Sympathy for the devil

"An intimate memoir of the author's long friendship with notoriously difficult author, Gore Vidal"--Provided by publisher. "Gore Vidal, a man who prided himself on being difficult to know, detached 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 ... Michael Mewshaw's 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. The Gore Vidal the reader comes to know here is generous and supportive to younger, less successful writers; he is also, especially toward the end of his life, disappointed, even lonely"--Provided by publisher.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.