Reviews for Palimpsest

The average rating for Palimpsest based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-16 00:00:00 John Hubaj This memoir covers the first forty years of the Vidal saga, alighting on his blind senator Grandpa, savage alcoholic mother, childhood sweetheart, licentious sex life, and endless hobnobbery with the most prominent actors and politicians of the period as he mosies up the Hollywood ladder and cosies up with Kennedys. Written in the sumptuously arch manner familiar to anyone who has seen a Vidal clip on YouTube, the memoir establishes a warm if prickly tone, and treats the reader as an intelligent confidant(e) for the duration. Vidal’s life was far from “tough” in the street sense, but it wasn’t without personal and financial trials. Far from being drip-fed millions since birth, Gore’s father was a Scrooge and his mother a vengeful rival who delighted in his failures. Since he moved in a world where homosexuality was not the lynching offence it was to the lower orders (in the 40s), he was able to enjoy full sexual freedom and promiscuity, despite the predictable condemnation of The City and the Pillar that forced him to work for a decade in theatre, film and TV, where he made enough to become the leisurely aesthete he aimed to be (i.e. to achieve complete artistic freedom, rather than a wanton lust for money—though Vidal was clearly used to a expensive lifestyle and eager to maintain this). Apart from some rather bland material towards the end on Jackie & Jack Kennedy, who seem to be deeply uninteresting figures on the whole, this is a swinging memoir of an outstanding life that will induce fits of envious knuckle-biting and book punching. But that’s our problem.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-07-02 00:00:00 Alain Collette Possibly the best memoir ever written. Vidal is selfish and self-obsessed. He writes as if he holds court to the glittering socialites and society-types who swarm around him as he delicately wafts them away, and yet he is the one playing courtier - not a single name goes unchecked, not a single encounter escapes being diligently written down to reflect the style in which he operated within it. Vidal is clearly entranced by celebrity: and as a celebrity who has to work for a living, he's especially bitter about those who do not. Ever nasty, ever self-obsessed, ever the worst qualities of all those he loathes, Gore Vidal was made to write a memoir. His ideas about himself and others are sometimes farcical. He loses a congressional Democrat seat in NY, but it's only due to Jack Kennedy's lack of popularity. Vidal's following commercial success at the top of the NYT bestseller list eventually leads powerbrokers to beg him to stand once again. He chooses to "let the cup pass unto" another candidate, who promptly wins it by a landslide - thanks to Vidal, of course. He maintains that he could have brought down perhaps his biggest foe in the administration, Robert Kennedy, if it wasn't for the fact that the evidence he wished to use was brought to him by the mob. People, places, and vocations change and flicker constantly. Even the most famous A-listers (Garbo, the Kennedys, Tennessee Williams) are used as props for Vidal's wit, their worst traits and moments dissected for Vidal's pleasure. Their good qualities? Rarely, if ever, mentioned. Jackie Kennedy has "boyish beauty and life-enhancing malice [that] were a great joy to me". Grace Kelly at the time of her marriage is fat and rapidly ageing, willing to play princess on a rock above a casino to escape the fate of Loretta Young and Joan Crawford - that of an (gasp) old actress in the makeup chair before everyone else. Lee Radziwill (whose secret service codename was supposedly 'rancidass') is so loathed that her presence dominates the Kennedy Administration for him (and therefore us). Vidal would be misogynistic if he didn't view men with equal contempt. Even his partner of 53 years, Howard, gets nary a mention. In this hurricane of casual sex and casual friendships, the one constant is grief, which is slowly revealed to dominate the book. Vidal's first love (and best friend) Jimmie Trimble is killed during the war. At the start of our story (in the present, as an old man) he meets with Jimmie's mother. In the middle he once again takes a break from dizzying past memories of glamorous NY socialites and NYC beatniks in order to document present-day meetings with Jimmie's friends. By the time we reach the final act of the book, he meets with the woman Jimmie was engaged to at the time of his death. Vidal is seemingly winded by grief when she shows him a picture Jimmie kept of her in his pocket - not because of what the photo represents, but because it is curved to the shape of his body. The finest segments of this book are the earliest. Vidal has ways of describing the people and places around him in the heady days of his youth in a way that are reminiscent of an ancient Greek orgy. When discussing his bisexuality and homoeroticism in youth he writes that "we were true pagans who knew nothing about categories." When describing Trimble, he writes that "his sweat smelled of honey, like that of Alexander the Great". He has a one night stand with the 'irresistible' Kerouac at the height of his 'animal charm' before the latter descends to rampant alcoholism, antisemitism, and an early death. When, decades later, he sees a youth wearing a t-shirt with Kerouac's face on it, he strikes up a conversation with the boy. Did he really look like that? asks the child? Yes says Vidal, he did for a time, and that's all that's necessary, to look like that - to be like that - for a time. The book ends with - what else? - a recollection of society types flattering Vidal. The story he intends to convey means nothing, but a throwaway line that is mentioned almost innocuously is of interest. Vidal offhandedly writes that he has purchased a cemetery plot for himself in the same cemetery in which Jimmie Trimble was buried all those decades ago. I expected the society gossip. Perhaps foolishly, I didn't expect the quality of the book.