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Title: United States by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0-7679-0806-6 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gleefully malicious
Comment: Gore Vidal possesses an immense erudition and a willingness to inflict it on anyone and everyone who doesn't measure up to his standards, with tremendously entertaining results. He is a pedant and a nitpicker who will not let be even the smallest things, and I would hate to be subjected to his merciless eye, but it's great to read about the people who have been.
I bought the book for its first section, which consists of essays on literary matters (quite a few of them concerning people of whom I had never heard before -- some of whom I have now started reading just because of the essays), figuring that I could at worst skip the politics (the idea of which bored me) and still have quite a collection of essays in my hands. As it turned out, though, once I had made my way through that section I was so hooked on Vidal's drily contemptuous writing that I couldn't help continuing. I'm glad I read on, because his views (many of them bolstered by first-hand experience with the issues about which he's writing) and ability clearly and convincingly to expound them are amazing. He has really changed my ideas about a few issues. (There are also a few issues on which I think he can say nothing but educated nonsense, but I didn't read the book to have my own opinions parroted back at me.) The essays are fascinating, educating and entertaining, and the collection is superb -- trumping (in quantity and quality) just about any other book of his essays available. The ``sequel'' to this collection, Last Empire, can be a bit repetitive and shrilly alarmist, but this one is fresh and insightful throughout (perhaps because he's talking about events from which I feel sufficiently detached to be open-minded?).
The only slight complaint I have is that Vidal, in the middle of his complaints about the style and spelling problems of others, has some stingers of his own. (One of the most glaring is that he likes to set off parenthetical notes for example this one, with only a final comma.) I'd try to ignore this in an ordinary writer (should I say mere mortal?), but with someone who so clearly values pedantry and precision it is extremely jarring.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great collection of very entertaining, well written essays
Comment: This is some of the sharpest commentary on politics and literature that is available in print today.
That said, I must strongly disagree with another reviewer's characterization of Gore as a secret conservative. I'll deal with his points 1 at a time:
-Distain for postmodernism: OK, Noam Chomsky also hates postmodernism. Is he a conservative too?
-Historical care because "Most liberals think of history as somehing to forget.": Wow. Most idealogues think history is something to forget, liberal or conservative. Even if true, this would show that Gore is not most liberals.
-"Many liberals distrust humor": Once again, Wow. Gary Treudeau? Tom Tomorrow? (very funny liberal cartoonists) One's political views have absolutely nothing whatever to do with enjoyment of humor. A lot of people generally distrust humor. I call them humorless, I don't know what the other reviewer would call them.
-"Will Vidal ... be received into Christianity at last? It wouldn't surprise me a bit.": Did you read this book? He repeatedly lambasts Christianity and the Bible itself. He's not Jerry Falwell's best friend by any means...
However, if we take the definition of a liberal as a humorless, postmodernism-loving, history-hating person who can't write well, and a conservative as anything else, then Gore Vidal is definitely a conservative. Tried and true.
Historically, hasn't conservativism had something to do with politcal views? Oh, I forget. All that history stuff is too complicated for my delicate liberal brain.
Rating: 5
Summary: Master Essayist At Work
Comment: United States, the 1993 Winner of the National Book Award, it covers the years from 1952 until 1992. This book shows that Vidal is an authority/reliable source in many areas. He served in WWII and wrote his first novel while doing so. He comes form a political background; his grandfather, blind Senator T.P. Gore, brought him up. He is related to Eleanor Roosevelt and was friendly with JFK. He ran for Congress in New York in 1960 and came in second in the California democratic primary in 1982. Furthermore, his father served as director of the Bureau of Air Commerce under FDR, which gave him insight into the forming of airlines and access to Charles Lindberg. He wrote his first novel at the age of 20 and has subsequently written 23 other novels, most of them historical novels in which he did significant research to get the details just right. He has numerous interesting insights into the lives of other writers as well as being capable of writing compelling book chat. He has also written for TV and the movies, as a result knows a lot of famous Hollywood movers and shakers. His heroes (John Quincy Adams, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Bowles, Edmund Wilson, Charles Lindberg) and villains (Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, the CIA) are vividly drawn and expertly judged throughout.
I am hesitant to recommend this tome that weighs in at 1295 pages and is the size of a reference book, but does seem all but indispensable, because it has many excellent and interesting essays. It is divided into three sections: state of the art (literature), state of the union (politics), and state of being (personal responses to people and events, not to mention movies and children's books). Not a light book to take on the train, this tome took me the better part of a year to finish, but was well worth it.
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Title: The Last Empire : Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal ISBN: 037572639X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1560255021 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal ISBN: 156025405X Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press / Nation Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The American Presidency by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1878825151 Publisher: Common Courage Press Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Decline and Fall of the American Empire by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1878825003 Publisher: Odonian Press Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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