FLORENCE KING: In Sickness and In Health
Vidal, Gore
NOWHERE ELSE in Gershwin's music are the joy and the sadness so overwhelming as in Porgy and Bess. Set in Charleston's black slum, Catfish Row, Porgy and Bess is the story of a cripple...
...His first illness looked like appendicitis to Vidal, who had had it himself, but the doctors patientlyexplainedthatnobodycangetappendicitisat 70,whereuponHoward'sappendixburstandhehadto be rushed to the hospital and operated on for peritonitis...
...Another type of Vidal story is the jaw-dropper...
...among homegrown operas, only Carlisle Floyd's Susannah,whichowesagreatdealtoGershwin'sexample,isofcomparablepower.YetMussorgskyorWagner it is not, and efforts to talk it up as a world-historical achievementonlystrainthecredibilityofitslegitimate claimstoexcellence...
...If this paragon also had a smooth, accessible writing style, that would be a heaven-sent bonus...
...Set in Charleston's black slum, Catfish Row, Porgy and Bess is the story of a cripple who takesinamurderer'ssluttishmistresswhennooneelse will, the love that grows between them, the murderer's return and his persistent erotic hold on Bess, Porgy's vengeance and jailing, Bess's flight to New York, and Porgy'spursuitofher,indefiancenotonlyofreasonbut of even the most desperate hope...
...Actually "palimpsest" refers to a papyrus that has been written on before and scraped clean, leaving traces of the earlier writing showing through...
...POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION zigzags a lot and frequentlydoublesback,butitmakesportwithout foundering.ItcarriesaclassicVidalcargowitha generous store of name-dropping ("Howard and I sailed the Aegean in a caique with Paul Newman and JoanneWoodward");Zeligmoments(howheinvented the Peace Corps and "passed the proposition along to Jack...
...Hisfirstmemoir,whichtookhimfromhisbirthin 1925 to age 70, was called Palimpsest, and I panned it, sayingamongotherthingsthatthetitle"soundslikean arcane sexual practice involving an inflated condom that explodes like the Hindenburg in the tradesman's entrance of some hired Apollo, sending ecstasy and otherthingswashingoverMaitreVidal...
...It is also reported that many sturdy Swiss guardsmenfaintedduringthisholycombustion...
...What makes this memoir different from anything he has ever written is his unsentimental yet heartrendingaccountofthehorrendousfinalillnessof his companion of 53 years, Howard Auster, and his B O O K SI NR E V I E W M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 1 Florence King's collections include The Florence King Reader,STET,Damnit!:TheMisanthrope'sCorner,1991 to2002,and,mostrecently,DejaReviews:FlorenceKing AllOverAgain.Thelastreprintsherreviewof Palimpsest, Mr.Vidal'searliermemoir.Point To Point Navigation: A Memoir By Gore Vidal (DOUBLEDAY, 277 PAGES, $26) Reviewed by Florence King unexpected revelation about the natureoftheirrelationship...
...Porgy and Bess is serious well past the point that Copland will allow: It is a great work of art, almost certainly the finest musical work written by an American...
...soon to be killedinaplanecrash...
...passed on the information...
...In the ensuing chapters, O'Sullivan deftly traces the interactive careers of the three leaders...
...Howardbegantohallucinateandhadtohaveradiationforthebraintumor,hisheadboltedinplacewhile gamma rays were zapped into his skull...
...ThreeWho MadeaRevolution OTHER WRITERS HAVE NOTED the timely emergenceofanAmericanpresident,aPolishpope, and a British prime minister in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their critical role in leading the WesttoapeacefulresolutionoftheColdWar.Butithas remainedfortheAnglo-Americanjournalistandeditor John O'Sullivan to write the definitive history of howRonald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcherworkedtogether,openlyandnotsoopenly,to bring about what most experts agreed was impossible--the swift dissolution of the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism...
...Amelia said that Eleanor was always suggesting they make flights together all around the country, just the two of them, communing with the wind and the stars...
...This was kept from the world for a long time until someone (a Jesuit...
...The aviatrix supposedly wanted to marry the elder Vidal, but he declined, saying he thought of her only as a friend and flying companion...
...and Britain's accelerating economic decline coupled with a series of often violent strikes in the winter of 1978-79 brought the country to the edge of anarchy...
...Porgy's champions, Pollack among them (he devotes 100 pages to the opera), have emphasized its variegatedmusicalsophistication,andlikenedittoBoris Godunov and Carmen and Die Meistersinger--comparisonsthatGershwinhimselfmade,notunfavorably...
...The doctors operated and claimed they got it all, but found that the other lung was weakened by emphysema...
...Vidal ruptured a disk lifting him up, and also developed an ulcer from worrying about him and dealing with "the ongoing bureaucracy of American medicine, never again to be avoided this sideofRockCreekCemetery...
...O'Sullivan begins his admirable study by making the arresting point that the times seemed to have bypassed Reagan, Thatcher, and Karol Wojtyla, who embodied such seemingly "fading" virtues as faith, self-reliance,andpatriotism.Buttheunexpecteddeath oftheItalianJohnPaulIledtotheelectionofthePolish JohnPaulIIin1978;JimmyCarter'smonumentalineptitude at home and abroad prepared the way for a conservative alternative in Reagan in 1980...
...Newsweek followed his lead, and Vidal's next seven books went unreviewed by publishing's most important venue...
...Although he was a heavy smoker, he remained remarkably fit until the age of 70 when he suddenly started getting sick...
...The two met soon after the war-Vidal doesn't say how but other accounts claim the friendship began at the Everard bath house in New York--and became housemates...
...InSickness andInHealth SHOOT IF YOU MUST THIS OLD GRAY HEAD, but spare yourcountry'senfantterrible.GoreVidal--expat liberal elitist, name-dropper extraordinaire, snidest of the snide, unabashed advocate of male lovedecades before America even knew what "gay" meant, haswrittenhisfinalmemoir,andIlovedit...
...Eachhadasexlifeapartfromtheother:allelse,includingoursovereign,Time,wasshared...
...Not widely understood at the time was that both B O O K SI NR E V I E W M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 3The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World By John O'Sullivan (REGNERY, 448 PAGES, $27.95) Reviewed by Lee Edwards Lee EdwardsisDistinguishedFellowinConservative ThoughtattheHeritageFoundationandtheauthorof many books about American conservatism, including the first political biography of Ronald Reagan...
...Andasifallthiswerenot enough,hewasrewritinghismovie,TheCateredAffair, for television, complete with 44 breaks all in the right places...
...Vidal intended it as an allusion to the tricks that memory playsonautobiographers,butthetitlehehasgiventhis, his second memoir, is a more down-to-earth description of the 82-year-old memory he must now depend upon...
...Shortly before her last mysterious flight from which she never returned, she wrote him a long emotional letter which his wife found and destroyed, never telling her stepson Gore what was in it, but his father speculated that Earhart had deliberately crashed her plane to escape her miserable marriage to thepublisherG.P.Putnam,andbecause"shewashaving somesortofprematuremenopause...
...Noonewhohaseverbeenapatientoravisitorinahospitalcouldreadthatwithadryeye...
...ForconservativesforwhomthenameGoreVidalis anathema, there is hope: He loathes the New York Times...
...In World War II he served as first mate of an Army freight-supply ship based in the Aleutian Islands, where the weather was so coldthatthecompassesoftenfroze, making it necessary to rely on memorized landmarks, a process knownas"pointtopointnavigation"inwhichthenavigatorproceedswithoutradarandhopesforthebest...
...He repeats previously published accounts of his birth and childhood in Washington, D.C., but interestingly,hisportraitofhisblindgrandfather,Sen.Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, is sharper now that he himself has reached the age of the old man for whom he acted as guide and reader...
...Were it anyone else but Gore Vidal one could say that he has "mellowed," but he is still the master of the withering retort...
...Howarddiedat74in2005.Reflectingontheirlong successfullifetogether,Vidalsayswithoutfanfare:"But then it is easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part and impossible, I have observed, when it does...
...Gershwin's opera is indeed an American masterpiece...
...It would be impossible, of course,tofindsomeonewhocould do all of the above--unless you couldpersuadeJohnO'SullivantowriteThePresident, thePope,andthePrimeMinister, hisfirstbutnotIhope lastbook...
...Then the cancer spread to the section of the brain thatcontrolslocomotion.Thebrainoperationlefthim unable to control his movements or his bodily functions,andhehadtoweardiapers...
...and Vidal says: "I complimented her on her taste...
...A professor who lecturesonmyworktellsmethatacademicstothisday refuse to believe that the Times could ever have done suchathing.Suchissimplefaith...
...TodayhehasmovedbacktotheUnitedStatesfrom hisself-exileinItalyandspendsmuchofhistimereading Montaigne and meditating on mortality...
...Then, in response to the summer heat, he suddenly exploded...
...Then came pneumonia, followed by heart spasms...
...catty digs at Truman Capote (who plagiarized Eudora Welty because "he wanted to beagreatSouthernladywritertoo");andspot-ononeliners ("Commercialism is the ability to do well what oughtnottobedoneatall...
...PrincessMargaretwhisperedto Vidal, "Isn't he beautiful...
...Three years later, on October 12, 1984, Thatcher miraculously escaped an IRA bomb intended to kill her unscathed (five people died in the blast...
...His war with the gray eminence began in 1948 when he published his second novel, The City and the Pillar,anopenlygaywork,andthepaper'smostpowerful book critic was so shocked that he swore he would never review the author again...
...as serious music, it is obviously wanting...
...Next, he developed a malignant tumor on one lung...
...Healsopassesalongastorythattouchesobliquely ononeofthepersonagesinour2004election.Atadinner party given by the late Princess Margaret Rose sometimearound1990,theguestsincludedVidal,Jack Nicholson, Tony Richardson, and, seated across from Princess Margaret, "Senator John Heinz...
...As popular music goes, it is pretty serious stuff...
...Altogether,justthekindofpersonawriterneeds...
...Howard was a lounge singer...
...Detractors have maligned the opera as mere folk art or as a condescending white boy's misrepresentation of black sorrow and exaltation...
...John Paul II barely survivedanattemptedassassinationonly43dayslater,on May 13...
...Howard did not pursue a musical career but he sang at their parties, which he also planned...
...To betheworld'sfattestskinnymanisnotaninsignificant distinction,afterall...
...Worsethantheblackoutwasthepaper'shypocrisy and outright stupidity: It raved the three mysteries he wrote under a pen name, but a decade later when he publishedtheminasinglevolumeunderhisrealname, itreviewedthemagain--andpannedthem...
...To write such a multi-faceted story, you would want a polymath: an American familiar with Reagan's special genius for combining principle and pragmatism, a Brit who could explain how Thatcher became thefirstwomanprimeministerinBritishhistory,anda RomanCatholicwhounderstoodwhytheSovietswere so worried about the impact of a Polish pope on their empire.Youwouldseeksomeonewithakeenhistorical sense and a flair for biography--and the ability to integratesmoothlythemyriadaccomplishments of three major figures of our times...
...If Vidal has seemed to harbor a patrician contempt for just about every "popular" leader and flavor-of-the-month pol, it isbecausehehadthegoodfortune,duringhisformative years,toknowandtoserveagiantamongmen...
...He confessed that he thought he wasjustpassingthroughmylifeand was surprised as the decades began tostackupandwewerestilltogether...
...Instead of the eccentric character he seemed in Vidal's earlier writings, the stoic Gore, who served 30 years in the Senate, abstained on the Social Security vote, lived on his $15,000 salary, and was the firstandprobablythelastsenatorfromanoilstatetodie withoutafortune,emergesherealmostasaghostfrom the Early Roman Republic when virtue in its original sense of male honor reigned supreme...
...Thatcher offered a strong purgative--economic liberty, traditional Christian values, patriotism, and a strong attachment to the United States and like-minded nations--and in May1979waselectedprimeminister...
...For the rest of Gershwin's music, however, Copland's reservations apply...
...He had several falls...
...Thereisplentyofdish,suchasEleanorRoosevelt's resentment of his aviation-pioneer father's affair with Amelia Earhart, "for whom she had a Sapphic passion that Amelia found disconcerting...
...devastating descriptions (Jacqueline Susann's thick false eyelashes "resembled a pair of tarantulas in a postcoital state"), (Tony Blair's "tic-like smile and brightvulpinestare");Garboinanandrogynousmood, making a point of leaving the toilet seat up after using the bathroom at a party...
...These are one type of Vidal story, not proven but well within the realm of possibility all the same...
...The one included here claims that when Pope Pius XII died in 1958,hewasembalmedbyanamateurtaxidermist: ...while he lay in state in the basilica, he turned, according to one viewer, "emerald green...
...slices of movie filler to separate the commercialsfromeachother...
...Gershwin was an undeniable genius of sorts, and we should admire and delight in his art for what it is, not make claims for it that cannot rightly be sustained...
...A bornhost,hewasabletocompileaguestlistcontaining the likes of Greta Garbo at a moment's notice...
...The descriptions are almost unbearable to read, but it is as he is lying quietly in the hospital that a perfect brushstroke of a sentence clinches the whole experience in a single touching detail: "The hospital bed had a railing around itandonecouldbarelypokeahandthroughinorderto holdhishand...
...Senator Heinz was Teresa B O O K SI NR E V I E W 7 2 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 HeinzKerry'sfirsthusband.Doesthismeanthatheand PrincessMargaretwerelovers...
...There were, for example, the attempted assassinations: Reagan narrowly escaped death at the hand of John Hinckley on March 30, 1981...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
