Book review: Palimpsest by Gore Vidal

I was not planning on buying Palimpsest from the library booksale, but once I started reading it I had to. It is Gore Vidal's memoir about his life, based more on his memories as they come than on historical facts. Gore, who died a few years ago, came from a political dynasty family (Al Gore is a distant cousin; Gore Vidal dropped his first name to go by his mother's and father's surnames as a teenager) and was related by marriage to the Kennedys. He was also friends with fellow gay writer Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, and countless other literary, political, and Hollywood luminaries. His life story isn't really told chronologically, as he shares memories as they come to him, like when you're talking to someone and they backtrack. Far from sounding absentminded, Gore Vidal's voice is steady, sure of himself, sometimes serious and sometimes delightfully bitchy. I read this expecting to read lots of zingers and shade, and I was not disappointed.
A palimpsest is "a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain", according to the dictionary. It's a term I came across in library school, and that's what attracted me to this book. At turns funny, sad, and explicit, I'd recommend it if you like old Hollywood and literary gossip or have read every other Kennedy book out there and want something from another perspective. I enjoyed it but won't be keeping this one.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: mid April-late May
From: the library booksale
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

Exorcise these lovely ghosts of days when I had prospects.
Leave me with the present truth and those with unknown objects.
Looking back is fine and all but memories won't leave me.
Only leave the lesson learned so no one will deceive me.

Siempre, siempre, Abuelita, yo recuerdaré...

In my earliest memory I am walking through the rooms in the Eagle Rock house, which we moved out of when I was two. The rooms are dark, but sunlight spills across the polished wood floors. I pass my little brother who is lying or crawling on the floor and see my grandma stuffing an old pair of jeans and an old red plaid flannel shirt of my father's with crumpled-up newspaper. She explains she is making a scarecrow to decorate our front stoop for Halloween. Later it will scare me whenever I pass by it, even though I saw it being made.

One of the most interesting things about life is how quickly one becomes used to things. When my grandma lived with us, it was like she had always done so. When she was gone, either to visit my uncles or live in her house in Mexico, it was as though she had never been. I remember thinking in the past that her frequent absences might prepare us for when she would be gone.
The woman I came home one day to find up in our eight-foot fig tree (which was at the top of a thirty-foot hill) sawing off its branches by hand became a frail little slip of a person who had to be lifted out of bed, enormous brown eyes and bones showing through skin much paler than it used to be. The woman who cooked and baked delicious food for us could no longer keep anything down. This was not the end we wanted for her. It was not the end she deserved.

It's strange not having her here. I'll forget sometimes and think, "oh, I should tell her hello/about the job I got/etc.", then remember I can't. We just sort of assumed she'd always be here, that she'd take care of our kids the way she took care of us. I miss her. We knew this was coming, but it's still hard.