Empire of Self

Praise for Jay Parini’s Empire of Self

“A lucid, bracing, and candid book that is likely to become the definitive Vidal biography.” —Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

“A fine biography.” —Wall Street Journal

“Wholly readable.  Parini is a veteran biographer, and it shows in the seemingly effortless way he unfolds Vidal’s life.” —The Boston Globe

“Marvelous. . . . Affectionate and balanced.” —The Economist

“A loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted novelist, poet and biographer, has gone very deep into the ‘black energy’ of Gore Vidal’s relentless narcissism and megalomania.” —Washington Post

“[A] constantly memorable biography that will no doubt be the best Vidal will ever get.” —The Buffalo News

“Vidal is the perfect subject for a biography, as Parini proves in this highly readable and informative book. And Parini, who has also written biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost and William Faulkner as well as essays and poetry, is the perfect person to write it.” —Dallas Morning News

“A wonderful, moving biography of Gore Vidal.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Parini nicely describes the ‘lofty intimacy’ of Vidal’s style, and makes a strong case for Vidal as one of the critics who helped to ‘enlarge and redefine’ the book-review essay.” —The New Yorker

“Parini takes a long view of Vidal’s eccentricities, shedding new light on the legacy-building efforts of one of the twentieth century’s great public intellectuals.” —Boston Review

 “More than anything, Parini reveals, Vidal feared ‘becoming a rumor in his own time’—and forgotten when he was dead. ‘One feels the Great Eraser always at work,’ he said again and again in conversations and letters. Empire of Self may stay the hand of the Great Eraser.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“An admiring but unblinkingly honest portrait of the self-mythologizing, self-aggrandizing literary titan and TV celebrity.” —The Daily Beast

“Parini precedes each chapter with a vignette, a focused memory from his own experiences with Vidal. They range from amusing to deeply moving. . . . A superbly personal biography that pulsates with intelligence, scholarship, and heart.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“The outstanding quality—no, just one of the outstanding qualities—of this tour de force of effective biography is the dexterity, the balance with which Parini handles the two acute sides of his subject, Vidal the ‘angel’ and Vidal the ‘monster.’” —Booklist, starred review

“The incomparable wit, the literary genius, the dazzling friends, the staggering output, the politics, the sex, the drink, the dreadful mother and the awful last days—it’s all here. This is as good as biography gets.” —Dick Cavett