Inigo Thomas writes:

On a console table, photographs of many famous people. ‘Some family, some friends,’ Vidal said, with weary affection. Those on display were some of the people Vidal writes about in Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation, his new memoir, people he’s not always generous about. His affection for and dislike of those he knows, or knew: this is central to Vidal’s ambivalence about America and Americans, friends and friends as enemies, his loving and loathing of it and them, and more generally his two minds about the United States. Some are in two minds about Gore Vidal: they admire his wit but consider him insufficiently American or, some say, anti-American. They’re wrong: what he’s against is anyone who is willing to be led, anyone who says they must be followed. ‘Likeable’ isn’t a word you would use to describe Vidal. ‘Irrepressible’ is one word you would.

(LRB 10 May 2007)

Little Brown | hardback 278 pp. |ISBN: 9780316027274