Palimpsest: A Memoir Hardcover – October 3, 1995

READ THIS BOOK.If you're interested in the big view of what happened in 20th century America, Gore Vidal had a singular perspective that spanned more worlds than perhaps any other individual in the century. Palimpsest is him at his witty, vindictive, elegant, catty, erudite, expansive, generous, self-involved finest. His first-hand perspective on the Kennedy Bros (JFK, RFK), growing up with Jackie O; his complicated friendships with titans of 20th century American art (Bernstein, Nureyev, Kerouac, Tennessee Williams), his vast spite and emnity for others (Capote, Anais Nin), his central involvement in the golden age of American cinema, and his place in the grand experiment of American democracy (first openly gay congressional candidate).And if you don't care about all that, but you want to read a funny, scathing, bitchy (can i say that in an amazon review??) book full of one-line zingers that make you want to chuckle and guffaw and let out a DAYYUM GIRL YOU GOT SCHOOLED, then that's a good enough reason to read this.

Gore Vidal (1925-2012) first saw the light of day in a West Point hospital. His father Eugene Vidal was the coach of the Army football team. He was a silver metalist in the Olympic games and an All American football player from South Dakota. he would found three airlines and serve as FDR's director of civil aviation. Gore's mother was Nina Gore the alcoholic virago daughter of Senator Thomas Gore (1870-1949) a Mississippi born blind man who was elected the new state of Oklahoma's first United States senator. Gore Vidal grew up in his grandfather's Washington estate and later at the home of his mother and her second husband Hughdie Auchincloss. He served in World War II and upon his discharge lived and traveled in Europe. His sencond novel The Pillar and the Fury created a stir at it was an overtly homosexual novel. In the 1950s and 1960's he won fame as a writer of television drama, Broadway plays and movies. Vidal gained great fame for his novels such as Burr. Lincoln., 1876, Hollywood, Washington Dc, Creation and Julian. Gore Vidal never married and was bisexual,. This memoir goes into detail about several of his affairs and friendships with people like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Anais Nin and many others. He was close to his stepsister Jackie Kennedy and Jack. He was also close to Hollywood celebrities especially Paul Newman and Joann Woodward. The book is a wide ranging look at friends and the American literary scene in the postwar era. The story ends but is continued in the sequel to this interesting volume. Gore Vidal was a brilliant intellectual who had deep insight into American politics and life. An excellent memoir by one of America's greatest modern authors.

Vidal. So educated, cultured, connected. So at times flat out snarky. Behind the scenes with the Kennedys, Hollywood big wigs, foreign service diplomats, authors, on and on. Going places the reader would never have had access. Often his bottom line on things dryly hilarious.. Loved it. Will pass on to good friend. Too good to be left on the shelf

I like Gore Vidal's collected essays and I read his novel of Lincoln, which I found enjoyable, but he has always carried with him a venomous disregard for virtually everyone he has ever known. An openly gay man back when that was a bold thing to do, he was once quoted as saying, "I could have been President if it hadn't been for this homosexual thing," and it's probably true, as he came from the same social grouping as Jackie Kennedy, his one-time stepsister, but this resentment and envy curdled his considerable qualities and ultimately made him a very unpleasant man. This book is one long jaundiced, nasty gossip column, an excuse to put down almost everyone he's ever known..

...have you ever had the experience of looking back at what you wrote and practically cringing at your own attempts to dissemble? This book reads that way. You feel held at arms length; the narrator is cool and distant, yet you feel so close to him it's almost uncomfortable.There's an interesting tension between shielding your soul from people while at the same time longing for them to know every single thing about you -- what do you mean, your "fax machine has become a time machine." What are you talking about?? You don't need to make excuses to talk about your high school sweetheart; we were *hoping* you would.Anyway, the events of this book were not very exciting to me, but Vidal's explanation of himself is really something. He does things most memoirists can't. It's very good.

Nobody, but nobody can write it, plate it and serve the dish like Gore Vidal.

Very pleased with purchase and fast shipment.

Hard to get through. Pretty boring in places

Gore Vidal, PalimpsestVidal’s rambling gossipy memoir, while not exactly compulsive reading is rarely dull. The title prefigures the author’s method, which is one of statement, often followed by correction or withdrawal. This is appropriate since many of the anecdotes about the rich and famous are based on hearsay, the slander and lies that we all love and to and the impossibility of knowing the truth. Above all Vidal enjoys a good story, one that exposes human folly and hypocrisy, especially if his victim is a public figure, like, say, John F Kennedy or his brother Bobby, neither of whom emerge from this narrative with much credit. Vidal is always the cynical observer of the literary or political scene, forever wielding the satirist’s knife. Seemingly careless of what others think of him, Vidal begins by dissecting his close family and ends by taking a swipe at almost any man of reputation, including diverse eminences like Churchill, EM Forster and ‘little’ Martin Amis. And that’s just the British ones. The Americans, such as Eisenhower, Frank Capra or Truman Capote are exposed as shysters, hypocrites or weasels. Vidal is not out to make friends. Yet surprisingly he does. Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, all at times exposed to Gore’s moral scrutiny, and none of whom is let off lightly, are typically seen affectionately and treated with a degree of perhaps grudging respect. Old friends visit him in Paris or Italy, for obviously even as a self-proclaimed recluse he remained, with his acerbic nature, a witty conversationalist and basically an honest man, and one who will give no quarter. What Vidal has, and, it seems from this memoir, what most others lack is a sense of self-respect. Although he achieved a modicum of both, he is not desperate for money or fame. The topic of money, how acquired, coveted and used obsesses Vidal. Thus, he tells us that his half-sister Jackie ‘loved money even more than publicity and her life was dedicated to acquiring it through marriage, just as her mother had done before her and my mother before her mother.’ Recalling a conversation he’d had with Jack Kennedy about the ‘golden ambience’ of childhood in pre-war Merrywood, ‘I said that much of the atmosphere – ambience – had to do with the fact that each of us had a mother who had married Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr., for his money. Jack seemed startled at my bluntness and muttered something about “security,” but Jackie agreed.’ And finally, the explanation for his underlying sense of injustice: ‘Jackie, Lee and I, were brought up in a wealthy manner and yet were penniless, unlike the first gentleman’s [Auchincloss’s] children. Of necessity, Jackie married twice for money, with splendid results. Lee married twice, far less splendidly. I went to work.’ For which the reader should be grateful, for Vidal became not merely a political columnist, but an actor, playwright, scriptwriter and novelist. He is also a social pariah whom the establishment loved to hate, pillorying him for his so-called communism and his homosexuality, the second of which he flaunted with aplomb. While not everyone will agree with him that the novel is dead and society doomed, for his advocacy of freedom of speech, non-interference in private life and as an antagonist of America’s reckless military campaigns, for these alone Gore Vidal deserves our thanks.

Gore Vidal's memoirs "Palimpsest" are fascinating, written in his inimitable sharp and witty style with numerous asides and revelations about the hundreds of (real-life) characters included in these pages. Those who know the persons and places he mentions won't be able to put it down, and it's truly interesting even when dealing with unfamiliar matters. Only regret: not the slightest detail about his love life, only hints (apart from the one great love of his youth).

I'm a big Vidal fan yet I only recently bought this, Vidal at his sarcastic best......

Gore Vidal tells it like it was.

This is simply my favourite book of the year. I originally bought it was I saw Gore Vidal on television and I hadn't read one of his books for a while. I must say that I was very suprised after 50 pages as I had expected gossip and human interest but not the real beauty of the novel which is both a description of lost love from a great writer as well as insight into a mind/life of a real intellect. As stated by other reviewers this is not a typical biography in that we meet the young child and have an overview of a life, its more a review of bits and pieces of his life, his musings on his actions and the meaning of his life and of course a chance to meet a lot of famous people. Gore is also not afraid to share the gruesome details such as his step-fathers inability to ''get it up'' or his relationship with his mother which as you can imagine from the fact that he used to vomit when she came into the room at the age of 11 was not a great success. Then of course our leading man also mixed with some of the intellectural, policial and cultural icons of a now past century so it can also be read from a historical perspective as an insight into a close but already lost period of time. I felt quite jealous of him swaning around Europe after the war with Tennesse Williams, or meeting the duke and duchess of windsor or partying around in the world pre-Aids or just hanging out with the kennedys all of whom he describes on a personal rather than political level, and I haven't even mentioned the showbiz cast including Paul Newman &r Marlo Brando. I was also pleasantly suprised to know that although he is an undouted top notch whit and racontour (a dying art) he also shares the same longings as the rest of us and is able to express those in a language which is beyond most of our capabilites. At some stages I honestly just stopped reading to savour the moment or reflect. To be allowed to share those feelings and experiences, to have them so well expressed I found simply a pure pleasure. Please Mr. Vidal, I'd be very interested in Volume 2 (apres his 39th year) where we can meet the modern scarey world of his recent political writings and touch on a rather taboo subject in our ever desperate to be young modern world that of old age.