The idea behind ["Views from a Window"] is one of such obvious wit and utility that one can only marvel at the fact that no one seems to have tried it before—but people undoubtedly said the same thing about the invention of the wheel. Gore Vidal, who has been interviewed by just about every publication claiming some connection to literature during the past 20 years, has selected the choicer tidbits from many of the interviews and arranged them not in chronological order but according to subject matter.

Thus, instead of wading through a tedious sequence of separate interviews to get to the good stuff, we are treated to intelligible, discrete summaries of Mr. Vidal's views on sex (mixed), American higher education (negative), on book reviewers (negative raised to the tenth power)….

The interviewers' questions, on every subject from homosexuality to "autobiographical" novels, reflect interests that are as constantly...