Gore Vidal: A Biography

This really is a superb and thorough work, despite reservations of other reviewers that are listed here. I find it highly instructive that Vidal commands such high dudgeon out of his detractors after such a long, fruitful life. Methinks they protest too much... Methinks also we need more Gore...Vidal, that is. And others like him, though I can't think of whom. And, please, lest we actually forget to mention Mr. Kaplan, who I find does a great job of holding Vidal's voice balanced with his own.Vidal in his own novels manages a similiar ability to inhabit his characters and yet we can summon Vidal behind the prose. Bravo! I do hope he outlives Mailer and Buckley to write the final word on them, if anybody will care by then. But, we will care about Gore.

What particularly fascinated me was the re-viewing of almost the entire 20th Century of the US through this book: politics, literature, culture (or otherwise), sex, and its major events. I remember the shock of WWII, the horror of the McCarthy days, the terrible battle in Chicago's streets during the mid-Sixties Democratic convention, the hilarious/appalling spectacle of big-ego authors beating up on each other and running for inconceivable offices ... and yet reading this book, I always found so much more than had ever been told before. It's the framework of Vidal's life and work that's far and away the most interesting aspect of him, and it's vividly here.

Professor Kaplan has given us a comprehensive and compelling biography of a gifted and very complex man. Richly detailed and fast-paced, it surely ranks as one of the best biographies of the year!

I read this 800 page bio in the blink of an eye; it's as inexhaustibly thorough as it is engaging. Skillfully researched and written, no detail (too many?) is left unmentioned. Especially deep is the coverage of Gore's early years in Hollywood, in New York television, on Broadway-this is not for people with short show business memories. Great on Gore's literary associations, the Trumans and the Tennessees, and not bad on analasys of Gore's varied and many works. Should tide us over pretty well till he's dead and the next biographer puts the final (here missing) period to an era and a myth.

Kaplan has written a wonderfully involving biography of my favorite author. His portrait is well balanced and doesn't skirt any issues concerning this talented, complex and sometimes infuriating man. I have had my reservations about Vidal as a person and Kaplan gives enough background to understand, though not fully absolve, Gore Vidal. I enjoyed every page of it. Especially priceless is the shrewd, winking, nudging account of the famous William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal feuds in which Buckley comes across as quite bad. It becomes pretty obvious to any intelligent reader of 1999 why Buckley behaved so erratically and could barely stand to be in the same room with Gore Vidal. The whole book is a great read. One finishes it with a sense of both admiration and pity for Vidal who suffered (at the hands of his shrewish mother, from the loss of an early love, from early devastating literary disappointments, from being gay when it was verboten) more than he ever let on. Vidal isn't what one would call a nice, warm human being, but he did his best to make something of himself with the considerable talent he had.