Palimpsest: A Memoir
On sale
1st August 1996
Price: £12.99
This is a memoir of the first 40 years of Gore Vidal’s life, ranging back and forth across a rich history. He spent his childhood in Washington DC, in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T.P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome and Paris in the ’40s and ’50s; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. His cast includes Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Jane and Paul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others.
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Reviews
Thirty-five years of American history in perfect prose
Applaud Mr Vidal's stirring lack of mellowness in this, his autobiography; may he have long life and much free ink
A record of the transmutation, of the base into the gold, that is the raw stuff of literature
There are passages from Gore Vidal's Palimpsest which expose that Mount Rushmore mind like nothing else he has written
One of the best first-person accounts of this century we are likely to get
Throughout his book we find him warm and generous among the poisoned arrows he also flings
An elegantly observed, ineffably sad - and at times hysterically funny - memoir
Matches some of the great literary memoirs of childhood
Wonderfully entertaining. You want the high-level political gossip? You get it here... it offers all the zing of a Dry Martini without the danger of getting drunk.
Wonderfully entertaining. You want the high-level political gossip? You get it here... it offers all the zing of a Dry Martini without the danger of getting drunk
He does not narrate his life: he revies it. The result is something quite novel and wonderfully appealing, a critical biography of himself...Vidal's life might even be his greatest work
An engrossing and beguiling read. Admirably candid, refreshingly indiscreet, intelligent and full of wit, it is also startlingly original... An unequivocal triumph
A tremendous read, down and dirty from start to finish. It is also a proud and serious and truthful book
May well be the best book of his long and interesting career ... Vidal is a creature of infinite surprise
Few Americans can boast the quality cast that Vidal can muster for his autobiography, and no one turns as wicked a phrase about them ... more please
An engrossing and beguiling read. Admirably candid, refreshingly indiscreet, intelligent and full of wit, it is also startlingly original...And unequivocal triumph.
PALIMPSEST is a tremendous read, down and dirty from start to finish. It is also a proud and serious and truthful book...
Unforgettable
He does not narrate his life: he revies it. The result is something quite novel and wonderfully appealing, a critical biography of himself...Vidal's life might even be his greatest work.
This wide-ranging book is every bit as interesting as one might have hoped. The grave themes that run through it are the more welcome for the fact that they are not included at the expense of any gossip