Empire of Self
A Life of Gore Vidal

An intimate, authorized, yet frank biography of Gore Vidal (19252012), one of the most accomplished, visible, and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century. The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parinis Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidals colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as wella virtual Whos Who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the crme de la crme of Hollywood. The life of Gore Vidal was an amazingly full onefull of colorful incident, famous people, and lasting achievementsthat calls out for careful evocation and examination. Jay Parini crafts Vidals life into an accessible, entertaining story that puts the experience of one of the great American figures of the postwar era into context, introduces the author and his works to a generation who may not know him, and looks behind the scenes at the man and his work in ways never possible before his death. Provided with unique access to Vidals life and his papers, he excavates many buried skeletons yet never loses sight of his deep respect for Vidal and his astounding gifts. This is the biography Gore Vidal has long needed.