(Likewise, he does not rebut the accusation made in the New York Times that Vidal was a paedophile he ignores it.) He simply suppresses one and the criticism it provoked. Parini does not mention that Vidal gave two versions. Norman Mailer publicly criticised Vidal for both the act and the telling. It is a tired performance.Īuthor Leyla Umar and Gore Vidal attend the Istancool arts festival n 2010, in Istanbul. But Parini does not provide a new interpretation of Vidal, nor does he correct previous errors about his life or writings. It retails some of his put-downs, honed and cutting. It notices that Vidal, often so haughty with the academy, adulated a few academic gurus such as Isaiah Berlin.

It emphasises the decisive influence of Gore's isolationist, anti-Roosevelt, blind senator grandfather. In Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies (published by Little, Brown in the United States, where it is published by Doubleday, the title is the shorter Empire of Self), Parini interleaves chapters with brief episodes concerning Gore and himself but otherwise it is a birth-to-death account which aspires to be definitive. Finally, after his death in 2012, Parini felt he could now write the biography for which he had been gathering material for two decades. He himself wrote two autobiographies Palimpsest and Point to Point. Instead, he suggested an experienced biographer, Fred Kaplan, who turned out what Parini describes as a 'sturdy and intelligent' study. Vidal asked Parini to replace him but he was very busy and also feared that what Vidal wanted was hagiography so he demurred. In the 1980s, he chose the Newsweek book reviewer, Walter Clemons, who received a $US375,000 advance but had never written a biography and was never to write one – he had biographer's block and died in 1994. It's ironic that the larger-than-life Gore Vidal, the all-around man of letters who presided with relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilisation, has ended up as the subject of biographers not equal to the task. Vidal considered himself unlucky in his two previous choices. His friend Jay Parini, an academic and an experienced biographer whose novel about Tolstoy, The Last Station, became a successful film, would seem the perfect choice as his biographer. Not only was he a best-selling author but he was a notorious stirrer for his sexual and political opinions and activities, and a coiner of one-liners which will enliven any book written about him.Īs an author, he was precocious, prolific, versatile and long-lived.

Gore Vidal is a choice subject for a biography.

Empire of Self by Jay Parini