Wow. I mean, wow. If I could be Gore Vidal for a day, I could die happy. I can't think of any other person who has been at the center of politics, academia, literature, hollywood and pop culture for the last five decades and certainly no one who can write as well as he. It was an enjoyable read because of the anecdotes, the digs about modern America, and the (lack of) organization -- it zig-zagged like a conversation, where one point or person makes him think of something else and suddenly you're off into another recollection and the reader doesn't see the connection until we skip to the next recollection.

I didn't really think all his counter-arguments to his critics were necessary -- mainly because I hadn't heard the critiques before, so I thought it just interrupted a good book when he would go on a rant about something that was published about him twenty years ago. It's also quite morose, since his life-long partner died, you get the sense he's just sitting around waiting to die and being disgusted with the world.

If you think Gore Vidal is an amazing author and necessary social critic, you'll love it. If you think he's an egotistical, elitist prick, this book won't change your mind. I loved it.

Over the past few days I have had the pleasure of being transported by the extraordinary literary craftmanship of Gore Vidal. His most recent memoir, Point to Point Navigation follows in the tradition of his early memoir, culling his memory for events in American and world history that he and his ego have managed in some way to be remembered as related to. The text is brief and driven by style that is filled with clarity, intelligence and style that is seldom seen in modern day writers. Although he begins moaning like an old curmudgeon about the state of American letters, and the American reading public, his text never is dull, albeit egoistic at times, and filled with names, places and events that place him in some manner at every important event, decision and personage of the twentieth-century. All this is done in a manner that can certainly call forth disdain, but instead I find myself amused, and giggling at his turn of phrase and how he is able at once to praise and skewer personages, both right and left, radical and conservative, popular and unpopular. His writing raises in me the desire to foster my own efforts in order to see if I could in some way benefit from his direction and tutelage as an erudite author. A pleasure to read, one must continually be on one's guard for the surprise repartee and thrust which comes unexpected as he leads one through the events of life remembered in a manner that truly owes more to a collection of film clips than any previous form of memoir, although he cites Montaigne's efforts at espistolory writing as the mark of measure by which to judge his own writing. Given my own circumstances wading through his text has been a pleasure lifting me across time and space, from place to place with a joy, an effervense that as he argues is rare in modern day letters.

Between Obituaries, 10 Dec 2006


"No other writer has peered so intently under the hood of American Society. None can match his uncanny gift for "telling us what we want to know' about public life, including politics, theatre and the movies. His new book is sad, spotty chronicle that would suggest Gore is stuck in a fog from a dwindling set of landmarks. Vidal's' imagination has always been able to get into the past" James
None of us know much about Vidal Gore, he likes it that way. His two memoirs have shed light on himself and the people he liked and loved. Gore's wit could cut someone, usually politicians, to the core with out them even realizing they had even a sliver. However, with his contemporaries, authors, he is even tempered and respectful. His stories about Tennessee Williams, whom he adored, but wrote about with sarcasm, are ones to savor. As are his stories about and with Johnny Carson. Carson and Gore liked each other and when Gore appeared on 'The Tonight' show, that was what television is all about. Marcus There are witty remembrances of Paul Bowles, Federico Fellini, Amelia Earhart, and Jackie Onassis. Gore Vidal's father had a 'fling' with Amelia Earhart and hits inside is a story in itself. Of course, the fact that Gore Vidal had entrance to the Camelot known as the Kennedy Administration was his forte. He and the Kennedy's had spats but one of the final chapters in this memoir is about Kennedy and his death and has credence.

The most painful to read portion of this book is the time and death of Vidal's companion Howard Austen. Vidal gives s a vivid portrayal of his life just before his death and the final moments of Howard's life. These are poignant and give us insight into this great man.

We learn about Vidal Gore's entry into politics and why it did not work out. The writing of his forty-sox books, his philosophy of life and the writers he revered. Montaigne is the author he reveres and reads time and again about memory and the lapses of memory.

"Gore Vidal has the looks of a prince, the connections of a prince, more wit than any prince, and a prose style that should be the envy of the dwindling few who realize that prose style matters." Larry Mc Murtry.

This is a book to be revered if you are a Gore Vidal fan, as I am. I did not want it to end. Gore Vidal is now eighty-one and his memoirs may end but a trilogy would be most welcome. Highly Recommended. prisrob 12/09/06

"if the mention of the people whom i have glimpsed on my way past them lacks precision in describing them, it is only because i never really saw them or thought about them, since for me they were manipulable objects to be used or somehow got around, in order to continue my trajectory."

"it has been my experience that writers, myself included, often forget what they have written since the act of writing is simply a letting go of a piece of one's own mind, and so there is a kind of mental erasure as it finds its place on a page in order to leap to another consciousness like a mutant viral strain."

"today the only subversive programming on American television is C-SPAN. one would like to say it is because they try to take books seriously. but it is not book chat where C-SPAN is at its best; rather, for those of us fascinated by politics, congressional hearings as shown by C-SPAN in exquisitely boring detail are to me the only exciting and useful American television on offer. to watch senators and representatives fairly up close in congress assembled affords us the only living look we will ever have of a government that is more and more secretive and remote not to mention repressive. only the slowest among us - and i am one - are able to process yards of absolute boredom and feel revivified."

"we had been together fifty-three years. he confessed that he thought he was just passing through my life and was surprised as the decades began to stack up and we were still together. but then is is easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part and impossible, i have observed, when it does. each had a sex life apart from the other: all else including our sovereign, Time, was shared."

I was a trite disappointed with this memoir, Gore didn't got into any of his personal relationship with Howard, it was a skimpy memoir.

This book makes me happy. He is such a great writer. He narrates the book himself and he speaks slowly,every word and sentence has time to be enjoyed.
What detracts is his incessant name-dropping; he seems to be connected in some way to everyone.
Toward the end he stops writing and begins responding and reacting to what others have written about him. He begins to sound tired, probably his intent.

I found that this memoir fell short of the sharpness and wit of Vidal's previous look back, Palimpsest. Caustic, rambling and opinionated, and more than the previous memoir, I took some observations with a grain of salt. Still a fun read of a unique man who straddled politics, theatre, Hollywood and the literary world.

Vidal is always a fun read. Unfortunately Gore Vidal skipped much I found fascinating about him; his involvement at the '68 convention when he debated Buckley, his appearances with Cavett (including the famous meeting with Norman Mailer), and his writing process. Probably my favorite novelist.

"Money is now a Great Wall of China separating American rich from poor, a division that is beginning to seem as eternal as the Great Wall itself." Deze opmerking, te samen met veel andere scherpe observaties en 'bon mots' over politiek, schrijverij, kunst, vrienden, vijanden, randfiguren, maken deze memoires van Gore Vidal bijzonder interessant. Vidal is geboren uit en leefde te midden van een heel gezelschap dat er toe deed in het naoorlogse Amerika tot zijn dood in 2006. Zijn ironie en eruditie maken het bovendien erg prettig om te lezen.

Interesting from a historical perspective. But, is Gore Vidal really as arrogant as he sounds?

If you're going to read Vidal's memoirs (and you should certainly consider it), start with Palimpsest, the earlier volume, which follows a more conventional autobiographical chronology and structure through the first 39 years of his life.
Point To Point Navigation is rather loose and rambling and repeats a lot from the earlier book - the death of Howard Austen is in many ways its crux, but I still feel like I scarcely know him ("knowing" only in the sense that one can know anyone solely through reading someone else's description, of course).
In addition to the recursive narration, hardly any chapter is more than three pages long, a device that mostly suits the fragmentary nature of the memoirs, yet seems even odder towards the end where a more sustained sequence (which is actually mostly long quotes from other people's biographical writings about Gore) is broken up arbitrarily by the chapter divisions.
I'm plainly not selling this book too hard - read the collected essays "United States (1952-1992)", then "Palimpsest" then borrow this from someone and get through it fast.

This autobiographical book by Gore Vidal since Palimpsest is interesting.
It jogged my memory of times forgotten.