Rating: 
Summary: the title says it all...
Review: ..."look at me, I know a big word that you probably don't, and I'm going to look down my nose at you..." That's Gore Vidal in a nutshell. Still having self-confidence problems, still trying to deal with them by pretending he's better than everyone else. Pretending that he knew famous celebrities, long since dead, so they can neither confirm or deny. Pretending that he's not responsible for how he's turned out, even though he's old enough to have gotten his life together. What a phenomenal waste.
Rating: 
Summary: High horse is conveniently tethered nearby...
Review: ..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.
Rating:
Summary: High horse is conveniently tethered nearby...
Review: ..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.
Rating:
Summary: Why I couldn't finish this book
Review: 1. His ridiculous treatment of his own novels as serious literature. 2. His attempts at revenge (for WHAT?) against Truman Capote and others. (Methinks the lady doth protest too much.) 3. The disillusionment and depression I was experiencing at learning that someone whose wit and intelligence I had always admired is really lacking in both when it comes to writing about his own life.
Rating: 
Summary: Actually 4.5 Stars!!!!
Review: A fine memoir from one of America's best writer. I have read and re-read this book and each time found something new that I haven't noticed before. Reading this is like being privy to some really good gossip. Like you are in the presence of Mr. Vidal himself, and he is telling you the most interesting stories of his life. When I first read this, I thought that there is no way a person could have known so many famous people that we call legends today. My favorite chapter is the one on Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg. This is a must read for all Vidal fans.
Rating:
Summary: Back-stage passes for the American century
Review: A memoir can only be as good as the life the author has lead. Gore Vidal has in my estimation lead one of the most fascinating lives of our time. This memoir covers his life up to age 39, the years when he was a firsthand witness to American History and culture. He gives us insight into the lives of some amazing friends from Jackie Kennedy (Vidal's step-sister) and Ellanor Roosevelt, to Tennessee Williams. These are the memories of a man who was instumental in shaping the culture we live in today. He's been percieved negatively because he got stuck with the homosexual label, but he shows us here the realities of the society he lived in, a society that he wasn't all that different from after all. This is far and away the most interesting biography/autobiography/memoir type book I've come across. Anyone who wasn't there to witness history themselves should check out Me. Vidal's version of it.
Rating:
Summary: Back-stage passes for the American century
Review: A memoir can only be as good as the life the author has lead. Gore Vidal has in my estimation lead one of the most fascinating lives of our time. This memoir covers his life up to age 39, the years when he was a firsthand witness to American History and culture. He gives us insight into the lives of some amazing friends from Jackie Kennedy (Vidal's step-sister) and Ellanor Roosevelt, to Tennessee Williams. These are the memories of a man who was instumental in shaping the culture we live in today. He's been percieved negatively because he got stuck with the homosexual label, but he shows us here the realities of the society he lived in, a society that he wasn't all that different from after all. This is far and away the most interesting biography/autobiography/memoir type book I've come across. Anyone who wasn't there to witness history themselves should check out Me. Vidal's version of it.
Rating:
Summary: enjoyable, erratic, gossipy
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Vidal's remembrances of things past
Review: America's best essayist and arguably one of our best stylists writes about his first forty years. He chats frankly about his randy adolesence and with brisk honesty gives us revealing sketches about politicians in Washington and witers, actors and directors in Hollywood. Vidal casts a cold eye on all he sees and we the reader can only benefit from the ink he spills. Having been born with the need to read copiously he peppers his reminiscences with asides such as, "It was the genius of Proust to take for granted that every appearance is either a deception or subject to misrepresentetion and that the only gift the killer Time bestows is to allow us to see, on later viewings, what it was that we missed first time around." A palimpsest, as Vidal is quick to clairify, is a tablet that is written on then imminently erased. This book is a tablet from which we should all glean what we can to sharpen our own view of our comparatively impoverished realities
Rating:
Summary: Frontrow seats and bittersweet
Review: 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.
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