The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini’s Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal is an intimate, authorized yet frank biography of one of the most accomplished, visible and controversial novelists and cultural figures of the past century.
“Probably no other American writer since Ernest Hemingway lived his life so much in the public eye,” writes Parini, whose other biographical subjects include Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and Jesus.