Inigo Thomas

From the London Review dated 10 May 2007

President Gore

‘Likeable’ isn’t a word you would use to describe Vidal. ‘Irrepressible’ is one word you would. He’s written 29 novels, hundreds of essays and the two memoirs: it is a daunting bibliography, and no obvious starting-point presents itself, other than the man himself. In Two Sisters, his ‘novel as memoir, memoir as novel’, the narrator, V., an idealised Vidal, says: ‘In a sense, the only purpose of life is the creation of a self and what matters is the sum total of all one’s attempts.’ There have been many attempts, and many lives. As well as being a novelist, satirist, playwright, essayist, formerly an American abroad now an American at home, Vidal is a television and radio wit, patrician, actor, conversationalist, self-made man, host and sometime Congressional candidate. Anti the American empire he is, but he’s a bit of an empire himself. Or a caste. [ read more . . . ]