Gore Vidal – Palimpsest – A Memoir: Review

It was 1995, that I first cracked Palimpsest's pages, entering this fascinating writer's life. After watching a documentary about Gore Vidal, last week, his memoir came to mind, almost 30 years later, that I decided to read the book again, as if experiencing it for the very first time. And I wasn't disappointed.

The title of the memoir, Palimpsest, is a curious one, And having studied literary theory in university, the name is appropriate for a memoir. Memory is not the most accurate witness for one's life. When we retrospect, names are forgotten, exact dates are hazy, and time and circumstance is ultimately biased, in favour of the autobiographer. A palimpsest is a parchment that scribes would record upon, erasing the contents, in order to write something else. Hence the notion of memory erased and written over, though the original script is slightly there, and can be discerned with effort. Vidal writes his memoir in a discursive way, layers of memory told in a non-chronological manner, combining anecdotes, present time perspective and free-association. To my mind, this is probably, the most accurate method in telling the history of one's life.

Gore Vidal is considered by many to be America's finest essayist. Although it was a sideline for him, he published numerous volumes of this work. In fact, for me, reading his essays was my introduction into his writing, to only much later, read his many historical novels on what he has famously called, “The United States of Amnesia”. Vidal claimed that he would never be the “subject” of his writing. So it was a welcome surprise for many when Palimpsest landed in bookstores around the world.

The memoir begins in Washington DC., where he lived with his grandfather, TP Gore, the blind senator from Oklahoma. Vidal's education started early because he read thousands of texts to his grandfather, often discussing the difficult contents. Thus began his love for literature. He claims as well, that he knew he would be a writer at that early age.

Many pages are devoted to his adolescent friend and lover, Jimmy Trimble. This was a short yet intensely loving relationship. Vidal goes as far to equate their bond with Plato's Symposium, where Aristophanes, tells the beginnings of humanity. To begin with, there were three sexes each shaped like a globe: male, female and hermaphrodite. The god Apollo grew jealous of their closeness, and punished them by slicing each globe in half. Ever since, we have been searching for our other half to become whole again. Thus comes the modern phrase, “You complete me.” or “How is your better half going?” If you have ever fallen in love, being with that person gives one a feeling of contentment or wholeness. Vidal felt that Trimble was his lost “other” if only for a short time period, as Jimmy Trimble died during WWII at the age of 21, I found Vidal's descriptions and feeling for Trimble quite moving.

Vidal published his first novel, “The City and the Pillar”, at the young age of 22. Because its theme is homosexual love, and the first of its type to arrive in the mainstream, the critics denounced the text outright. That said, the book sold well around the world, catching the attention of many intellectuals and writers at the time.

The book set the stage for Vidal to meet many luminaries of the written word: Tennessee Williams, Anais Nin, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Bowels, Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer. He also met and dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the philosopher Santayana, the Kennedy's and Leonard Bernstein, among others.

Vidal takes the reader into high points of the 20^th century. The reader comes to understand and know the people he meets, their attitudes, politics and general sensibilities. He writes with a clear and realistic style, and natural dialogue, giving the reader the feeling of being a fly on the wall.

Palimpsest is, above all else, entertaining while being informative.

A fascinating memoir from America's most celebrated man of letters.