On the Beach with Gore Vidal

We were away for Thanksgiving, reading on the blissful beaches of St. John, but we're back!

And what were we reading, you of course ask? Gore Vidal's new memoir "Point to Point Navigation".

It is very much worth a read. At 81, the acid tone still burns as much as ever, especially when off-handedly addressing the Bush administration (White House rehetoric is "the sub-literate mutterings of our current junta") or putting down an easy mark like Barbara Cartland.

Given the authors age and emminence, we'll politely pass by the reptitions and several strange sentances, and instead praise the utterly un-sappy and emotionally powerful accounts of the absence and death of friends. The chapter on the death of the beloved Howard is Vidal at his absolute best, the voice strong and familiar, at at the same time impossibly personal its devasting moments of crystaline objectivity.

Read this book, it will linger.