To judge by one of his responses to the Proust Questionnaire published in Vanity Fair, Vidal considers this peculiar little volume his chef-d'oeuvre. One can only assume this is another example of the well-documented phenomenon of a parent reserving his fiercest love for his sickliest child.

Although written in the nondemanding (for authors and readers alike) turn-the-squares'-cliches-against-them style of his celebrated poleminc-cum-sex-comedy "Myra Breckenridge", "Duluth" generally fails to sting or tittilate. Consider this representative (you'll have to take my word for it) sample of the book's approach, taken from its opening pages:

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"I believe, Edna, that a Negro is being lynched."

"You'll love Duluth. I can tell." Edna revs up her jalopy's motor. "We have excellent race relations here, as you can see. And numerous nouvelle cuisine restaurants."

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Oh, that vile bourgeois complacency! I can just picture Vidal's Washington-elite nostrils twitching with contempt as he composes at the writing desk in his palazzo in Ravello, Italy. Only one can't help but wonder: is it racism that excites his disgust or just the stench of the middle class?

Vidal was an old man when he wrote this, but he writes like a college sophomore out to have a great deal of fun. Lots of laughs, silliness, attacks on the right wing. A quick read and a fun one. Stay away if you are easily offended by sexual humor.

This book is Ha-Ha funny and Hmmmm interesting all at the same time. It is a satire, among many other things. Read it and read it again, and then once more, then put it aside for a few years, then read it again. You'll thank yourself for doing so.

Dawn Powell published "Angels on Toast" in 1940 to generally favorable reviews but poor sales. She rewrote the book, shortening and softening its satire, in 1956 under the title "A Man's Affair". She also wrote a TV script based on the book called "You should have brought your mink". The book has been reissued several times, all in the original 1940 version.

When the book first appeared, the critic Diana Trilling wrote a negative review. She observed that Powell was a writer of great gifts and style who, in "Angels on Toast", had wasted her talents on utterly frivolous, valueless people and scenes. On reading the book, I can understand Trilling's reaction. The book isn't one of Powell's best, but its scenes are sharply-etched and entertaining. As I have frequently found in Powell's novels, the book works better in parts than as a whole, even though the story line of "Angels on Toast" is generally clear and coherent.

The story is basically a satire of American business in the later 1930s with the scene shifting back and forth from Chicago to New York City. The two main protagonists are businessmen, Lou Donovan and his best friend, a less successful businessman named Jay Oliver. The two characters are pretty well differentiated from each other although both remain one-dimensional. The activities of Lou and Jay can be summarized in three terms: moneymaking, drinking and wenching. As are virtually all the characters in the book, Lou and Jay are out for the main chance in their endless trips to New York. They engage in unending bouts of hard drinking. Their sexual affairs, and the deceits they paractice on their wives and mistresses take up at least as much time as the business and the booze. Jay's mistreess is a woman named Elsie while Lou is involved with a mysterious woman named Trina Kameray. Both give just as good as they get. It is difficult to think of a book where the entire cast of characters are crass, materialistic, on the make, without sense of value. Powell portrays them sharply.

I found the book less successful than Powell's other New York novels. I think this is because the book satirizes American business and Powell clearly has less sympathy with business than she does with the subjects of her satire in her other novels. Her other books generally deal with dissilusioned wannabe artists in Grenwich Village, with writers, nightclub entertainers, frustrated musicians, and writers resisting the tide of commercialism. Powell has knowledge of the lives of such people and sympathy with at least some of their ideals. This gives a touch of ambivalence and poignancy to the satire. But in "Angels on Toast", she shows no real knowledge and no sympathy to the world of business. This, I think, makes the satire shrill and too one-sided. Also, the business world is satirized in essentially the same terms as the various components of New York society Powell satirizes in her other books -- i.e. the characters are egotistical in the extreme, heavy drinkers (always), and sexually promiscuous and unfaithful.

Some of the individual scenes in the book are well-done. In particular, I enjoyed Powell's descriptions of a fading old New York Hotel, called the Ellery and its guests and the patrons at its bar. There are a few good scenes of train travel in the 1930's, and much sharp, punchy dialogue. The book held my interest.

The characters are crass and one-dimensional. Powell refers to some of her minor characters repeatedly by offensive nicknames such as "the snit", "the floozie" and "the punk", which certainly don't show much attempt at a sympathetic understanding of people. The book is sharp, cutting, and more so that Powell's other books, overwhelmingly negative towards its protagonists.

This book has its moments. The writing style and the details are enjoyable, but the satire is too one-dimensional and heavy-handed. Although the book is worth knowing, it is one of Dawn Powell's lesser efforts.

Yet another example of Ms. Powell's scathing wit at play. The Angels in question are real Devils and whomever gets caught in their circle gets burned to a crisp. This is a witty tale of New York businessmen on the make, trying EVERY trick they know not to "rock the boat" with thier wives. Very entertaining read as you go along with these two rascals through their adventures. You will end up despising and envying them for all they get away with!

The camera rarely stops moving in this deftly wry tale of two self-serving businessmen and the wives and mistresses who continually trip them up. The narrative could easily have remained soap opera material were it not for Ms. Powell's generous eye for detail. The subtext splits the characters' heads wide open, and inside we find that the basic humanity of these big shots, bohemians, socialites and freaks goes all the way down to the well. Not quite comedy, not quite melodrama, not quite satire, not quite sure. Ms. Powell is a master at broadening emotional context with her scathing, loving wit. Preston Sturges would surely have been charmed

The idea of the plot in »Live From Golgotha« is so simple it's genius: the battle about transmitting live from the crucifixion of Jesus. I wonder why nobody has got that idea before. That alone is enough to deserve one star.

But the story itself does not deserve more than an additional two stars. It drowns in overexposed attempts to be controversial, in the typical American way of wanting to provoke the authorities of moral.

This novel is a mixture of the movies »Back To The Future« (I, II and III), »Life Of Brian« and »12 Monkeys« and the filmatization of »The Last Temptation Of Christ«. Gore Vidal has a lot of good ideas but he does not seem to tidy up in order to "kill his darlings" among them. However, Vidal's humour has a certain level, balancing on the thin line between Woody Allen'ism and blasphemy. (Being an atheist, I am not the right person to judge whether the author actually does step over the line and into blasphemy).

But the story fades, in and out. Mostly out, towards the end of the book. Compared to the expectations you start with, knowing the plot, it fades to disappointment.

So, reading »Live From Golgotha«, you get some good laughs, a few chills because of Vidal's close-to-blasphemy, from time to time some excitement about how the story is going to develop... but in the end, closing the book, the feeling is kind of empty.

Entirely blasphemous. Astonishingly simple. Entirely engaging and written in such a black vein of humour that you won't be able to help yourself. Questions the foundation of the Christian faith: can you ever remain certain that it was Christ who was nailed to that Cross having read this?
If you loved Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" you'll adore this book.

I s Gore Vidal a great writer? It depends on what he is writing. This compilation is long overdue as Vidal has never been taken as seriously by the Eastern literary establishment as he deserves. Certainly, he is one of the very few serious writers who also know how to entertain. This is what makes him so successful. Included here is his play, "The Best Man," the complete "Myra Breckenridge," selections from his historical novels, and a number of essays. My own opinion is that few writers are capable of such elegant prose as Vidal is when he is writing in the essay form. He understands politics better than any other fictional writer, which is why his historical novels make such splendid reading. His wit is uneven; brilliantly hilarious and insightful at its best, unnecessarily vulgar and savagely mean at its worst, which is why his comic novels are such hit and miss affairs. Vidal's work, taken as a whole, is an impressive library. Few good writers have been as productive as he, and who else can claim to have been consistently on the bestseller lists for nearly four decades as he has? Anyone who admires Vidal will argue with some of the selections here but there is also much to entertain and enlighten. Enjoy.

Gore Vidal takes you across more than a thousand years of Venetian history ___from its improbable origins as a safe haven from the marauding hordes of Attila the Hun (5th century AD), through a thousand years of the great Venetian Republic ("The Serene Republic"!)____down to its present day status as a tourist Mecca . Vidal garnishes his observations of the city and its people with characteristic irreverant humor.The pace of the book is pretty informal with short chapters devoted to the origins of Venice, its geography , the great mercantile Venetian empire which lasted over a millenium ,the flowering of arts : Veronese , Tintoretto, Giorgione , Vivaldi & Palladio were all at some point or another associated with the city . Also interspersed are some observations about Venice which most foreigners may not be familiar with e.g: "There is no sight more beautiful than Venice under a snowfall .Venice is like a once-great beauty who deserves to be seen by candlelight , and the soft light of winter works like a photographer's air-brush on the city's many cracks and wrinkles .Venice is particularly beautiful in a winter mist " etc.Also included is a chapter on the high and mighty who chose to spend some time in Venice : Henry James, Byron, Richard Wagner not to mention that Stravinsky is buried there .This is a good light read and Vidal is an entertaining guide along the way.

I have been a fan of Gore Vidal's for a very long time, so very few of his views on American presidents listed in this book are really new. But it is interesting to see them collected in one single volume and without the subtlety of earlier writings. Thus Vidal says plainly that presidents are either military dictators (Lincoln and FDR) or servants of Big Business. Truman and Eisenhower never considered the Soviet Union any real threat but invented the Cold War to please the military-industrial complex - a game that JFK, a cynical in everything else, believed in and wanted to win, almost causing World War III. And the Clintons are, of course, naïve idealists who never had any idea of how the US works until they tried to defy Corporate America with their health care plan which would have brought happiness to all. And so on and so forth.

Of course one should not accept at face value the conventional version of any country's history - not only the United States'. Vidal's historical novels, especially "Burr", are excellent in pointing that out. But although "The American Presidency" is useful as a readable and entertaining summary of American history which does sometimes make you think, it is also extremely simplistic - almost a caricature of Vidal's early writings on that subject. It made me sad, in a way.

The book/pamphlet is unusual. It is quick reading and very amusing and funny. It does not try to be completely historically detailed and is not written in the scholarly style but rather goes through the key American presidents in order and gives a brief description of their character, accomplishments, and the problems they faced/solved/created.

In my opinion, Gore Vidal can be considered an elite insider of the US system. He pretty much writes as one blatantly and I believe he is making a point: here is someone on the inside who knows many of the presidents, politicians, the rich, and the media editors and is presenting history through such a perspective and in such a mode. He is a traditional republican and conservative (in the original sense of these words, hence the lower case use): foreign adventures/interventions, domestic political repression, economic polarization, and increasing corporate control are things he speaks against vehemently. For these reasons, this is a very refreshing book to read.

In addition, the book raises and deals with important questions about the presidency as an institution: what are its limitations and powers? How did this historically lead to its use and abuse for particular ends by various characters? What types of people were the various presidents and how did they change this institution?

Finally, Gore Vidal sees the US in the process of a slow but steady downfall, particularly since the Cold War years (1950s): politically, culturally, and economically (since the 1980s). The costs of being imperial master, with attendant crushing stifling of dissent at home, the huge military spendings and deficits, and foreign interventions and the loss of foreign and US life in the process, etc. are reviewed quite negatively in this book. Whether you believe this or not is something else, and the facts he produces are suggestive only (but then again,
the book is quite short).

In short, I recommend the book. As long as read properly, it provides quite some insight into American history. If you're looking for detailed history, facts and figures, and precise arguments, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a quick overall and consistent viewpoint and history viewed in broad burshstrokes, this book really hits the spot.

For those who don't have the time to read James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" this book is a nice short summary of why we shouldn't take the institution of the American presidency too seriously. Also, it highlights the grossly mistaken manner in which American history is taught in the nation's high schools. Vidal makes it clear that far from the proud heroes presented in the history textbooks, most American presidents were just ordinary guys with more than their far share of flaws. He also explains why it is important to understand that the policies led by these flawed, often greedy and usually power hungry individuals had grave consequences not only for America but most of the world.

Gore Vidal's life is interesting enough in itself to assure a good read: grandson of blind senator Thomas Gore; stepbrother, or almost, of Jackie Kennedy; acquainted with Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, etc; famous novelist, playwright, screenwriter. However, one does get the impression that he's slipping into name-dropping at times. He clearly stretches his relationship with the Kennedys - which Vidal himself seems to regard as the most important aspect of that period in his life - almost to the breaking point. This is partially redeemed, however, by his critical (jealous?) view of JFK. His troubled relationship with his mother is given a proportioante weight. The most annoying thing in this book, though - maybe noticed only by Vidal fans like myself - is how he shamelessly reproduces whole paragraphs, verbatim, from other writings of his, like his comments on Richard Nixon and his apartment in Rome. He also re-tells for the nth time his role in re-writing the script of "Ben-Hur", still not revealing if he wrote anything for that film besides the famous Ben-Hur/Messala relationship. Those who are not as familiar with Vidal's work, though, and who read those stories for the first time, will certainly enjoy them. But I did find disappointing that the book is more like a "Who's who" of famous people whom Vidal met than a critical self-portrait.

What's a man to do when he's more talented than everyone else? Vidal's answers, told through the lens of his old age, are fascinating if only because the world has no other figure whose work bridges literature's twilight, pop culture's dawn and a political past when our leaders didn't seem so patently ridiculous. Gossipy, yes, but in an idiosyncratic way that lends credibility. I mean is it really malicious to have include a scene with Jackie giving douching instructions? I think not. The Truth? God knows, but that much-abused word is given a breather in this memoir, relieved of the pressure by memory's sleights of hand, readily admitted to throughout the book. Without the pressure to create an encyclopedic autobiography, Vidal leisurely rambles through his first 39 years, pausing to gaze upon an astounding collection of acquaintances. Details in the book but the effect produced is saddening on both a cultural and personal level. Culturally becuase in our compartmentalized age of "experts", wise folks with Vidal's breadth of talent can not flourish. Personally, because he feels his strength diminished, his time ending as he struggles to come to terms with a lost boyhood love. For what it's worth Gore, take your vitamins, strap on your six shooter and keep firing away

A memoir can only be as good as the life the author has lead. Gore Vidal has in my estimation lead one of the most fascinating lives of our time. This memoir covers his life up to age 39, the years when he was a firsthand witness to American History and culture. He gives us insight into the lives of some amazing friends from Jackie Kennedy (Vidal's step-sister) and Ellanor Roosevelt, to Tennessee Williams. These are the memories of a man who was instumental in shaping the culture we live in today. He's been percieved negatively because he got stuck with the homosexual label, but he shows us here the realities of the society he lived in, a society that he wasn't all that different from after all. This is far and away the most interesting biography/autobiography/memoir type book I've come across. Anyone who wasn't there to witness history themselves should check out Me. Vidal's version of it.

[...]

In "The City and the Pillar" Vidal makes every symbol a bludgeon and beats his readers over the head with it. (Hint: the pillar is a phallic symbol!)The structure of the novel is practically outlined in bullet-points before each chapter. When, at the climactic moment he tells us that the circle is complete (actual phrase!) and that this is the climax of the novel, I threw the book at the wall.

The book might be appropriate as a Young Adult novel for a struggling gay teenager reading years below his or her grade level, but I'd hesitate there too. It's got all the nuance and subtelty of a YA novel, but it really does try to be an actual piece of literary fiction. Shame, because it could almost be a decent after-school special.

I always have high expectations for books that broke the rules- particularly those that make their writers suffer needlessly due to society's close-minded bigotry. So I was rather taken by the *concept* of Gore Vidal's 1948 novel "The City and the Pillar," but ultimately I found it wanting. In fact, despite the budding romances of handsome young atheletes and showy movie stars, it ended up as quite a dry read. Vidal is dispassionate as he relates young Jim Willard's youthful misadventures of love and lust while searching for his high school crush, who he still holds a flame for years after a timid sexual tryst on a camping trip. His characters seem to me a bit two-dimensional and undeveloped, lacking any basis for their shallow and arid personalities- no one is born acting how they do when they mature, but when the reader is presented with only the face and there are no attempts to divulge the motivations they quickly get irked. The only character whom Vidal seems to make any token attempt to reveal to us is Maria Verlain; even more attentions are given to her than to the protagonist. He describes Maria's many facets with more scrutiny than he'd allow any of Jim's lovers throughout the novel. Why is it Vidal can't manage to give more depth to the shallow Shaw, or spare a few words to tell us the source of the pessimist-masochist Sullivan's eternal grief? Overall, the novel isn't worth analysis so as to find the means to praise it. Daring, yes, but few other endearing attributes show their face in Vidal's sparse, pruned sentences that lack the vitality that is emblazoned upon every page of a good book.

The first time I read "The City And The Pillar" I was less than blown away. Vidal presents us with a story of first love and passion, but he tells it somewhat dispassionately. The ending in particular did not jive with the nature of the characters. Time passed without me thinking much of this novel until I read "Palimpsest" (Vidal's Memoirs). Palimsest introduces us to the real characters behind TC&TP. I gained a whole new angle to view Maria Verlain with the revelation that she was/is Anias Nin. Likewise, I was introduced to Jimmie Trimble, Vidal's best friend (in Plato's sense of the word) and first love. Jimmie is much more real in "Palimpsest" and I found it difficult not fall in love with him myself, a feeling the characters in TC&TP never inspired. I don't want this to sound like I'm putting down TC&TP, I'm not. I just want to convey that the story was exponentially more powerful and moving after I read "Palimpsest." I do recomend this book, but only after reading Vidal's memoirs. The real Jimmie is infinitely more beautiful than the Jimmie Vidal morphed into fiction.

I bought this book because it was ostensibly about Hollywood during the golden days of the silent movies. I found the beginning of the book so tedious I actually stopped reading it-- starting over again a few months later. After at least one hundred boring pages introducing endless Washington characters (trying to sort out their relationships to each other is mind numbing), you finally get a glimpse of Hollywood. The book then goes back and forth, with the majority of "action" (a term I use very loosely) taking place in the east. I enjoyed the last fifty pages or so. If you like Gore Vidal, okay read it. But if you are interested in old Hollywood--I suggest you skip this book and find something else.

Hollywood, at least as it stands in relation to Empire, Vidal's previous book on turn of the century power politics, is dissapointing. Vidal's old gang of power brokers, Caroline Sanford, James Burden Day, Blaise Sanford, William Randolph Hearst and the rest do return, though older and strangely out of breath.

Vidal's main focus, the joining of Hollywood and Washington as collaborating sources in producing a particular type of propaganda -- America as it must and shall be -- is only forcefully embraced at the end of the novel. Earlier chapters set in the movie capitol, though meant to support this thesis, are unfocused and star-struck. Trivial personalities, simply because they were stars 80 years ago, are given the bulk of Vidal's precious pages. The deft and conceited Caroline, one of Vidal's best all-time creations, is really not allowed to say that much.

Instead, horribly, she becomes a movie star. Nevermind that she is co-publisher of the most powerful newspaper in Washington and, if she were a more realistically fleshed out charachter, might prefer to stay there. Added to this she is given a filmmaker boyfriend.

"Yes, this was her lover. Women, Blaise noted, not for the first time, had no taste in men." With his own pen Vidal dismisses Caroline's love interest, the hapless Timothy X. Farell. As we are inclined to do also.

In spite of its flaws, Hollywood is a necessary read for those won over by its brilliant predecessor Empire. Strangely enough some of its finest writing centers around the lowly charachters of the Harding Administration -- as swinish, one senses, as their day.

Washington is Vidal's comfort zone, the place where his writing reads the most accurately, where his charachters speak the most assuredly. In Hollywood much of those gifts are wasted.

The fifth novel, chronologically, of Gore Vidal's American chronicle series deals with much more than the evolution of the industry that bears the title of this book. There is at least as much political chicanery in Washington as movie-making propagandizing in Hollywood. Politics runs through Vidal's blood so he can never escape the subject entirely. The dual career of Caroline Sanford as east coast newspaper publisher and west coast starlet, while not completely implausible, seems to be a way of weaving the world of the entertainment capital into the fabric of the political capital. I was quite interested in many of the strands of both stories but I felt they were welded together more than organically linked.

I have read the American chronicle novels preceding this one and two of his early novels (The Judgement of Paris and Messiah). I had thought that Vidal had a workmanlike but non-descript style similar to Steinbeck's, at the opposite end of the spectrum from writers like Faulkner and Hemingway who announce their unique presence on every page. In the American chronicle novels, however, the god-like narrator is none other than Vidal himself, the catty, gossipy gadfly insider/outsider who can't resist giving you the inside scoop on every major development that occurs in his world. There are passages of spectacular wit and irony as well as a few in which he seems to be straining for an effect. Hollywood is nonetheless quite readable and especially indispensable in Vidal's American mythology and contributes new evidence to support my belief that he is one of America's most underrated writers from the mainstream.