Poet, novelist and biographer Jay Parini (One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner) has written an intimate, clear-eyed and authoritative biography of Gore Vidal (1925-2012). Parini's nearly 30-year friendship doesn't blind him to his friend's faults. "He could be cantankerous, testy, ill-mannered, a terrible snob, a drunken bore," writes Parini. But he was also "a man I admired and valued as a friend."
Vidal wrote two memoirs (Palimpsest in 1995, and Point to Point Navigation in 2006) but he wanted Parini to write his full biography. Parini agreed on the condition it would not be published in Vidal's lifetime. This freedom from interference allows Parini a more critical eye toward Vidal's novels, screenplays and essays. He's also able to sift out fiction from what Vidal presented as fact. (Parini believes Vidal wasn't blacklisted by reviewers after the publication of his groundbreaking 1948 gay novel The City and the Pillar; he just followed it up with a number of underwhelming novels.)
A charming narcissist ("He required a hall of mirrors for adequate reflection, and there was never enough"), Vidal's colorful and volatile life was filled with fetes and feuds with celebrities, politicians and writers. His poised, witty and acerbic personality (catnip for talk shows that helped sell his novels) hid his social insecurity. His life partner of 53 years, Howard Austen, was his diplomatic buffer with most people.
Empire of Self offers a fascinating and compelling portrait of Gore Vidal's many contradictions: an anti-Roosevelt Democrat; a gay man who believed "There were no homosexuals, only homosexual acts"; and an enormously successful author with the thinnest of skins. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant