Contemporary Literary Criticism | Vidal, Gore (Vol. 142) - Hilary Mantel (review date 16 November 1991)

Hilary Mantel (review date 16 November 1991)

SOURCE: “How Pleasant To Be Enraged,” in The Spectator, November 16, 1991, pp. 42-3.

[In the following review, Mantel offers a positive evaluation of A View from the Diner's Club.]

In 1976, Gore Vidal tells us in his preface, he received a telegram congratulating him on his election to the Institute of Art and Letters. He telegraphed back that he could not accept because ‘I was already a member of the Diner's Club.’ This must be what in America passes for a joke. John Cheever didn’t see it. ‘It sounds so coarse,’ he complained. ‘Why couldn’t you have said Carte Blanche?’

The first part of this new book of essays [A View from the Diner's Club] is what Gore Vidal, in his twee vein, calls ‘book chat’. He is different from other writers, he tells us at once; he has never taught in a university, doesn’t attend conferences, and has never reviewed a book for...

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