FIFTY-SIX
Professor Marcie Frank has flattered me by a comparison to Pope. So, in ending, let me quote the last lines of the Dunciad, lines that I learned, voluntarily, as a schoolboy:
Nor public flame nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, CHAOS! is restor’d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries all.
In 1943 when I recited this to a classmate at the Phillips Exeter Academy, he was bewildered. “Why did you learn that?” he asked. “Because,” I said, “it’s bound to be apt one of these days.” And so it is today, January 1, 2006.
Much time over thirty years was spent on the balcony overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ulysses, more than usually off course, was believed to have sailed…well, rowed on the scenic route back home to Ithaca. Several miles to the back of my head are the temples of Paestum.
PHOTO CREDITS
Photography research by Ann Schneider
Chapter Five: Warner Brothers/Photofest
Chapter Six: Photofest
Chapter Seven: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Seven: Gerald Bruneau/Grazia Neri/Polaris
Chapter Nine: Everett Collection
Chapter Eleven: U.P.I. Bettmann/CORBIS
Chapter Twelve: A.P. Images
Chapter Fourteen: Fred R. Conrad/New York Times
Chapter Fourteen: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Sixteen: Everett Collection
Chapter Nineteen: Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum Photos
Chapter Twenty: Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, Sotheby’s
Chapter Twenty-Three: Paramount Pictures/Photofest
Chapter Twenty-Five: Keystone/Gamma
Chapter Twenty-Six: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Twenty-Six: Everett Collection
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Phillips Exeter Academy Archives
Chapter Thirty: Bettmann/CORBIS
Chapter Thirty-Two: Bettmann/CORBIS
Chapter Thirty-Three: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Thirty-Five: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Thirty-Five: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Thirty-Six: Polaris
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Roddy McDowall
Chapter Forty-Two: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Forty-Five: Eamonn McCabe/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Bettmann/CORBIS
Chapter Fifty-Two: Collection of Gore Vidal
Chapter Forty-Six: Eamonn McCabe/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-five novels, six plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and the critically lauded memoir Palimpsest. Vidal’s United States: Essays 1952–1992 won the 1993 National Book Award.
ALSO BY GORE VIDAL
NOVELS
Williwaw
In a Yellow Wood
The City and the Pillar
The Season of Comfort
A Search for the King
Dark Green, Bright Red
The Judgment of Paris
Messiah
Julian
Washington, D.C.
Myra Breckinridge
Two Sisters
Burr
Myron
1876
Kalki
Creation
Duluth
Lincoln
Empire
Hollywood
Live from Golgotha
The Smithsonian Institution
The Golden Age
NONFICTION
Inventing a Nation
SHORT STORIES
A Thirsty Evil
Clouds and Eclipses
PLAYS
An Evening with Richard Nixon
Weekend
Romulus
On the March to the Sea
The Best Man
Visit to a Small Planet
ESSAYS
Rocking the Boat
Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship
Homage to Daniel Shays
Matters of Fact and of Fiction
The Second American Revolution
At Home
Screening History
United States
The Last Empire
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Imperial America
MEMOIR
Palimpsest
*1Diana Phipps’s collages (minus color) have been used as endpapers for this edition.
Return to text.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2007
Copyright © 2006 by Gore Vidal
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.vintagebooks.com
This book contains excerpts from How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal by Marcie Frank. Copyright © 2005 by Duke University Press. Reprinted with the kind permission of Duke University Press.
Photo credits appear on Back Matter.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vidal, Gore, 1925–
Point to point navigation : a memoir, 1964 to 2006 / Gore Vidal.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Vidal, Gore, 1925–2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS3543.I26Z475 2006
818.5409—dc22
[B]
2006011644
eISBN: 978-0-307-38770-7
v3.0