Few American writers can display the virtuosity of Gore Vidal: saline essays on popular arts and letters; our best political play, The Best Man; intimate analyses of politics, ranging from his observations chez Kennedy to the limitations of Ronald Reagan; futuristic visits to a small planet; revisionist appraisals of America's past imperfect in Burr and 1876; and, of course, the sexual vaudeville of Myra Breckenridge, Myron, and, though he has shrewdly disowned it, the film Caligula, loosely based on his conceptions.

And yet … and yet. I know of no writer with comparable gifts who elicits so little critical response…. This exclusion is due mostly to the writer himself. Vidal has spent decades creating the persona of the Gentleman Bitch of American letters: cutting but not piercing, acidulous but not serious. (p. 34)

A pity. In fact, Gore Vidal is a serious man and an almost solemn writer. No one who...