The Thriving VirulencenAnd ^^11-Heeled DeviationnGore Vidal: Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays 1973-19 76;nRandom House; New York, 1977.nby Otto J. ScottnTh, there is something nearly inexpressiblyndreary about this collection ofnarticles recycled from The New YorknReview of Books and New Statesman.nThey reveal a great deal about the author;ntoo much, in fact, for decency. A sensenof embarrassment rises, similar to thensensation of watching an actor in an Xratednmovie who smiles into the cameranthroughout his gyrations.nYet the book is valuable, in a macabrensort of way, for its glimpses into a set ofnpeople and their attitudes usually as closednand mysterious to the everyday world ofnnormal persons as the painted catamitesnof Hollywood & Vine, or the hideousncellars of Greenwich Village. In discussingnthe Memoirs of Tennessee Williams,nfor instance, this passage occurs:n”I don’t remember whether or not I everntold Tennessee that I had actually seennbut not met him the previous year. Tienwas following me up fifth Avenue whilenI, in turn, was stalking yet another quarry,nI recognized him: he wore a blue bownwith polka dots. In no mood for literarynencounters, I gave him a scowl and henabandoned the chase just north ofnRockefeller Center. I don’t recall hownmy own pursuit ended. . .”nMr. Scott is attracted to both fairnessnand historical research which enables himnto see his contemporaries in proper dimensions.n141nChronicles of CttltttrenThat glimpse of street-walking is sandwiched,nhowever, between rhapsodicndescriptions of the reviewer, Vidal, andnhis recollections of various parties andnencounters in Rome shortly after WorldnWar II, which is described as a “goldenndream.” A little later Vidal smiles againnat the reader, and says, “Incidentally, Inam mesmerized by the tributes to mynbeauty that keep cropping up in thenmemoirs of the period.” Those, we arenfree to infer, are tributes from personsnwho most often express their lofty sensenof aesthetics in the art of graffiti.nHis comments about other writers arenless admiring, with the exception of MarynRenault. Her recreations of a bisexualnPagan world lead to some predictablensighs over a vanished Eden, and bitter asidesnon an evil Christianity. For the rest,nwriters are apt to get short shrift and nonmercy from Vidal (one hesitates to callnhim Mister). Solzhenitsyn was by “naturendestined to write manuals of artillery,”nHerman Wouk is too Jewish to writenabout upper class “goyishers,” the teachersnwho toil over novels are “hacks” whonproduce books to be taught and notnread—and only the Italian author ItalonCalvino is worthy of a full-article panegyric.nIn time, these reminiscences of Vidalnsqueezed between comments on othernwriters, times and events, add up to anseries of strip-teases of a remarkable sort;nof a person who has forgotten—or whonhas closed his eyes—to the fact that thennneyes of the world are unwinking andnpenetrating. There is also a gatheringnsense that Vidal has reached the stagenthat overcomes certain types of actors,nor other public figures, who begin tonbecome exaggerations of themselves. Thenrole overtakes, and the writer—in thisninstance—merges into performer.nThat becomes horridly evident in thenlast section, which contains the articlesnon “fact.”These range from the times ofnPresident and Mrs. U.S. Grant tonHoward Hunt, ITT and Robert Moses.nPresident Grant has not been well treatednby American historians, who—at leastnin this century—seem to find it hard tonforgive this nation for its history. But toncall U.S. Grant, a man who would havenbeen a Caesar in Rome, and his wife—n”these two odd little creatures”—is tonfall into a back-of-the-stairs assessmentnonce too often. Vidal also describesnCharles Sumner, a true grotesque, asn”brilliant.” Such judgments, displayed asna part of a tedious article on the Grants,ninspired by the General’s intelligentnMemoirs and the somewhat silly effortnof his widow, do not exhibit any historicalninsight into an era still very near ournown. For President Grant crushednSumner as contemptuously as a mannsquashes a bug, and will remain a greatnhistorical figure long after Vidal ceasesnto be a footnote of our times.nBut Vidal’s treatment of GeneralnGrant, like his assessment of ITT is sonmuch a part of the Radical Camp schooln