Empire of Self

Jay Parini has written a wonderful biography of one of my favorite writers, Gore Vidal. Empire of Self covers a lot of the same ground as Gore's memoirs and the earlier (and much detested by Gore, though I enjoyed it) biography by Fred Kaplan, but Parini was friends with Gore for thirty years and brings a lot of personal insight to the story of Gore's life.

I read Gore's first memoir, Palimpsest, when I was just out of high school and what impacted me the most at that time, and for years afterward, was Gore's great love for Jimmy Trimble, the boy with whom he'd fooled around while in school and who was then killed in World War II. Back then,  it seemed to me like a tragic tale of lost love. I could easily imagine what might have been if Jimmy had returned from war, how they would have ended up together.

I've certainly grown up a lot in the (we won't say how many!) years since then. Jimmy Trimble was a beautiful young man who died far too soon, and whatever they shared together certainly impacted Gore to some degree for the rest of his life. But the great love of Gore's life was Howard Auster, no matter how much Gore himself may have protested  that his companion of 50 years was a friend with whom he shared his life or that the great secret to their lasting friendship was that they didn't sleep together.

Parini's insider view of their relationship, and especially of Gore's life after Howard's death, is eye opening, though it  wasn't my first indication of Gore's true feelings. Vidal's description of Howard's passing, in his second memoir Point to Point Navigation, spoke volumes. Reading Parini's description of how Gore, at the very end of his life when he could barely speak, asked Jay to tell him stories about Howard and their times together, had tears streaming down my face.

Once young love and tragic loss seemed far more real and valid to me than a day to day life with someone with whom you didn't even share a bed. I've grown up, and I see now the difference between true love and youthful infatuation. Gore, always going against the grain, may have immortalized what he had with Jimmy both in fiction and memoir, but it was Howard who mattered to him.

Gore Vidal

  The writer I've admired most in my life, one of the first who made me want to become a writer myself, is gone. Gore Vidal died yesterday evening at his home in California, aged 86.

  I know that Gore himself didn't believe there was any kind of afterlife, but in my mind's eye today I'm seeing him as he was back in the prime of his life, bounding up the steps at his beloved La Rondinaia in Ravello to find Howard Austen, Tennessee Williams (the Glorious Bird), Paul Newman, and, yes, Jimmy Trimble, all lounging on the terrace, drinks in hand, awaiting his arrival.

  Thank you, Gore Vidal, for the impact you had on my life. Rest in peace.

National Book Award Finalists

I'm about two weeks late in mentioning this, but the finalists for this year's National Book Awards were announced earlier this month. Here's the list:

Fiction:

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
Far North by Marcel Theroux

Non Fiction:

Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook by David M. Carroll
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles

Poetry:

Versed by Rae Armantrout
Or To Begin Again by Ann Lauterbach
Speak Low by Carl Phillips
Open Interval by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Transcendental Studies by Keith Waldrop

Young People's Lit

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Stitches by David Small
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia

I'm familiar with many of the titles, from working in a bookstore, but I haven't read a single one of them myself.

The best part of this year's National Book Awards, though, is that they've chosen Gore Vidal as the recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. It's certainly about time!

Speaking of Gore, I did buy his new pictorial memoir, Snapshots In History's Glare. There wasn't a whole lot of new information for someone who'd already read his two earlier memoirs, but the pictures were really worth the price of the book and when you add in Gore's commentary and captions, it really is a must have for any fan. There were a lot of interesting shots I'd never seen before, including copies of letters written by Gore or friends of his (such as Paul Newman).

Most fascinating of all, I think, were the copies of just a few of the letters from gay men who wrote to Vidal after the publication of The City and the Pillar in 1948. They were moving and depressing all at the same time, a portrait in miniature of that era when the closet was the norm.

A New Gore Vidal Memoir

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, by my very favorite author is Gore Vidal. I think he's an amazing writer, I love his essays, his novels, and just hearing him express his views on books, life, and most of all, the United States.

I just found out about a new pictorial memoir he's putting out, called Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare. I work in a bookstore and I had no idea this was coming out until I read about it on Band of Thebes!

I can't wait to get my hands on it! I've read both of Gore's memoirs, Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation, as well as Fred Kaplan's biography of him (which I liked, though Gore himself didn't speak well of it in his second memoir), but I don't think I'll ever tire of hearing (or in this case, seeing) more about him.

In addition to the new memoir, Gore is speaking his mind once again on the sate of the union, this time in an interview with the Times of London. The view is rather grim, but that's because Gore never pulls any punches:

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. “Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they’d say ‘They live well but they’re all alcoholics’. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over.” Instead, America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

I don't always agree with Gore on everything. Take his views on sexuality, for instance. They seem too much like a throwback to the closeted era of the 50's: he'd slept with, by his own estimate, a thousand men by the time he was 25 (!), but he still believes there are only homosexual acts, not homosexual people. To me, that seems too much an attempt to have your cake and eat it too, to be gay while denying such an identity actually exists outside the bedroom. Being gay goes beyond just sex, as much as many would like to claim that sex is all that's involved!

Gore has got an incredible mind, though, and whether you agree with him or not, he always gets people thinking.