Every Time A Friend Succeeds
Parini
£8.00
Every Time A Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies
The Life Of Gore Vidal
By Jay Parini
Published by Little Brown, London, 2015. First Edition. Hardback with dust jacket over grey boards. Approx 24cm H x 15cm W. 465pp; 32 b/w plates. Index.
Book condition: Used. Very Good+. Clean, bright and tight; No annotations or tears. Dust jacket condition - Very Good. A little edge rubbed, otherwise very good. Not price clipped.
'Grandson of a popular senator from Oklahoma, Vidal was a man of vast contradictions and enormous energy: a brawler with aristocratic pretensions, an intellectual and a workhorse, a tireless sexual adventurer and genius. Massivly erudite, Vidal could turn his hand to polemic, anarchic satire, bestselling novels, Broadway hits, and cameo roles for Hollywood films. His houses were grand, his feuds - with Truman Capote, Bobby Kennedy, and Norman Mailer - were legendary, the scope of his friendships - with Tennessee Williams, Paul Newman, John F. Kennedy, Princess Margaret - unparalleled. Deftly Parini unpicks all these adventures and connnections, from the sexual favours Vidal loftily accepted from Jack Kerouac in the fifties to Hustler entrepreneur Larry Flynt's appearance in a gold-plated wheelchair at his deathbed, while paying warm tribute to Vidal's loving yet turbulent fifty year relationship with his partner Howard Austin.'