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A generous, entertaining, intimate look at Gore Vidal, a man who prided himself on being difficult to knowDetached and ironic a master of the pointed put-down, of the cutting quip enigmatic, impossible to truly know This is the calcified, public image of Gore Vidal--one the man himself was fond of reinforcing. Im exactly as I appear, he once said of himself. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water. Michael Mewshaws Sympathy for the Devil, a memoir of his friendship with the stubbornly iconoclastic public intellectual, is a welcome corrective to this tired received wisdom. A complex, nuanced portrait emerges in these pages--and while Gore can indeed be brusque, standoffish, even cruel, Mewshaw also catches him in more vulnerable moments.
