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The Seattle Times: Books: "Point to Point Navigation": Vidal fills in some blanks — but not all |
 | | One reads novelist-essayist-screenwriter-historian Gore Vidal for his pointed political ideas about what he calls "the United States of Amnesia"; for his personal connection to history (Vidal had a ringside seat for the Kennedy and FDR administrations); for his mordant assessment of the sad state of literature in a digital, post-Gutenberg world. |
 | | In "Point to Point Navigation," the 81-year-old Vidal's most recent memoir, he fills in some of the gaps left by "Palimpsest," his 1995 autobiography, which charted his boyhood and his life-changing connection to Jimmie Trimble, a classmate he fell in love with at boarding school. |
 | | And there is, understandably, overlap and repetition between "Palimpsest" and "Point to Point." If Trimble, in his absence, is central to "Palimpsest," then Howard Auster, the author's companion of 53 years, is at the heart of "Point to Point." Vidal recounts with powerful simplicity Auster's long illness, followed by his death in 2003. |
| seattletimes.nwsource.com /html/books/2003443639_vidal26.html (649 words) |
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