Read These Marvelous Books!

For all of my life, or at least as far back as I can remember having any awareness of literary matters, I have found Gore Vidal to be a brilliant writer and a fascinating person. These books, the first and second volumes of his memoirs, are not only a wonderful reading experience which allow the reader to view, first hand, exactly HOW the English language is meant to be used; they also provide a truly fascinating "history" (in certain ways) of famous figures and interesting true events from America's prior decades. Further, they display, from a unique vantage, a view of attitudes and concepts relating to class and societal differences in the USA that everyone should know about, but which few do these days.

These two books also offer a number of sometimes biting insights into the personalities of other famous celebrities and artists. Here is a typical quote referring to Truman Capote, "Although he felt himself to be the heir to Proust, a reference I once made to Madame Verdurin drew a blank."

As everyone probably knows, Norman Mailer (who passed on recently) and Gore Vidal were notoriously famed for a not-so-friendly rivalry with each other. If any of the millions of silent fans of this blog were unfortunate (or, some might argue, "fortunate") enough to have never read any of Mailer's work prior to his departure from this Earth, don't let the same sad fate befall you in the case of Gore Vidal. Here, in these two books, lies a marvelous opportunity to gain an appreciation of Mr. Vidal as a person, while also being exposed to some of the best prose you will read in ANY memoir ever published.

If anyone wished to read a short review that references both of these books, I would suggest this one, here, as being fairly evenhanded.


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Spencer