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“It seems I had, once again, said the unsayable too soon. I was subversive”
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Point to Point Navigation
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The brilliant sequel to Gore Vidal ’ s acclaimed, bestselling memoir, Palimpsest .
In Point to Point Navigation , the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal ranges freely over his remarkable life with the signature wit and literary elegance that is uniquely his. The title refers to a form of navigation he resorted to as a first mate in the Navy during World War II. As he says, “As I was writing this account of my life and times since Palimpsest , I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather.” It is a beautifully apt analogy for the hazards (mostly) eluded during his eventful life and for the way this memoir proceeds—far from linear but always on course.
From his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Gore Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theater, politics and international society where he has cut a broad swath, recounting achievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and on a number of occasions lost). Among the gathering of notables to be found in these pages, sketched with a draftsman’s ease and evoked with the panache of one of our great raconteurs, are Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, Tennessee Williams (the “Glorious Bird”), Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Greta Garbo, Federico Fellini, Rudolph Nureyev, Elia Kazan, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some of the book’s most moving pages are devoted to the illness and death of his partner of five decades, Howard Austen, and indeed the book is, among other things, a meditation on mortality written in the spirit of Montaigne.
Elegiac yet vital and even ornery, Point to Point Navigation is a summing-up of Gore Vidal’s time on the planet that manages to be at once supremely entertaining, endlessly provocative, and thoroughly moving.
In Point to Point Navigation , the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal ranges freely over his remarkable life with the signature wit and literary elegance that is uniquely his. The title refers to a form of navigation he resorted to as a first mate in the Navy during World War II. As he says, “As I was writing this account of my life and times since Palimpsest , I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather.” It is a beautifully apt analogy for the hazards (mostly) eluded during his eventful life and for the way this memoir proceeds—far from linear but always on course.
From his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Gore Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theater, politics and international society where he has cut a broad swath, recounting achievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and on a number of occasions lost). Among the gathering of notables to be found in these pages, sketched with a draftsman’s ease and evoked with the panache of one of our great raconteurs, are Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, Tennessee Williams (the “Glorious Bird”), Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Greta Garbo, Federico Fellini, Rudolph Nureyev, Elia Kazan, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some of the book’s most moving pages are devoted to the illness and death of his partner of five decades, Howard Austen, and indeed the book is, among other things, a meditation on mortality written in the spirit of Montaigne.
Elegiac yet vital and even ornery, Point to Point Navigation is a summing-up of Gore Vidal’s time on the planet that manages to be at once supremely entertaining, endlessly provocative, and thoroughly moving.
278 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,2006
This edition
- Format
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278 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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November 7, 2006 by Doubleday
- ISBN
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9780385517218
- ASIN
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0385517211
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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About the author
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Works of American writer Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, noted for his cynical humor and his numerous accounts of society in decline, include the play The Best Man (1960) and the novel Myra Breckinridge (1968) .
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
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Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
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Literary celebrity, critic, and prolific author of many works, including the National Book Award?winning United States: Essays 1952-1992 and more than 20 novels, the octogenarian Gore Vidal keeps writing. Although critics unanimously point to the author's memoir Palimpsest (1995) as a masterpiece in the genre, they agree that the writing and much of the content in Point to Point Navigation pale beside the earlier effort. Reviewers take the avowed stylist to task for some lazy phrasing, though most give a nod to the career, the extraordinary experiences, and the sly, acerbic wit of a man who, seemingly, knew everyone worth knowing in the last four decades of the 20th century. Finally, that's one of the book's problems: the point of all that name-dropping remains unclear, the stories scattershot and even repetitive.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
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While hardly his best work it does demonstrate his all-encompassing brillance.
More than anything a reminder of the days when there were public intellectuals roaming the US.
More than anything a reminder of the days when there were public intellectuals roaming the US.
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The most touching thing about this book is his description of the loss of his partner of 50 years. He handles the loss in the simplest and most heart-renchingly exposed way - it's a short scene worth reading the entire book just to encounter.
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Yikes. I think listening tothe audio book with Vidal reading it himself made it worse, which is incredible, because it was a disjointed mess that seemed to be written for the contract and advance and not for any need to create a good book. He never finished a thought. I don't mind jumping back and forth in time, but there needs to be an underlying thought. This was not a memoir, as much as Vidal going after his bad press and people he had bones to pick. The end was just the worse, where he quoted from a couple books with a new theory on the Kennedy assassination. WHy is that there? What does this have to do anything? Some of it was moving, dealing with the death of his partner, but that was squandered with all this bad will towards his critics and his unwillingness or inability to complete anything thematically.
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Snark, Snark, Snark oh how did I get through this?
Name dropping, opinion as fact and I was sexier, wittier and more brilliant than any of you people. It gets worse as the book goes on. In the end it is just a series of musings of people, places and things and his opinion on what did/didn't happen, who lied (usually republicans), and who told the truth (only people who told him how wonderful he was). It goes on and on and on and becomes almost unbearable at the end. Do I really care that Greta Garbo left the toilet seat up after she went to the restroom or his innuendo that she was a masculine? Nope. Only got through it in audible form. Never would have made it through the book version.
Name dropping, opinion as fact and I was sexier, wittier and more brilliant than any of you people. It gets worse as the book goes on. In the end it is just a series of musings of people, places and things and his opinion on what did/didn't happen, who lied (usually republicans), and who told the truth (only people who told him how wonderful he was). It goes on and on and on and becomes almost unbearable at the end. Do I really care that Greta Garbo left the toilet seat up after she went to the restroom or his innuendo that she was a masculine? Nope. Only got through it in audible form. Never would have made it through the book version.
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"Point To Point Navigation" is Gore Vidal's second memoir; his first being "Palimpsest," which I have not read but is widely critically acclaimed. He was a renowned and controversial public intellectual, author across multiple genres, failed political candidate, actor, world traveler, expat and friend or acquaintance to many of the world's best known, most heralded celebrities in entertainment, politics, literature and high society; including for starters, Greta Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie & Jack Kennedy, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Tennessee Williams, Princess Margaret, Rudolph Nureyev, Amelia Earhart, to name just a few. The list seems endless. Equally glamorous are the many global locales where he resided with his partner, Howard, of 51 years - with much of that time spent in Italy.
Of course Vidal's personal life began quite extraordinarily. He was the grandson of a US Senator, raised in Washington, DC, with much of his youth spent within the Senate chambers alongside his grandfather. His renowned airplane pilot and aeronautics pioneer father created two major airlines and was extremely close with Ms. Earhart, among other aeronautical glitterati of the time.
I found much of the book disjointed, lacking a clear order, and at times a bit droll but it's well worth the read to understand the breadth of this exceptional life. Vidal's little tidbits on family members and the extraordinary people he met, along with his expat tales, are well worth the read. His commentary on society, sexuality, politics, art, media, classism, education, literature, climate change, war, etc, are at times revelatory and examples of just how current he was at every stage of his life. He personalizes historical references and makes them interesting and relatable. I highly recommend this book to lovers of history, individuality and the courage to live life loudly with vigor and valor every step of the way.
Of course Vidal's personal life began quite extraordinarily. He was the grandson of a US Senator, raised in Washington, DC, with much of his youth spent within the Senate chambers alongside his grandfather. His renowned airplane pilot and aeronautics pioneer father created two major airlines and was extremely close with Ms. Earhart, among other aeronautical glitterati of the time.
I found much of the book disjointed, lacking a clear order, and at times a bit droll but it's well worth the read to understand the breadth of this exceptional life. Vidal's little tidbits on family members and the extraordinary people he met, along with his expat tales, are well worth the read. His commentary on society, sexuality, politics, art, media, classism, education, literature, climate change, war, etc, are at times revelatory and examples of just how current he was at every stage of his life. He personalizes historical references and makes them interesting and relatable. I highly recommend this book to lovers of history, individuality and the courage to live life loudly with vigor and valor every step of the way.
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This is more or less a continuation of Vidal's autobiography covering the first part of his life, titled Palimpsest (1995). Like its earlier companion piece, a lot of famous people make brief appearances through its pages, but having been published a little more than a decade later and some six years before he died, Point to Point finds Vidal ruminating a bit more on his older age and the end of life. I found Palimpsest more interesting, though a big period of time passed between my reading of the first and the latter.
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