Palimpsest

Palimpsest - Gore Vidal

The only novel of Vidal's I've read so far is 'The City and the Pillar', and reading this memoir makes me want to seek out more of his work.

The prose is graceful and fluid, full of education and humor. He moves from the present to the past as his memory serves him, the memoir settling down chronologically only after its well under way. The effect is engrossing and feels like you're listening to the man tell you about his life, and the love affair that triggered his artistry.

Vidal had a wonderful career and his bibliography is a little intimidating, but I'm encouraged to take a plunge into his 'Narratives of Empire' now that I know a little more about where he was coming from.

There is so much left to read. I don't read literary memoirs or biographies normally, but the contrasts Vidal presents between events as he recalls them versus how others do, plus Truman Capote's biographers going with what they'd like to think is true, makes me want to read more and put together my own patchwork of the past.