Stephen Hayes reviewed Palimpsest by Gore Vidal
None
3 stars
I'm not quite sure why I took this book out of the library. I sometimes find that I like literary biographies of authors more than the books they wrote, and I've never read any books by Gore Vidal.
After reading this one, I'm still not sure if I'll read any others, but I found this one quite interesting, and in many places, especially the earlier part, witty and humorous. As the title suggests, he jumps backwards and forwards in time, sometimes writing over what he has already written, and sometimes the chronology is a little confusing, especially when discussing people he had known for a long time.
As a writer he met lots of other writers, and the book is a cross between a literary who's who and a scurrilous gossip column. On the whole, however, he didn't much like the company of other writers, even though he had met …
I'm not quite sure why I took this book out of the library. I sometimes find that I like literary biographies of authors more than the books they wrote, and I've never read any books by Gore Vidal.
After reading this one, I'm still not sure if I'll read any others, but I found this one quite interesting, and in many places, especially the earlier part, witty and humorous. As the title suggests, he jumps backwards and forwards in time, sometimes writing over what he has already written, and sometimes the chronology is a little confusing, especially when discussing people he had known for a long time.
As a writer he met lots of other writers, and the book is a cross between a literary who's who and a scurrilous gossip column. On the whole, however, he didn't much like the company of other writers, even though he had met quite a lot of them, and he seems to have had fallings out with those he knew quite well, among whom were Tennessee Williams the playwright and [a:Truman Capote|431149|Truman Capote|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1419249359p2/431149.jpg] the novelist. I was most interested in what he said about Beat Generation writers, as I have been particularly interested in them, and he knew [a:Allen Ginsberg|4261|Allen Ginsberg|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1421583811p2/4261.jpg] quite well, and had met some of the others, including [a:Jack Kerouac|1742|Jack Kerouac|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1430512644p2/1742.jpg], in whose book [b:The Subterraneans|330760|The Subterraneans|Jack Kerouac|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1428958819s/330760.jpg|2696001] he appeared as Arial Lavalina.
There is also quite a lot of political gossip, which throws an interesting light on American politics in the early 1960s. Vidal and Jackie Kennedy Onassis shared a common stepfather, whom both of their mothers had married for his money. Vidal himself even stood (or ran) for election at the time that Jack Kennedy was running for President, though he did not have a high opinion of most of the other members of the Kennedy administration, or of Kennedy himself, whom he regarded as a warmonger.
Concerning his own life, Vidal hated his mother, and had only one true love, Jimmy Trimble, whom he met at school, and they were lovers from the age of 12 until the age of 19, when Jimmy Trimble was killed in the Second World War. Thereafter Vidal had a preference for casual anonymous sex, a preference which, he says, he shared with Jack Kennedy, and thought sex was inimical to friendship. He did have a lifelong companion, but according to Vidal their relationship was premissed on "no sex".
Vidal was also involved in film and television, and wrote several plays, some for television, some for the stage, and he also wrote the screenplay for several films. As a result quite a lot of his personal reminiscences involve actors, directors and producers in the film industry, and it is only his acerbic wit that keeps the parts of his book that deals with them from being a standard celeb gossip column.
An enjoyable read, and quite illuminating, but I'm still not sure if I'll try to read any of his fiction.
