Palimpsest

A Memoir

By: Gore Vidal, Jay Parini (Introduction by)

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Paperback | 13 January 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
496 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.7 x 3.7

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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

Industry Reviews

An elegantly observed, ineffably sad - and at times hysterically funny - memoir - Sunday Express

One of the best first-person accounts of this century we are likely to get - Sunday Times

An engrossing and beguiling read. Admirably candid, refreshingly indiscreet, intelligent and full of wit, it is also startlingly original... An unequivocal triumph - Daily Telegraph

He does not narrate his life: he revies it. The result is something quite novel and wonderfully appealing, a critical biography of himself...Vidal's life might even be his greatest work - Independent

May well be the best book of his long and interesting career ... Vidal is a creature of infinite surprise - Washington Post

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