United States: Essays 1952-1992

Description

Gore Vidal's reputation as "America's finest essayist" is an enduring one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work, contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines and journals. He has divided the essays into three categories, or states. State of the art covers literature, including novelists and critics, bestsellers, pieces on Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Suetonius, Nabakov and Montaigne (a previosly uncollected essay from 1992). State of the union deals with politics and public life: sex, drugs, money, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, "The Holy Family" (his essay on the Kennedys), Nixon, and finally "Monotheism and its Discontents", a scathing critique of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In state of being, we are given personal responses to people and events: recollections of his childhood, E. Nesbit, Tarzan, Tennessee Williams and Anais Nin.

GORE VIDAL the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, numerous screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and the critically lauded PALIMPSEST: A MEMOIR. He lives in California. Author Location: Beverly Hills, Los Angeles PALIMPSEST (978 0 349 10800 1) / BURR / 1876 / EMPIRE / HOLLYWOOD / WASHINGTON D.C. / MYRA BRECKENRIDGE etc.

'Magnificent...irresistable from beginning to end.' THE TIMES 'All the Vidals are on display in this glittering showcase... Long may he continue to nip and bite at the flanks of the corrupt, the powerful, the moronic and the self-serving.' GUARDIAN 'The arc and span of Vidal's erudition and intelligence are prodigious... for forty years it has been Vidal's vocation to restore a witty and classically literate sense of memory and historical continuity to a country he calls "Amnesia"' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'Vidal is the outstanding literary radical of America.' Melvyn Bragg 'He can express in a phrase what a more solemn essayist would be hard pressed to put in a paragraph.' Peter Ackroyd 'Unique; masterly; an indispensible book.' TIME OUT 'Every reader of sense should hurry to acquire Gore Vidal's brilliant offering.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'He is a great historian. America needs his intelligence, and we should not be averse to it. This volume has a very considerable importance.' OBSERVER 'Gloriously funny.' Jonathan Raban 'At more than 1200 pages, it's too short by half.' GLASGOW HERALD 'In a better world, writers would be as electable as film stars.' ATTITUDE 'Bumper package of brilliance and bitchery, about US culture and politics, from Uncle Sam's own enemy within.' NEW STATESMAN 'There is no commentator in his league.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY