[In the following review, Malin offers a favorable evaluation of Live from Golgotha. Malin concludes that “Vidal's provocative, distasteful novel is, perhaps, one of his most sustained meditations on the nature of things.”]

Gore Vidal has always been interested in performance and duplicity. He has, indeed, played many roles: the nineteen-year-old wunderkind of Williwaw; the sage of the inner workings of the government; the lucid, aristocratic visitor from Rome who appears often on television to attack the medium and American technology in general. If we assume that Vidal is unaware of his “acts,” we are surely deceived. He is, indeed, fascinated by the ability of the performer to play different roles so well that he seduces the audience. We must view Vidal as a self-conscious actor of subtle roles. There is irony here. Vidal is, if you will, so brilliant that he makes us believe that he is “fake.”

But I hasten to add that Vidal is certainly aware of the nature of performance, of artistic creation. And he is at his best when he mixes roles. Perhaps few readers remember that he was our first critic to celebrate Italo Calvino’s fiction. Both writers are essentially interested in the nature of “reality”; they use low forms—science fiction, popular culture—for high ends. They play seriously; their meditations are sophisticated, subtle, subversive. Vidal is at his best when he employs “camp” for serious purposes. In Duluth, Myra Breckinridge, Two Sisters he intermingles genres; he questions, indeed, the very notion of genre—of art itself. (So, of course, does Calvino.)

I must mention a wonderful collection of essays on Vidal edited by Jay Parini (Columbia University Press, 1992). Many of these essays support my contention that Vidal has, for the better part of his long career, created odd novels which cannot be easily categorized. Williwaw, for example, is one of the most interesting war novels because of the very exclusion of epic scenes of battle, of strong leaders. War is presented “off-stage.” (I think of the violence which occurs behind the “scene” in Greek tragedy.) Vidal’s history cycle employs such “real” heroes (or villains) as Lincoln and Burr; at the same time his fictional characters interact with—and interpret the actions of—Lincoln. Thus we have the startling feeling that history—especially American history—is itself a fiction.

Vidal, we know, has always been abusive toward religious orthodoxy. He has attacked Christianity as a kind of comedy; and he has, of course, courted displeasure and anger. Live from Golgotha, like Duluth or Myra Breckinridge, is earthy, dirty, and obscene. Saint Paul is an agent of the Mossad. Jesus is fat. It is appropriate that the mockery and the lunacy begin in the very first lines: “In the beginning was the nightmare and the knife was with Saint Paul and the circumcision was a Jewish notion and definitely not mine.”

But if we look closely at the lines, we recognize that there is a narrator. The narrator is dreaming. The stage is being set for a “dream-world” in which “stability” of any sort is disrupted or mutilated. And the breaks, ruptures, and mutilations continue to the point of utter rupture and farce.

The narrator tells us that he is unsure whether or not he exists. He believes that he is being manipulated by outside forces. He is “possessed,” uncertain, “unreal.” And in a sense he is right. Timothy, the narrator, is being controlled: “Am I possessed? Or—who am I? I must keep a firm grip on myself, assuming that it is mine that I now try firmly to grip.” There are several games being played here. Timothy—any person in a novel—lacks flesh and blood; he is a mark on the page. Vidal uses the notion that we deceive ourselves: we cry or shriek at performances, theatrical events. He does more—he asks whether or not religion as such is a fantasy, a “fiction.”

But Vidal cannot stop here. He questions the validity of time and space—the existence of “reality.” If the Bible—or any religious text—is imperfect or incomplete, then it lacks wholeness (or holiness). It risks misinterpretation.

Although Vidal raises questions about the relation of word to world—of the truth of texts—he now offers the idea that every reader is a creator, a judge. And if the reader is being read—by another reader—aren’t critics criticized? Aren’t interpreters interpreted? Then the entire notion of “belief” is indeterminate, open, cut. Timothy, at one point, tells us—does “he” know we exist?—“But when I enter the past through memory I must now be extremely alert to the possibility that my recollections are being altered in ways that I cannot determine. … What is truth indeed!”

I must stop here. Although Vidal offers a fiendish gospel—a counter-gospel—he must be taken seriously. He is, after all, asking basic epistemological questions. He turns the tables on us. Why do we believe in miracles? Do we find truth by reason or faith? Such questions are especially disturbing because they are asked in improper, shocking, indecent ways.

I suggest that Vidal’s provocative, distasteful novel is, perhaps, one of his most sustained meditations on the nature of things. It will be read for many years.