Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal - Hardcover

Parini, Jay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408704633 ISBN 13: 9781408704639

Publisher: LITTLE BROWN BOOKS GROUP, 1701

Synopsis

For the latter half of the 20th century, Gore Vidalâ€s writing was integral to American letters and politics, despite his self-imposed exile in Italy. Erudite and witty, he was critical of public life and successive US administrations. Drawing on 30 years†friendship and unpublished letters and diaries, this biography looks back at his turbulent life and career, his friendships with John F Kennedy, Tennessee Williams and Princess Margaret, and his famous feuds with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer.

About this title

About the Author

Jay Parini is a Professor of English at Middlebury College and is the author of the novels , The Last Station (adapted as an Academy Award-nominated film and translated into more than thirty languages) and Benjamin's Crossing. He has written biographies of Robert Frost, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck.

Review

This biography, filled with glittering names and acerbic wit, faithfully evokes the dangerous charm whose chilly dazzle even his melancholy last years could not quite extinguish * Daily Mail * In a good year for biography, the life I enjoyed the most, a gossipy window on a great American, is Jay Parini's life of Gore Vidal, Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies -- Robert McCrum * Observer * Riveting * Herald * As much an intimate memoir as a scholarly biography -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * a marvellous new biography . . . a portrait that is both affectionate and balanced * The Economist * Writer, pundit, bon viveur, frequenter of chat-show couches, Vidal will be remembered by his contemporaries, Parini is sure, "as a meteor who streaked through the night skies, with a fantail of sparks". He is less certain about future generations. "Will they read him? It's impossible to know." With this fine biography, he has done his part in ensuring they will * Independent * He has painted a portrait that is by turns shocking, witty and very funny - just like the much-missed man himself * Evening Standard *

Edition details

• Publisher: LITTLE BROWN BOOKS GROUP
• Publication date: 1701
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408704633
• ISBN 13: 9781408704639
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480