We learn some quirky details about the writer, as well-his fascination with Billy the Kid (and, later, with Timothy McVeigh), his fondness for celebrities of all sorts, his discomfort with academics, and his rivalries with Norman Mailer (with whom he reconciled) and William F. Like other critics, Parini believes Vidal’s essays surpassed his other work. The goals are exposition and elucidation, and he achieves them gracefully. He tells us about each of Vidal’s major works (and the major reviews thereof) but never in prose choked with jargon or self-importance. Parini is a wise general biographer of a literary figure. They range from amusing to deeply moving. Parini precedes each chapter with a vignette, a focused memory from his own experiences with Vidal. Like many other fine artists, Vidal worked until he could no longer do so. But so do others, as the author ably shows: Vidal was generous, brilliant, assiduous, and innovative. Petty, jealous, judgmental, and imperious-all applied to him. They became fast friends as well as professional colleagues, though Parini continually reminds readers of Vidal’s often difficult personality. Jesus: The Human Face of God, 2013, etc.) met his subject in the mid-1980s, and he begins his chronicle with that encounter. Poet, novelist, and biographer Parini (English/Middlebury Coll. An intimate but unblinking look at Gore Vidal (1925-2012), the gifted essayist, playwright, novelist, and public personality, who, for a time, seemed ubiquitous in the popular culture.
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