Vidal memoir a pleasure to read

Gore Vidal once served on a freighter based in the Aleutian Islands where the weather was so bad the sailors often had to rely on maps or memorize points or landmarks having no sun or moon to guide them. The term for this is “Point to Point Navigation,” hence the title.

He is such a versatile writer, it is a pleasure to read abut his life. He has written novels, plays, short stories and an earlier public memoir. The front flap lists 24 novels and the back flap, 22.

His father owned at least three airlines and, at 10, let him take off and land a plane, a feat duly recorded for that day’s newsreel. There’s a fine picture early in the book of his father with his business partner, Amelia Earhart, congratulating each other on their recent jump from one of his airplanes.

One of Gore’s earliest friendships was with Eleanor Roosevelt. They gave each other advice.

In any case, he has an anecdote or two, or perhaps a quote for each one. He ran for Congress; wrote many movies both in Hollywood and in Italy and mysteries under a pen name; was once president of the Venice Film Festival; gave many talks; and the reader gets the feeling he has left out much he participated in during those years.

He and his mate of 50-odd years, Howard, lived in an Italian town for many years – and otherwise in Hollywood. Howard died after a long illness, and the reader senses Vidal’s loneliness thereafter – not that he mentions it.

There are so many people – all famous – it wouldn’t be possible to reproduce his anecdotes. One stuck in my mind: he once had a meeting with an officer during the Vietnam War, one Ugal Gent, who happened to be a descendant of one of the original Siamese twins.

Princess Margaret, or PM as she is called, was a frequent visitor; his mother had an “off and on” affair with Clark Gable – and when she later married Hugh Auchincloss, Vidal became his stepson, as Jackie Kennedy was his stepdaughter. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were close friends: once they came to see him off on some kind of celebrity ship’s voyage. After waving goodbye to them he went up to that day’s dinner, only to find them sitting at the head table.

He was an honorary citizen of Ravello in Italy, where he and Howard had a home, and of Los Angeles, where they had another home later. He was president of the Venice Film Festival; one of his own films won at the Cannes Film Festival in 1964.

Another pal visiting in Italy in the earlier years was Rudoph Nureyev, who cursed President Carter – to his face – for not arranging to bring his mother to the U.S., saying he didn’t have time. Nureyev cursed him in three languages and said he would not be re-elected – and he wasn’t.

Vidal tells us he doesn’t know what a novel will be about until he starts writing one. In one of them, the hero turns into a female, which amused him no end. In any case, this memoir, besides containing many anecdotes and his comings and goings with Howard, also gives us his thinking on many, many matters: politics, some strong opinions of certain people, literature and writing. There are many pictures, which gives an intimate feeling to the stories they go along with, including a very interesting one of Greta Garbo.

I’d say it was cuts above gossip; he expresses his interests and doings for 40 years in often witty writing, well worth a read for someone who was an adult in the last 40 years of the 19th century.

Book info:
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964 – 2006
By Gore Vidal
Little Brown, $16

Posted by Rae Eastman on November 29, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry