Contemporary Literary Criticism | Vidal, Gore (Vol. 142) - Hugh Brogan (review date 27 October 1995)

Hugh Brogan (review date 27 October 1995)

SOURCE: “Private Faces, Public Places,” in New Statesman & Society, October 27, 1995, p. 44.

[In the following review, Brogan offers a positive assessment of Palimpsest.]

Autobiography is a form which invites experiment, and Gore Vidal has been bold enough to accept the invitation. In his introductory chapter to Palimpsest he confesses that, until recently, he misused and mispronounced the word. The OED definition is “a parchment, which has been written upon twice, the original having been rubbed out.” Skillful palaeographers can read what lies obliterated underneath.

To call a book of memoirs a palimpsest is therefore to invite readers to undertake detective work; it implies that there is a subtext for discovery. The title is also a warning that the author is not trying to make things easy. Another definition of palimpsest is, “… a parchment, prepared for...

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