Palimpsest: A Memoir

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20th century
A01=Gore Vidal
amelia earhart
american
amry life
Author_Gore Vidal
autobiograph
autobiography
biography
Category=DNBA
christopher isherwood
eleanor roosevelt
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_non-fiction
exeter
gay
gore vidal
jack kerouac
jane and paul bowles
joanne woodward
julian
kennedy
kennedys
LGBT
literary
literary non-fiction
london
memoir
memoirs
military life
myra breckinridge
myron
new york
non-fcition
novelist
oklahoma
palimpsest
paris
paul newman
personal essays
politics
relationships
rome
sexuality
society
st albans
t.p. gore
tennessee williams
the city and the pillar
truman capote
usa
washington d.c.
washington dc
writer

Product details

  • ISBN 9780349147154
  • Weight: 387g
  • Dimensions: 126 x 196mm
  • Publication Date: 02 Oct 2025
  • Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Vidal on Vidal - a great and supremely entertaining writer on a great and endlessly fascinating subject

Palimpsest
is Gore Vidal's account of the first thirty-nine years of his life as a novelist, dramatist, critic, political activist and candidate, screenwriter, television commentator, controversialist, and a man who knew pretty much everybody worth knowing (from Amelia Earhart to Eleanor Roosevelt, the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, Jack Kennedy, Jaqueline Kennedy, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, Andre Gide, and Tennessee Williams, and on and on).

Here, recalled with the charm and razor wit of one of the great raconteurs of our time, are his birth into a DC political clan; his school days; his service in World War II; his emergence as a literary wunderkind in New York; his time in Hollywood, London, Paris and Rome; his campaign for Congress (outpolling JFK in his district); and his legendary feuds with, among many others, Truman Capote and William F. Buckley.

At the emotional heart of this book is his evocation of his first and greatest love, boyhood friend Jimmy Trimble, killed in battle on Iwo Jima.

'Gore Vidal, a writer of lustrous and fabulously readable prose, was always ahead of his time, so it is wonderful to see some of his finest works being republished for an audience who will be ready to (re)discover his daring, his insight and his wickedly waspish wit' STEPHEN FRY

Gore Vidal was at the centre of literary and intellectual life for half a century and wrote 'The Narratives of a Golden Age' series as well as countless bestsellers. He died on 31st July 2012.

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