Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny Summer day in New York.
I never take vacations. I don’t say that to boast. I think it’s the conditioning of my proletarian Congregationalist conditioning as a kid. Word hard or perish. For many it would probably seem pathetic. They may be right. Or, they may be wrong. Furthermore, a writer is always challenged to find a way to earn a living.
However, these past few weeks have been a kind of vacation for me. A summer vacation. In thinking about it, I realized, ironically it was because of the heat. New Yorkers stayed home as much as they could, and inside. Those who could left town (and got the same thing wherever they went in the Northeast corridor). Aside from occasionally going out to an early dinner, I had more time. To read. All pleasure, nothing challenging.
This past weekend I read“I Told You So; Gore Vidal Talks Politics/Interviews with Jon Wiener.”
The opening page after the copyright page contained the quote of Gore: “The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.” The blurb on the cover has a quote by Dick Cavett: “Best talker since Oscar Wilde.”
Although Mr. Cavett couldn’t have been around when Wilde was propounding his poetic wit for any and all to listen to. I never imagined what that would have been like until I read Cavett’s quote. Because Gore Vidal is endlessly interesting on a number of levels.
The only problem I have with his interviews is there are times when I think he thinks he knows everything. Then there I times when I think he knows everything too, comparing him to myself who knows little if anything. So it’s a good problem.
The book is four or five interviews, conducted with the man at various community or university auditoriums. The subjects touched upon are politics, history, historical figures, Hollywood figures, scandals and fiascos. He fills you in where you probably never had been. He is impressively knowledgeable about many things, especially historical characters down through the ages. The good part about that message is Keep Reading.
So I did. If you like Gore Vidal, you will not be disappointed. If you don’t like Gore Vidal, you shouldn’t waste your time. When we read with rancor we deprive ourselves of truth.
Then after the Vidal interviews — it was a quick read, a very nice little book; like watching it on TV with no noise in the room — after that one I picked up the new “My Lunches with Orson; Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.” Edited by Peter Biskind. If you’re a fan or an historian of movie lore, or even if you just like watching those great old movies on TCM. Like a compulsive habit; buy this book.
Orson Welles at table. I once saw him there. He was the size of the table — round table — sitting in a tiny nook of a private room, separated from public view by a curtain in the old Ma Maison on Beverly Boulevard. Dressed all in black, vast in size, somewhat darkly menacing yet oddly sorrowful in presence, it was almost like Hollywood noir come to life; “The Third Man” sixty years later. I moved along that day I saw him, knowing I wasn’t supposed to be there. |
