Audiobook8 hours
Point to Point Navigation
Written by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Gore Vidal
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
In a witty and elegant autobiography that takes up where his bestelling Palimpsest left off, the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal reflects on his remarkable life.Writing from his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theatre, politics, and international society where he has cut a wide swath, recounting achievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and sometimes lost). From encounters with, amongst others, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Francis Ford Coppola to the mournful passing of his longtime partner, Howard Auster, Vidal always steers his narrative with grace and flair. Entertaining, provocative, and often moving, Point to Point Navigation wonderfully captures the life of one of twentieth-century America's most important writers.
Author
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was born at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was 19 years old and serving in the army, appeared in the spring of 1946. He wrote 23 novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over 200 essays, and a memoir.
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Reviews for Point to Point Navigation
Rating: 3.7105263578947367 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
95 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This isn't a chronological biography or memoir but really just a collection of mostly short chapters with Vidal telling various and often funny anecdotes about writers such as Truman Capote and Tennessee (The Bird) Williams and other famous people such as Rudolph Nureyev and Princess Margaret. I listened to the audiobook version which has the added benefit of Vidal doing his Capote and Williams imitation voices and that of others such as Jack Kennedy. So that probably an extra point or two just for the entertainment of the narration.It seemed to jump the shark when the climax is built around Vidal advocating for the mob-hit / CIA cover-up version of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and using as his source Lamar Waldron's Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK. That seemed to be the totally wrong note to go out on.His earlier thoughts on mortality and the passing of his companion Howard Austen were more moving.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Aside from the fact that this is the first book I was able to enter into LibraryThing with an old CueCat (Mac OS 10.4.9) with no mods, it's more Gore. Not more than you asked for; Gore so that you don't want to ever lose this voice. Even when his views don't agree with yours, you can't deny his education, pedigree, or erudition. Americans such as Gore don't come along often. Treasure him.