Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir 1964 to 2006

If name dropping bothers you, you will not want to read this book, for most of the author's best friends belong to the Who's Who of the 20th century. And if egotism and self-glorification annoy, you will have even more reason not to open this book. But then let's be open-minded, in memoirs the Self always plays the starring role, and in Gore Vidal's case, he always shines and often outshines some of the 20th century's most interesting characters. Vidals list of friends and acquaintances include Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Anais Nin, Johnny Carson, Rudolph Nureyev, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Saul Bellow, JFK, Princess Grace, Princess Margaret, Amelia Earhart, Greta Garbo, Federico Fellini...just to name a few. One notices that most of these people are no longer among the living and Vidal, now 82 and in failing health, is pondering his own journey "toward the door marked Exit." There is no continuous narrative in this book. The stories jump from the Hudson Valley to the Hollywood Hills to Ravello and back again. It zooms back and forth in time as well with 30 and 50 year jumps, so the metaphor of point to point navigation is apt. I have read only a few of Vidal's novels (Kalki, Messiah, Myra Breckenridge, Creation) but I have read, I think, most of his essays. Some critics predict that Vidal's American chronicle series of novels are his best work (I couldn't finish them.) but I believe that his essays will be his lasting legacy. Vidal's essays are always witty, observant, and his prose is always a precision instrument. He often repeats himself, especially in this book. He recognizes that his memory is failing and wonders out loud whether he has already told some these anecdotes. But the telling is always entertaining. He alwalys consults his master, Montaigne: "..describe what you see, not how you feel." ( That's approximate, I'm quoting from memory which also has lapses.) Although many of his essays are glib and supercilious, there is a moving and heartfelt account of his companion of 53 years, Howard Auster. Auster has been mentioned before over the course of Vidal's long career but this is the first time Vidal has written about him at any length. Towards the end of his life when Auster asks, "Didn't it go by awfully fast?" Vidal's reply was, "We had been happy and the gods cannot bear the happiness of mortals." In an elegiac tone, not only with Auster's death but the deaths of most of his friends, Vidal is readying himself for his own departure. He had thought of calling this book "Between Obituaries." All things considered, this is still a wonderful if gloomy memoir of one of the century's most brilliant literary careers.

"No other writer has peered so intently under the hood of American Society. None can match his uncanny gift for "telling us what we want to know' about public life, including politics, theatre and the movies. Three worlds he has noted where 'no one is under oath'. But this author kept one subject under cover: himself. His new book is a sad, spotty chronicle that would suggest Gore is stuck in a fog from a dwindling set of landmarks. Vidal's' imagination has always been able to get into the past. With his first memoir, Palimpsest, Vidal finally took the witness stand." James Marcus None of us know much about Gore Vidal, he likes it that way. His two memoirs have finally put sight on himself, and the people he liked and those he loved. Gore's wit could cut someone, usually politicians, to the core without them even realizing they had a sliver. However, with his contemporaries, authors,per say, he is even tempered and respectful. His stories about Tennessee Williams, whom he adored, but wrote about with sarcasm and satire are ones to savor. As are his stories about and with Johnny Carson. Carson and Gore liked each other and when Gore appeared on 'The Tonight' show, that was what television was all about. There are witty remembrances of Paul Bowles, Federico Fellini, Amelia Earhart, and Jackie Onassis. Gore Vidal's father had a 'fling' with Amelia Earhart and this inside is a story in itself. And, the stories of Saul Bellow, 'a man of Bentha glimpsed checking out some sexy nuns with Albetto Moravia.' Of course, the fact that Gore Vidal had entrance to the Camelot known as the Kennedy Administration, was his forte. He and the Kennedy's had spats, but one of the final chapters in this memoir is about Kennedy and his death and this portrayal has credence. The most painful portion of this book is the time and death of Vidal's companion Howard Austen. Vidal gives s a vivid portrayal of his life just before Howard's death, and the final moments of Howard's life, when he checks for breathing 'by passing a hand in front of his nose and mouth'. These are poignant and give us insight into the man that is Gore Vidal. We learn about Gore Vidal's entry into politics and why it did not work out. The writing of his forty-six books, his philosophy of life and the writers he revered. Gore Vidal loved his grandfather, the blind senator, T.P. Gore. "In due course, he moved west to the Indian territories and helped organize Oklahoma as a state where he served as their first senator from 1907 through 1937. His last years were spent working as an attorney for several Indian tribes that had been cheated of their land by the US Government." "Gore Vidal has the looks of a prince, the connections of a prince, more wit than any prince, and a prose style that should be the envy of the dwindling few who realize that prose style matters." Larry Mc Murtry. This is a book to be revered for all of us Gore Vidal fans. Gore Vidal is now eighty-one and his memoirs may end a

In this what Vidal calls his final memoir that loosely covers events in his life from 1964 to the present, a continuation of PALIMPSEST-- more or less-- he, in his words, navigates "so often with a compass made inoperable by weather." The memoir goes back and forth from Vidal's comments about his personal life to art to world events. If you get bogged down in trying to sort out all the marriages and divorces that make him somehow related to Jackie Kennedy, just keep reading for anon you'll know why he has little use for Jimmy Carter (he sent Carter a telegram after the aborted rescue attempt of the hostages in Iran asking him to resign) but admires Princess Margaret: "she was far too intelligent for her station in life." Vidal writes with candor and for the most part kindness about a great many people he has known: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Didion, Truman Capote ("no fact ever gave him pause"), Tennessee Williams, Greta Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fellini, Nureyev, Johnny Carson et al. He has not mellowed in old age-- he is now 81 and "waiting for diabetes to do its gaudy final thing"-- in his view of what is wrong with American politics. The grandson of a U. S. senator as well as a candidate for both the United States Congress and Senate, Vidal certainly speaks with knowledge and authority. He finds C-SPAN the only "exciting and useful American television" now available to the public as it "affords us the only living look we will ever have of a government that is more and more secretive and remote not to mention repressive." Vidal's account of the illness and death of Howard Auster, his partner ("as the politically correct call it") of 53 years is moving but without self-pity. The most difficult thing about grief is that those that remain have no one to talk to and "familiar rooms" are now empty. Emily Dickinson would describe the loneliness as that "awful leisure." As always, we are reminded that Mr. Vidal is a master of the English language. And certainly we have to revere someone who says that Barbara Bush looks like George Washington and will have his entire library of 8,000 books shipped from the Italian coast to California when he moves to the United States.

I've been reading Vidal's non-fiction since "Reflections on a Sinking Ship" about 40 years ago. His essays and memoirs are a priceless insight into American culture. No American essayist can speak with authority or depth on matters literary and aesthetic. This memoir follows its predecessors well. It's funny, even bitchy at times, but always on the mark. He is America's best man of letters.

Mark Twain wrote "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with," and so it is, too, with historian and author Gore Vidal. Point to Point Navigation is best described as a stream of consciousness. Reflections, observations, and reminisces, not in any chronological order necessarily, but as one thought leads to another Vidal recollects interesting as well as poignant memories from throughout his life. Filled with Vidal's wit and observations, one comes away from the book with a sense of what it must be like to sit down with this renowned author simply for a talk together. Aptly titled, "Point to Point Navigation" refers to the dangerous navigation Vidal had to use during World War Two when as first mate on an army freight-supply ship they had to maneuver without compass (inoperable due to weather) but rather by memorized landmarks and without radar, a process which the writing of this memoir made him feel as if he "were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea," for the memoir presents a nonlinear reflection of a life whose course and recollection thereof has twist and turns but which remained on course. Vidal is one of America's finest biographers: author of twenty-five novels including his fascinating informative Narratives of Empire series, six plays, many screenplays, and more than two hundred essays. He is an esteemed political commentator who has expertly utilized rationality and erudite humor regarding topics such as sex, religion, politics, literature, and history of empire. I have loved the man's works since I was a teenager, from his essays and earliest novels to his more recent pamphlets regarding American imperialism, his words have educated, enlightened, and given me much to ponder. When I consider Vidal, I think of knowledge. As I recall the many Vidal essays, novels and interviews I've read, I am reminded yet again of a Twain quote Vidal exemplifies, "I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people." (from Twain's Is Shakespeare Dead?) Such unrestrained candor is what makes Vidal a pleasure to read. Though subtitled "A Memoir 1964-2006" the book reaches far back into Vidal's earliest childhood years with touching stories of his fascination with cinema (including a charming anecdote of seeing his first movie in 1929), as well as his family and early exposure to politics and politicians. All this is presented with a wry humor and beautiful style we've come to expect from him, such as this indicative gem, "Contrary to legend, I was born of mortal woman, and if Zeus sired me, there is no record on file in the Cadet Hospital at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point..." Point to Point Navigation seems shorter than Vidal's first memoir, Palimpsest, and also seems to contain shorter chapters, and in the latter chapters it digresses into quotes/excerpts/and