Book review - "View from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal"

Vidal's great skill is as an essayist but he's also a terrific interview subject, capable of being sharp, intelligent and very witty, though liable to foam at the mouth if steered on to the wrong subject. For the most part this is a highly entertaining collection of interviews,arranged chronologically; when Vidal is talking about himself, movies,the arts, Italy, etc few can do it better (eg Truman Capote has "the mind of a Kansas housewife" - which, you know, there's something in that). Indeed at times this is preferable to his memoirs - here we get decent accounts of the writing of Julian and Burr, and he talks about his plays a bit more. He goes on to his other topics, such as religion, sex, politics - towards the end he gets a bit manic, talking about what he would do if he ruled the world: allow people to do whatever they want in their private lives but set up an all-powerful authority which would regulate birth control, run the environment. This authority would be run like a Swiss hotel, at which point you start envisioning the foam. But entertaining and highly readable