Novelist, essayist, playwright and provocateur, Gore Vidal was a man of many words—all well-chosen. The patrician figure, often seen on talk shows in the ’60s and ’70s, had a reputation for being razor sharp with anyone he regarded as a fool, which was almost everyone. Vidal’s friend over many decades, writer Michael Mewshaw, offers an unusual perspective, finding him “generous, hospitable, and loyal to friends”—a public man who kept his private feelings masked. What’s shocking about Sympathy for the Devil is its account of Vidal’s last years of wheelchair-bound, alcohol-triggered, cantankerous dementia. It was a dark end for a bright mind.
