Palimpsest
by
Gore Vidal
(Random House)
review by Ron Hogan
Palimpsest
by
Gore Vidal
(Random House)
review by Ron Hogan
To many people, Gore Vidal is a semi-legendary author who occasionally makes slightly ironic cameo appearances in movies like Bob Roberts and With Honors. They know that he has written dozens of books, including the celebrated sexual farce Myra Breckinridge and historical novels ranging in scope from the Roman Empire's last pagan flings (Julian) to the birth of the American republic (Burr) -- even if they haven't actually read any of them. Fewer people know that the writer was born into power and wealth. His grandfather, T. P. Gore, was the first senator to be elected from the state of Oklahoma (Vidal is distantly related to Vice-President Al Gore) and the family was at the center of Washington, D.C. society. But all that is only the tip of Vidal's iceberg.The author has often insisted that he is not the subject of his writing, and never will be. But when at the age of 70, he learned that scholars were doing research for his biography, he was spurred to recollect the events of his life and set them to paper in Palimpsest. The title of the book means "a parchment or tablet that has been written upon or inscribed two or three times, the previous text or texts having been imperfectly erased and remaining, therefore, still visible." Vidal carries the metaphor further in his neat, elegant prose:
"...discreet archaeological layers of a life to be excavated like the different layers of old Troy, where at some point beneath those cities upon cities, one hopes to find Achilles and his beloved Patroclus, and all that wrath with which our world began."
The classical allusion is extremely apt, for beneath this chronicle of the worlds of literature and politics, the person most indelible to Vidal is his adolescent friend and soulmate, Jimmie Trimble, who was killed in combat during the second world war. The "half of me that never lived to grow up" is a ghost that haunts Vidal's memoir, and he returns to the subject of Trimble often.
The 'half' of Vidal that did live to grow up published a well-received first
novel, Williwaw, in 1946. But his grandfather, remaining
hopeful that Vidal would enter politics, quietly proceeded to influence his
election to office in New Mexico. Those plans were shattered, however, by the
1948 publication of Vidal's The City and the Pillar.
The story is that of a young man who becomes obsessed with another young man after their brief sexual encounter. As he subsequently
journeys through the American homosexual underground of the Depression and war
era that follows, he continues to idealize the one time lover. The book was
recieved by the press with indignation and, as Vidal notes of his fellow
writers, "[t]he fag writers were terrified; the others were delighted that a
competitor had so neatly erased himself."
Vidal weathered the storm, immersing himself in literary and socialite circles. He eventually found work writing plays for live television dramas, then wrote plays for the stage, and eventually moved to California to write screenplays for MGM. He maintained a home in New York and finally launched his political career, running a failed campaign for the House of Representatives in 1960. Gore Vidal wrote the occasional novel during these years, often under a pseudonym, but it was not until the mid-60s that his career as a novelist regained its fullest momentum.
While everybody from Eleanor Roosevelt to Tennessee Williams turns up in the pages of Palimpsest, the majority (not counting parents and grandparents) appear only in brief glimpses, such as the one-night stand between Vidal and Jack Keruoac. One notable exception is Anais Nin whom Vidal discusses at great length, primarily to correct assertions about their relationship made in the pages of Nin's diary and in various biographies. Another is half-stepsister Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, since Vidal had regular, but less than cordial, contact with the family during JFK's campaign and brief presidency. Recalling an interview in which a reporter confronted him with an old quip, "I seem to have met everyone, but know no one," Vidal asserts, "I had never wanted to meet most of the people that I had met and the fact that I never got to know most of them took dedication and steadfastness on my part."
The fleeting nature of the author's recollections of his life, and his decision
to avoid discussing his writing except where it has immediate relevance to his
encounters with other people, give Palimpsest a loose, free
floating quality. Only roughly chronological, the memoir constantly leaps
forward and backward through the layers of Vidal's reverie and insight. The
prose, however, remains very controlled and precise, and the author always
steers back to the overall arc of his life. Gore Vidal proves an excellent
raconteur and a charmingly ironic guide through the late twentieth century's
various circles of fame.
