I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics: Interviews with Jon Wiener
Marking the first anniversary (July 31) of Vidal’s death, at age 86, Weiner—a University of California at Irvine history professor, Nation contributing editor, and Pacifica Radio host—gathers four of his many interviews with the outspoken novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and occasional political candidate, whom TV talk-show host Dick Cavett dubbed “the best talker since Oscar Wilde.” The interviews travel back in time: Weiner chats with Vidal at the 2007 Los Angeles Festival of Books, at a 2006 session of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and at the Plaza Hotel during the “shadow convention” lampooning the 2000 Democratic Convention. The volume’s fourth conversation was Weiner’s initial, 1988 encounter with the acerbic author of “Tales of Empire,” Myra Breckinridge, The Best Man, and The City and the Pillar: an interview at Vidal’s Ravello, Italy, home that was originally published in Radical History Review. One need not share Vidal’s often contentious political preoccupations to welcome this return of Vidal’s inimitably confident, never remotely tentative “voice.” Essential for libraries where Vidal’s novels and nonfiction are popular. --Mary Carroll