Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal by Jay Parini review – prurient and patronising with a touch of tenderness

Cod psychology is not the only fishy aspect of a portrait of Gore Vidal that fails to get to the heart of its subject – if there was one

In the introduction to his new book about Gore Vidal, Jay Parini writes of their friendship: “I was looking for a father, and he seemed in search of a son.” In a memoir, this would be a powerful inducement to read on, signalling precisely the kind of complicated relationship one wants in that form. But a word of caution. This is not a memoir. Parini, a novelist and academic, has written, in essence, a traditional biography; his recollections of Vidal are limited mostly to the rather stagey first-person vignettes – “So this is where you often had lunch with Capote, in the late 40s?” – which precede each chapter. His talk of his closeness to Vidal, moreover, soon starts to seem to the reader like something of an exaggeration. By his own telling, Parini played a rather courtly role in Vidal’s glorious realm. His subject was famous for his feuds. He and Parini, however, remained pals right until the end, perhaps for the straightforward reason that his awed biographer knew better than ever to disagree with him.

Related: Gore Vidal: an appreciation

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