SOURCE: “Isn't It Romantic?,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 1, 1995, pp. 2, 9.

In the following review of Palimpsest, McCourt finds Vidal's memoir lacking, though commends his discussion of a boyhood friendship, which to McCourt's regret is not elaborated upon.

Gore Vidal, author of this long memoir, of many novels, including the groundbreaking The City and the Pillar and the comic masterpiece Myra Breckenridge, of a clutch of hit plays for early television and high-tide Broadway and of such film scripts as Ben Hur, Suddenly Last Summer and The Best Man, is the child of the broken home called America, of which he has made himself, in dozens of splendid essays, the preeminent public scold.

At age 14 he shortened his name, lopping off Eugene and Luther. I regret the loss of the appropriate Eugene (he was well born into the American sociopolitical aristocracy) and only somewhat less the Luther...