Gore Vidal
Point to Point Navigation
Doubleday (Hardcover)
$26

To call Gore Vidal’s career or life long and varied is easy. And it’s easy for that common description of an old lion to pass a reader’s eyes without it meaning much. But to read this memoir, his second, is to be reminded that the author’s father -- an aviation pioneer -- was intimate with Amelia Earhart, that Vidal himself was close with Eleanor Roosevelt -- and that his godchild is the son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. Now, that’s long and varied.
Those of us who prefer Vidal’s essays to his fiction will find the same satisfying weaving of erudition and cattiness here. And since Vidal is into his ninth decade and has lived his fascinating life among so many famous figures, there is no shortage of subjects about whom he can share his first-hand reminiscences: Johnny Carson, Paul Bowles, Princess Margaret, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Frederico Fellini and Chistopher Isherwood, to name just a few.
-- Frank Reiss

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