A decade ago, I went to lunch with Gore Vidal at his house in Ravello. That house (since abandoned) and that sort of occasion have been written about so often by Vidal's guests and interviewers, and by Vidal himself, that there is little to say that hasn't been said. It is a beautiful place, if you like houses perched on cliffs, with an epic view of the Tyrrhenian Sea (somewhere in the hazy distance south of Salerno are the remains of the Greek settlement at Paestum). If you don't like houses perched on cliffs, then the blinding absence of a horizon at noon on a summer's day and the steep plunge to the road below are unnerving.

LRB 10 May 2007 | PDF Download