be a homosexual in what he considers the limiting modern sense of the term; a blue-blooded intellectual who never went to college and believes that the amateur is the "very best sort of reader" ; and, finally, a memoirist who vowed never to write a memoir but has produced, perhaps, the most compelling and deliciously fun memoir to appear in several decades. From a purely voyeuristic perspective, how could this account of Vidal's first 39 years (through 1964) be anything but compelling, given the cast of characters? "It seems that practically everyone I have ever met is now the subject of at least one biography," Vidal notes in a tone somewhere between honest bemusement and none-too-subtle back-patting. Novelist, Broadway playwright, studio screenwriter, politician, hobnobber with everyone from Tennessee Williams to Jackie Kennedy (they shared the same stepfather) to George Santayana to Greta Garbo to the duke and duchess of Windsor--Vidal turns up alongside as many famous people as Woody Allen's Zelig; the difference between them is that, unlike Zelig, Vidal knows (and tells) who his famous friends had sex with (occasionally, as in the case of Jack Kerouac, it was Vidal himself). Ranging from bitchy to compassionate to shrewd, Vidal's wit-drenched remembrances of the people around him never fail to entertain, perhaps because, in his own words, "I was certainly more interested in my view of them than I was in my view of myself." We all spend some of our most pleasurable hours talking about other people; Vidal makes that fundamental human activity into a minor art form. (Reviewed November 1, 1995)0679440380Bill Ott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Vidal's account of his first 39 years includes his reminiscences of a host of prominent political and cultural figures. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Prolific essayist, novelist (Burr et al.), screenwriter (Suddenly, Last Summer), playwright (The Best Man), and sometime political candidate Vidal quotes the definition of palimpsest as " `a parchment which has been written upon twice; the original having been rubbed out.' " This particular memoir of his first 39 years (1926-65), says Vidal, has "many rubbings-out and puttings-in," which may explain its many-layered nature and the bare nod to chronology, with flashbacks and flashforwards and curious juxtapositions of friend and foe. In it he blithely skewers both family and friends (or ex-friends)-particularly his alcoholic mother, the Auchinclosses, John and Jackie Kennedy, Anaïs Nin and other literati, and too many more to recount-with nasty revelations. But Vidal is still a stylish writer, and those not put off by the mean-spiritedness of these self-serving memoirs and fascinated by the literary, political, and entertainment worlds of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s may want to read this. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/95; BOMC and Quality Paperback selections; New Yorker serial, Oct. 2.]-Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
