Another book discovered through a swap that just blindsided me with it's brilliance. I've read it several times due to the layering technique that Vidal uses.



He's (apparently) quite open about not only much of his life, but also the rich, powerful and lucky family ties that allow him to share anecdotes about the Kennedys and the satellites, such as Jackie, who didn't come from money, but certainly knew how to carry herself in such a way as to allow her to keep marrying "up" as it were.



I found it quite amusing that he chose for his title the very same one that Nabakov wanted to use for his collection of autobiographical stories. Unfortunately Nabakov's publishers told him no, as they believed that people wouldn't want to go into a bookshop and have to ask for a book whose title they couldn't pronounce. So Vidal got to use it and appear even more erudite.



His insights into his life and the philosophies he developed are fascinating as well and it definitely will remain one of my favorite books, as well as a favorite autobiography. Highly recommended, in other words.

Just finished reading Gore Vidal's Palimpsest (New York: Random House, 1995). According to Vidal, "I have just now looked up the earliest meaning of palimpsest. It is even more apt than I thought: "Paper, parchment, etc., prepared for writing on and wiping out again, like a slate" and "a parchment, etc., which has been written upon twice; the original writing having been rubbed out!' This is pretty much what my kind of writer does anyway. Starts with life; makes a text; then a re-vision-literally, a second seeing, an afterthought, erasing some but not all of the original while writing something new over the first layer of text. Finally, in a memoir, there are many rubbings-out and puttings-in or, as I once observed to Dwight Macdonald, who had found me disappointingly conventional on some point, "I have nothing to say, only to add?'...These memories were recorded during 1993 and 1994 and completed-or abandoned-in March of 1995. 1 go back and forth between the present (now already past) to people and places that I knew long ago, duly noting along the way a number of familiar selves, some more real than others....Palimpsest: discrete archeological layers of a life to be excavated like the different levels of old Troy, where, at some point beneath those cities upon cities, one hopes to find Achilles and his beloved Patroclus, and all that wrath with which our world began." (6)

Vidal's memoirs are truly entertaining and it is amazing how his life seems in some manner or other to have touched every important event and person in the twentieth century. The memoir is filled with names and places and discusses quite openly his own sexuality and sexual desires and conquests. So much of his writing is light, easy and well written and a joy to read. One is propelled along by the memoirs and his current ruminating on writing his memoirs which he does along the way. He takes certain individuals to task, specifically Truman Capote for filling his life with endless fictions made up to resemble reality, but Vidal can be accused of the same thing. His endless witty repartee is surely only a part of memories reworked and rewritten in the style of a palimpsest.

The worst part about this book is that in it, GV dishes out scandal like the rent is due tomorrow.
The best part about this book is that in it, GV dishes out scandal like the rent is due tomorrow.

Highly enjoyable - in terms of prose as well as details and secrets. You'll learn things about the Kennedies that many people today don't realize seeing the clean-scrubbed pictures on the History channel. But we also hear many unsavory details about other personalities and politicians.

But Vidal does keep focus on his own life, though it does veer off that path multiple times. Nonetheless, the story of GV's live - literary, political, sexual - will keep you reading.

It's a must.