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The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal

Part of Vintage International

Author Gore Vidal
Edited by Jay Parini
$13.99 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Jun 17, 2008 | 978-0-385-52682-1
Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt
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Gore Vidal—novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist—is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will stand as one of the most enjoyable and durable works from the hand and mind of this vastly accomplished and entertaining immortal of American literature.
Introduction by Jay Parini

PART ONE: READING THE WRITERS

Novelists and Critics of the 1940s (1953)
Tarzan Revisited (1963)
The Top Ten Best-Sellers According to the Sunday: New York Times as of January 7, 1973 (1973)
French Letters: Theories of the New Novel (1967)
American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction (1974)
Calvino's Novels (1974)
The Hacks of Academe (1976)
Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self (1976)
Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes (1980)
William Dean Howells (1983)
Dawn Powell: The American Writer (1987)
Montaigne (1992)
Rabbit's Own Burrow (1996)

PART TWO: READING THE WORLD

Passage to Egypt (1963)
Pornography (1966)
The Holy Family (1967)
Homage to Daniel Shays (1972)
Pink Triangle and Yellow Star (1981)
Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy (1981)
The Second American Revolution (1981)
The National Security State (1988)
Monotheism and Its Dicontents (1992)
Black Tuesday (2002)
State of the Union, (2004)
“Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age.” —The Washington Post Book World“Vidal is the best all-around American man of letters since Edmund Wilson.” —Newsweek “Wonderfully selected. . . . All classic Vidal essays are here. . . . [They] confirm Vidal's stature.” —The Buffalo News“Gore Vidal, essayist; so good that we cannot do without him. He is a treasure of the state.” —R.W.B. Lewis, The New York Times Book Review“Fearlessness and independence of mind are the strengths in this author’s arms, but his heart’s love is language and the richness of language.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

About

Gore Vidal—novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist—is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will stand as one of the most enjoyable and durable works from the hand and mind of this vastly accomplished and entertaining immortal of American literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Jay Parini

PART ONE: READING THE WRITERS

Novelists and Critics of the 1940s (1953)
Tarzan Revisited (1963)
The Top Ten Best-Sellers According to the Sunday: New York Times as of January 7, 1973 (1973)
French Letters: Theories of the New Novel (1967)
American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction (1974)
Calvino's Novels (1974)
The Hacks of Academe (1976)
Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self (1976)
Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes (1980)
William Dean Howells (1983)
Dawn Powell: The American Writer (1987)
Montaigne (1992)
Rabbit's Own Burrow (1996)

PART TWO: READING THE WORLD

Passage to Egypt (1963)
Pornography (1966)
The Holy Family (1967)
Homage to Daniel Shays (1972)
Pink Triangle and Yellow Star (1981)
Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy (1981)
The Second American Revolution (1981)
The National Security State (1988)
Monotheism and Its Dicontents (1992)
Black Tuesday (2002)
State of the Union, (2004)

Praise

“Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age.” —The Washington Post Book World“Vidal is the best all-around American man of letters since Edmund Wilson.” —Newsweek “Wonderfully selected. . . . All classic Vidal essays are here. . . . [They] confirm Vidal's stature.” —The Buffalo News“Gore Vidal, essayist; so good that we cannot do without him. He is a treasure of the state.” —R.W.B. Lewis, The New York Times Book Review“Fearlessness and independence of mind are the strengths in this author’s arms, but his heart’s love is language and the richness of language.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

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