Gore Vidal

La semblanza del emperador Juliano, quien representa la última tentativa de restaurar el helenismo frente a la hegemonía creciente del cristianismo, es la clave de una época -el siglo IV- en que un viejo mundo agoniza y otro nace, a la sombra de la Cruz.

Creación una de las novelas más ambiciosas de Gore Vidal , narra el periplo de Ciro Espitama, embajador de un imperio que se extiende desde el Mediterráneo hasta la India, en su afán por resolver algunos de los grandes enigmas de todos los tiempos. De este modo, su esplendido relato se convierte en fascinante recorrido por los tiempos de Buda, Confucio, Anaxagoras, Herodoto, Pericles y Socrates. En el ambito de la novela historica, probablemente no exista una obra que refleje con tanta fuerza, amplitud y precision el ambiente de una epoca como Creacion .

En el inquieto clima tropical de una nación sudamericana, todo parece estar preparado para que estalle la revolución. Un aventurero norteamericano, un general ambicioso y un literato francés están a

Unafraid to point fingers and assassinate characters, Gore Vidal has always been provocative, if not universally liked. A prolific essayist and acclaimed author of historical novels such as 1984's Lincoln, his talent for positioning history within a modern context is one thing about Vidal that remains undisputed.

In Death in the Fifth Position, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is hired by a ballet company on the eve of a major upcoming performance. Handling the press seems to be no problem, but when a rising star in the company is killed during the performance—dropped from thirty feet above the stage, crashing to her death in a perfect fifth position—Sargent has a real case on his hands. As he ingratiates himself with the players behind the scenes (especially one lovely young ballerina), he finds that this seemingly graceful ballet company is performing their most dramatic acts behind the curtain. There are sharp rivalries, sordid affairs, and shady characters. Sargent, though, has no trouble staying on point and proving that the ballerina killer is no match for his keen eye and raffish charm.

Además de uno de los escritores de mayor talento que ha dado Estados Unidos en el siglo XX, Gore Vidal es un polemista vocacional y uno de los analistas más lúcidos y mordaces de la política estadounidense. En este volumen se incluye una seleccion de los articulos y ensayos breves que el autor ha publicado a lo largo de medio siglo, y que se divide en dos partes: una primera dedicada a la literatura con articulos sobre Henry James, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessin, Susan Sontag, Henry Miller..., y otra dedicada a cuestiones politicas, desde el sistema electoral, hasta la pornografia como delito, pasando por el legado de personajes como Lincoln, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, o por las consecuencias del 11-S.El libro se completa con un amplio prologo de Eduardo Iriarte que situa a Vidal en su contexto como critico literario y como analista politico.

POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION refers to a form of navigation Gore Vidal resorted to as a first mate in the navy during World War II. As he says, ''As I was writing this account of my life and times since PALIMPSEST, I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather.'' It is a beautifully apt analogy for the hazards eluded (mostly) during his eventful life. From his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Gore Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theatre, politics, and international society, recounting achievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and on a number of occasions lost). Among the gathering of notables to be found in these pages, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Greta Garbo, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some of the book''s most moving pages are devoted to the illness and death of his partner of five decades, Howard Austen, and indeed the book is, among other things, a meditation on mortality, written in the spirit of Montaigne.

La vida de Juliano, considerado a menudo “un héroe de la resistencia” contra el cristianismo en nombre de los valores del helenismo, es la historia de un fracaso, pero sobre todo la de una lucha sin

''Vidal has a fierce, uncontaminated sense of what''s right and wrong, and he expresses his most intimate opinions fearlessly'' John Simpson, Daily Mail This new selection brings together the best of Gore Vidal''s essays, comment and criticism from his fifty-year writing career. With mercurial intelligence and often courageous - and outrageous! - forthrightness, Vidal explores his keystone subjects: primarily the worlds of literature and US politics; but also showbiz, sexuality and modern manners. His gaze ranges from the fiction of Calvino and Updike to the politics of pornography to the Clinton and Bush administrations, America post-September 11 and contemporary imperial ambitions. These essays are a witty and brilliant assessment of our times from the most memorable of American literary masters.

In Death Likes it Hot, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargeant travels out to a posh beach community to help a wealthy socialite plan an end-of-summer party. His enjoyment of the sun, the surf, and the company of a lovely young fashion reporter is interrupted by the death of the socialite's niece: she mysteriously drowns while swimming on a crowded beach. No one suspects murder until the police find a lethal dose of sleeping pills in her system. As Sargeant watches the police's investigation unfold, he keeps an eye on the grieving socialite; the victim's famous painter husband; a suspiciously cheery brother and sister; and a garrulous tabloid columnist. Now, instead of planning guest lists, wine choices, and menus, Sargeant is faced with a killer unlike he's ever faced: highly sophisticated, devilishly clever, and just as smooth as he is.

Al tiempo que el presidente Wilson involucra a su país en la Gran Guerra europea, en California está naciendo la forma más poderosa de manipular la realidad que haya existido jamás: la industria del

Edgar Box no es más que el seudónimo que adopta el gran Gore Vidal para firmar las magníficas tramas policiales en las que se ve envuelto el detective Peter Cutler Sargeant III. En este caso, misteriosos asesinatos dentro de una compañía de ballet clásico.

Abraham Lincoln ocupa un lugar de honor en la historia de los EEUU y, por ende, del mundo. Sin embargo, entre las situaciones difíciles que le tocó afrontar es de especial relevancia la etapa en que su promesa de mantener unido al pais choco con la dura realidad, lo que le llevo a sentirse amenazado, de muerte incluso, y sintio en su propia piel el desprecio y hasta la agresividad de sus correligionarios. A partir del momento en que en 1861 Lincoln llega a Washington, Gore Vidal recrea toda la trayectoria vital de este personaje y, al mismo tiempo, recrea una epoca crucial para la democracia de los Estados Unidos. Como siempre, Gore Vidal va mas alla de la simple recreacion historica, pues plantea para el debate ideologico algunas contradicciones que parecen inherentes en los sitemas democraticos, al tiempo que pone el dedo en la llaga de las imperfecciones de la organizacion politica estadounidense. "Lincoln" es una de sus mejores novelas historicas.