The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal

Publishers Weekly

Vidal's daunting career has encompassed 24 novels, 11 essay collections, six plays, two memoirs and countless occasional writings. This new collection is an entry point into this literary giant's work for a new generation of readers, offering some of Vidal's most famous and entertaining essays from the past 50-odd years. Compiled and introduced by Parini (The Last Station), Vidal's literary executor, the pieces range across Vidal's far-flung areas of expertise, resting most frequently and contentiously on literature and presidential politics of the past and present. His assessment of "The Top Ten Bestsellers" of January 7, 1973, is a savagely meticulous dissection of middlebrow American taste, while "American Plastic" tacks in the opposite direction, skewering the academy-approved, theory-based fiction of Donald Barthelme and William Gass with derisive glee. Vidal's comfort in puncturing conventional wisdom with his wit and analysis is fully displayed throughout, most notably in his discussion of the battle over the Kennedy legacy in "The Holy Family" and the controversial "Black Tuesday," which condemns the Bush administration for its alleged imperial ambitions in the wake of September 11. (June 17)

Library Journal

Parini, Gore Vidal's literary executor, has judiciously selected 21 of Vidal's essays from the 114 previously gathered in the unwieldy United States: Essays 1952-1992, as well as added three more recent essays. Despite this drastic reduction in quantity, there is no corresponding loss in quality. Regardless of what one thinks of Vidal, what Vidal thinks is never in doubt in these 24 essays, divided here into two groups: literary criticism and historical or cultural commentary. His writing is clear, sharp, and disciplined, and his approbation of William Dean Howells and Italo Calvino are as finely tuned as his excoriation of John Updike and Herman Wouk. Vidal is the grandson of Democratic Sen. Thomas P. Gore and the son of Eugene Vidal, who worked for FDR, so one might assume he'd follow in their tradition. But, as these essays show, Vidal has little faith in the politicos of either party and suggests our country has become more oligarchy than democracy. If your library does not already have the aforementioned 1400-page behemoth, this slimmer volume would be an excellent choice.
—Anthony Pucci

Kirkus Reviews

A splendid, savvy distillation of the best from the veteran novelist and essayist. This lively volume's raison d'etre is the inclusion of recent politically charged commentary, but most readers will huddle happily with its several golden oldies. For example, the included non-literary essays conclude with "Black Tuesday," a reaction to the events of 9/11 that draws the mordant conclusion that "each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us." Fair-and true-enough, but lesser mortals have made such observations. It took a writer of Vidal's prodigious gifts to deflate the godlike reputations of the Kennedy clan ("The Holy Family") and America's most ebulliently macho chief executive ("Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy"), and to examine tax inequity and activism during our early history ("Homage to Daniel Shays") and the late unlamented 1970s ("The Second American Revolution"). Elsewhere, in a clutch of literary essays, Vidal honors such critically embattled contemporaries as Tennessee Williams, Edmund Wilson and the now-rediscovered Dawn Powell. He's rougher on others, such as the purveyors of "new fiction" led by maverick innovators Pynchon and Barthes ("American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction") and university-based scholar-critics who overexplain and obfuscate the obvious ("The Hacks of Academe"). But Vidal strolls through many arenas, offering an affectionately incisive guide to Italo Calvino's whimsical complexity and a brilliant analysis-really, it's almost beyond praise-of the industrious and honorable William Dean Howells, whom Vidal has the good sense to admire almost unreservedly. Nearly six decades' worth of eloquent bile,dispensed with unmatched craft and wit.