Research Catalog

Sympathy for the devil : four decades of friendship with Gore Vidal

Title: Sympathy for the devil : four decades of friendship with Gore Vidal / Michael Mewshaw.
Author: Mewshaw, Michael, 1943-
Publication: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Supplementary Content: Cover image

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFD 15-1053	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Description

200 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

"A generous, entertaining, intimate look at Gore Vidal, a man who prided himself on being difficult to know Detached and ironic; a master of the pointed put-down, of the cutting quip; enigmatic, impossible to truly know: This is the calcified, public image of Gore Vidal--one the man himself was fond of reinforcing. "I'm exactly as I appear," he once said of himself. "There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water." Michael Mewshaw's Sympathy for the Devil, a memoir of his friendship with the stubbornly iconoclastic public intellectual, is a welcome corrective to this tired received wisdom. A complex, nuanced portrait emerges in these pages--and while "Gore" can indeed be brusque, standoffish, even cruel, Mewshaw also catches him in more vulnerable moments. The Gore Vidal the reader comes to know here is generous and supportive to younger, less successful writers; he is also, especially toward the end of his life, disappointed, even lonely. Sparkling, often hilarious, and filled with spicy anecdotes about expat life in Italy, Sympathy for the Devil is an irresistible inside account of a man who was himself--faults and all--impossible to resist. As enlightening as it is entertaining, it offers a unique look at a figure many only think they know"--
"An intimate memoir of the author's long friendship with notoriously difficult author, Gore Vidal"--

Subjects

Call Number

JFD 15-1053

ISBN

LCCN

2014016971

OCLC

2014016971

Author

Mewshaw, Michael, 1943-

Title

Sympathy for the devil : four decades of friendship with Gore Vidal / Michael Mewshaw.

Publisher

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

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Cover image

Research Call Number

JFD 15-1053