August 31, 2017

Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal
Jay Parini

La Dolce Vita – A delectable romp about a bon vivant writer who wasn’t wrong about everything. Gore Vidal became exactly who he longed to become: a financially successful celebrity (with homes, at various times, in New York, Rome, Ravello, and the Hollywood Hills); a gadfly whose provocative opinions caused some to think and others to look away (and the media to always take notice); a writer whose essays might very well outlast his novels. Over the course of his adult life, Vidal amassed a $37 million fortune jousting with The Establishment. In death, he left his fortune to the most establishment of Establishment institutions: Harvard University. A few of the feuds and snide comments that propelled his celebrity will live on in the Great, Dusty Halls of Literary Rumor and Gossip – but there are bigger Godzillas now eating up all of the TV air time. One of them, in fact, is President. That, in itself, underscores how Vidal’s writing on the callous, coarse and corrupt aspects of the “United States of Amnesia” – as well as the imperial ambitions and actions of our once-promising Republic – remain pertinent, now more than ever.

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