This isn't a chronological biography or memoir but really just a collection of mostly short chapters with Vidal telling various and often funny anecdotes about writers such as Truman Capote and Tennessee (The Bird) Williams and other famous people such as Rudolph Nureyev and Princess Margaret. I listened to the audiobook version which has the added benefit of Vidal doing his Capote and Williams imitation voices and that of others such as Jack Kennedy.

It seemed to jump the shark when the climax is built around Vidal advocating for the mob-hit / CIA cover-up version of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and using as his source Lamar Waldron's Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK. That seemed to be the totally wrong note to go out on.

His earlier thoughts on mortality and the passing of his companion Howard Austen were more moving.

For the first half of the book I was astonished at how many other famous / important people Vidal was related to or worked with in politics, the arts and popular media -- until it occurred to me that the higher up one moves on the social power pyramid, the narrower that world becomes. Still, his stories and musings are consistently wry and politically sound.

Palimpsest, for all Vidal's narcissism, was an achievement in autobiography, a genre generally to be avoided. For a man I'm inclined to think of as exceptionally cold it was lyrical and warm, surprisingly frank on the heart, and well structured. He didn't feel compelled to tell us all - self aware enough to edit even life for the good bits.

But this. If you rate Vidal, best not read it.

The voice is still there, the wonderfully shaded irony, his acidic cutting through spin in commentary on events. But it's mostly the final telegrams of an old man missing his dead partner and lamenting the death and decline of his America, his friends, his glittering life. Even the chapter length tells of his waning powers - a page or two at most, before he must rest.

The queerest thing of all was the three or so chapters where he rated academic and biographical writings on his own life and significance. One chapter is a complete quote from the book of an academic - like he was reading you his book review over the breakfast table.

Or perhaps he was worried that his words, his important words, were impermanent after all. Not etched on tablets for eternal reference. I'll be reading his collected essays for the rest of my life, as he himself never put down his Montaigne.

I am hoping for some unreleased essays and his correspondence to be published. But this second autograph of his life made me feel like I was feeding on carrion.

Like most of other Gore Vidal works, I liked the pacing and found the themes and anecdotes interesting, but wondered if it could be better organized. The stories seem to jump from one time to another, with some being repetitive.

The ending became a self-indulgentish. I wonder if Vidal could have gotten deeper into how his critics view him.

I like this memoir better than the first one because it moved into my own personal timeline and names were more familiar and the political information was relevant to me as something other than history.

If I only had a quarter of this man's talent...I'd give anything to write the way he does! Just wonderful, witty, subtly sarcastic, name droppingly delightful. RIP Mr. Vidal, and thank you so much for contributing to our world.

Great writer. Great memoir.Great read.
" When my mother was asked why,after three famous marriages,she did not try for a fourth she observed."My first husband had three balls.My second two.My third,one. Even i know enough not to press my luck."

Escrito como reacção à biografia de Kaplan sobre o autor, este livro ilumina alguns episódios da vida de Gore Vidal, sempre num registo irónico e muito bem humorado. A tradução da 1.ª edição (que espero tenha sido revista entretanto) é francamente má.

This was quite a rollercoaster-like read and yet rarified for this 60-year-old; I don't recommend this book for anyone younger due to the nonstop references to people, places and events held dear to this and other members of the Greatest Generation. I like how the author divides the book into short chapters, making it more readable, but they are so dense! His family history got me so bogged down that I didn't finish reading that chapter. But, overall, the book is a sharp insight into the life of a famous author and bon vivant.

Worth reading for the anecdotes & zingers. Who besides Gore Vidal would compare the false eyelashes of Jacqueline Susann to "a pair of tarantulas in a post-coital state?"

Enjoyed the dishy gossip, especially about Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy & Tennessee Williams.

Not as good as his earlier memoir. There was quite a bit of skipping around and very short chapters, all of which made it slightly difficult to follow his train of thought. However, this is an antidote for anyone who is over-exposed to the Myth of the Kennedys.

Looking for some lighter reading I was rewarded by the wit and elegance of Gore Vidal’s prose which here adds to his previous memoir to cover the years 1964 to 2006. It is like a wine-assisted, long series of conversations with a close friend over several weeks and nights. Of course there’s some delicious gossip and scandal as well as some serious criticism of various governments of the USA including Nixon, who, unknown to me featured in one of Vidal’s six plays, An Evening with Richard Nixon.
I was almost completely ignorant of his 24 novels, previously brought to my attention only when they became screenplays, for example, Myra Breckinridge. Of his many screenplays such as Ben Hur, I didn’t know abut his involvement with Fellini and Vidal’s mostly ignored script for Casanova (the fate of many film-script writers). Other screen writers mentioned included Dalton Trumbo, ‘who fell afoul of congressional Red hunters with his sharp responses to their deeply un-American catechisms’. Vidal’s support for him after Hollywood blacklisted him, included Vidal’s only stage experience in the play Trumbo and his pleasure when Trumbo in old age was finally given the Academy Award for one of his many pseudonyms used by the few brave Americans who employed his work secretly.
Vidal and Howard, his partner lived many years in Rome as did Trumbo whose European films were accredited to him. Pope John Paul II came in for some deserved scorn and a marvellous joke attributed to the Jesuits on his reactionary policies along with a scandalous secret about the lying in state of Pope Pius XII whose corpse at least, seems to have got poetic justice.
Vidal’s language, reminiscent of Alexandre Pope takes down cant and pretension, for example, on the marriage of Grace Kelly to become Princess Grace of Monaco, replacing a dying screen career with a new fame. Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t escape when, she heard that Vidal was staying at Windsor Lodge at the invitation of Princess Margaret (PM), ‘the Queen’s girlish voice was replaced by the voice of Lady Bracknell: “My room!” She boomed, Then she fled across the lawn.’
The Kennedy’s and their involvement with mobsters from Cuba and elsewhere are revealed, including the plot to assassinate Castro and a plan to mount another attack on the island after the failure of the Bay Of Pigs folly. Vidal dismisses Earl Warren’s report into the assassination and remains convinced that Oswald was the patsy and Jack Ruby was CIA; as usual, he was never afraid take up unpopular opinions. In 1978, he famously spoke at the Arlington St church in Boston before 1,500 in the audience to defend the 24 men who had been arrested at Revere Beach during a campaign by police ‘cracking down on same-sexualists’ (the police wording). The chief justice of Massachusetts was in the audience and forced to resign. In answer to Vidal’s letter of support, the judge quoted Solzhenitsyn ‘…hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else is this disease rejected in the press.’ We share those times again.

In his concluding chapter, he writes: ‘Irony has never had an easy time in our American version of English.’ Much of his time in public life was spent as an ironist so it is fitting that his last reference was to Alexander Pope and a quotation of the last Ines of The Dunciad.
‘Lo thy dead empire, CHAOS is restor’d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries all.’