Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) burst onto the literary scene with his controversial novel about homosexuality, The City and the Pillar (1948). Parini (D.E. Axinn Professor of English & Creative Writing, Middlebury Coll.; Jesus; The Last Station) draws on 30 years of friendship with Vidal to address both his attractions and failings. Over six decades, Vidal produced some 80 books, including 30 novels, 25 books of essays (in Parini's judgment, his finest work), and 22 plays and film scripts. He was a fixture on television, acted in movies, ran for public office (twice), and engaged in nasty public feuds with Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and William Buckley. Vidal was a man of contradictions: a good friend but vicious in attacking those he deemed enemies (some of them friends until shortly before); a conscientious writer who weakened what he wrote by slapdash methods; a libertine who only cruised in the afternoon so his evenings were free for conversation. Vidal lived as though in front of a looking glass, never satisfied with what he saw there.