Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal

by Michael Mewshaw

A generous, entertaining, intimate look at 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 This is the calcified, public image of Gore Vidal―one the man himself was fond of reinforcing. "I'm 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 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.
Sparkling, often hilarious, and filled with spicy anecdotes about expat life in Italy, Sympathy for the Devil is an irresistible inside account of a man who was himself―faults and all―impossible to resist. As enlightening as it is entertaining, it offers a unique look at a figure many only think they know.

Genres: Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 13, 2015

About the author

Michael Mewshaw is an American author of 11 novels and 8 books of nonfiction, and works frequently as a travel writer, investigative reporter, book reviewer, and tennis reporter. His novel Year of the Gun was made into a film of the same name by John Frankenheimer in 1991. He is married with two sons.

Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime "voice of books," has called him "the best novelist in America that nobody knows."

Reviews

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal " is a book that takes the reader through the various stages of the relationship Michael Mewshaw had with the great writer, essayist, gadfly/wit, intellectual, and political polemicist who was Gore Vidal.

For me, as someone who once met Gore Vidal (albeit briefly) at a public event in which he was interviewed about his life and career and later signed copies of what proved to be his final novel, "The Golden Age", I learned more about Gore Vidal on a personal level from reading "Sympathy for the Devil" than I had ever given thought to. Vidal had been my favorite living writer for close to 20 years, and in all that time, I gave little thought to his personal life. From reading his novel and hearing him expound on various themes on TV and radio, I became caught up in his persona. He was a very fascinating person. And though I never agreed with him on every matter he spoke about, Gore Vidal was never dull.

The following observation Mewshaw made about Vidal, made me sad, because it summed up the beginning of a slow and steady decline of a singularly unique figure on the literary and world stage: “In the space of time I had known him, Gore had become the kind of novelist he used to blister with disdain. Having mocked Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald as rummies and lampooned his contemporaries – Mailer, [Tennessee] Williams, and Capote – as lushes who squandered their talent, having described Irwin Shaw and James Jones in their last years on Long Island as looking like ‘a couple of mangy old lions’, he was now as bad as any of them, and nobody except Howard [Auster, who was Vidal’s longtime companion and protector] dared tell him to take a look in the mirror.”

For anyone who is either a Gore Vidal fan or simply curious about who he was, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.

[Rick Skwiot · Rating 5 out of 5]

On its face, Michael Mewshaw’s remembrance of Gore Vidal works as an entertaining and finely crafted tapestry of the American expat literary community in Rome late 20th century, replete with salacious and often hilarious anecdotes of writers, rockstars, Hollywood actresses and Italian cognoscenti. But on a deeper, more resonate level it stands as a haunting disquisition on fame, fortune, ambition and celebrity, a social history chronicling the disintegration of a man who seemed to have everything but came to appreciate so little of it. Despite Vidal’s vaunted intellectual prowess, Mewshaw shows him here to have had diminishing self-knowledge, leading to a bitter alcoholic tailspin and death. Ultimately the meaningful work and wealth, the awards and adulation, the loyal friends and privileged lifestyle weren’t enough to soothe his soul, suggesting that the devils that drove him and formed his unique vision as a writer and political pundit were the same ones that ultimately destroyed him. This is a fine book and a good companion to Mewshaw’s earlier literary memoir “Do I Owe You Something?”

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when I thought I was done reading books about Gore Vidal this one comes along. This is one of the better ones, but perhaps you have to read to rest to appreciate that.

Some reviewers found this gossipy but that is merely a reflection of Vidal and his tendency to tell the same stories different ways. Who was the real Gore Vidal? Many people have tried to answer that question, and Mewshaw does a good job trying to get closer to certain truths.

[Carole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Michael Mewshaw wrote this book, he states, the clear up the record about the persona of Gore Vidal. Starting from the 1950's, Vidal was a famous author (Burr, 1876, Myra Breckenridge as well as Broadway plays),frequent TV commentator (dueling archly with Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley) and a formidable intellectual force. He also ran for elected office twice. He was renowned for his acid wit, aloof and arrogant bearing, and brilliant and forceful intelligence. I was always interested in this colorful personality, who knew everyone.

Mewshaw sets out to demonstrate that Vidal, unlike his reputation for being cold and unfeeling, was actually a generous and supportive human being who cared little for money and was loyal and helpful to his friends.

He doesn't succeed.

Mewshaw knew him off and on, primarily in Italy, when Mewshaw started as a struggling young writer. Vidal did offer him some encouragement and loaned him his villa to do some writing. (Mewshaw spends some time complaining about how uncomfortable the place was.) But the acts of generosity and charity - few and far between - are far offset by the depressing picture of Vidal as an aging, bitter drunk, barely able to function, but still able to sling off horrifying public insults to people trying to help him in his dotage. Mewshaw does him no favors. He inveigles Vidal to speak at a literary function in Key West in 2009, when Vidal is wheel chair bound, looks like a death camp survivor, and lives on an diet of scotch. That a friend would put Vidal on C-SPAN in such a condition doesn't say much for Mewshaw's empathy for the man and belies the book's title.

The book boils down to gossipy anecdotes about Vidal and his loyal partner Howard. Mewshaw is a competent writer. I would love to hear what Vidal would have to say about the book and its author.

[Frederic · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a very funny Lina Wertmuller story and a few anecdotes about Vidal and Austen that illustrate their deep and strong bond with one another but this is primarily a sad recollection of the physical and mental deterioration endured by Vidal over his last thirty years...and though it purports to centre on the friendship between Mewshaw and Vidal the overwhelming attitude of the author seems to be meanness...Maybe Vidal was justified in his often referenced Paranoia if this is how a "friend" treats his memory...

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always guessed that Vidal's icily impenetrable patrician veneer and spiky wit hid a regular human with all sorts of vulnerabilities, contradictions, and a dark side; this book offers evidence. It also describes a golden moment for intellectual expatriate Americans in Rome, which will make anyone stuck working a day job in boring old America jealous. And while I'm pleased to report that Mewshaw, unlike so many who turn their celebrity acquaintances into a book, is a pretty good writer, I must also deliver the verdict that the book is still 30% padding. Still, if you're a Vidalophile like me, Sympathy for The Devil is a treat.

[Alexandria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I downloaded Sympathy for the Devil and scanned every word within a week. It's not very long and enviously well-written. The author Michael Meshaw is blunt yet humane in his recollections of Vidal. What I found most fascinating were his insights into Gore's creation of public persona and how as Gore aged, he became entrenched in the personality which had won him fame and the public had come to expect -- that of a shocking, acerbic humorist. There are anecdotes of him drunkenly spouting about anal sex, his mother's vagina, and salaciously gossiping about all sorts of A-listers he had known from John Kennedy and Truman Capote to Marlon Brando.

The most compelling if uncomfortable undertone within the book is the theme of depression and suicide. On being asked to reminisce about Vidal after his death, Meshaw responds: "I remember...how funny he was and how generous and hospitable. Not at all the bitchy, vengeful man his critics imagined." This novel provides a dimensionality missing from documentaries about Vidal, a dimensionality which Vidal purposefully avoided in his autobiography and memoirs. He played the game, and although it seems a bit treacherous that a good friend would show Vidal's cards after his death for profit, the book does not read exploitative but insightful. It comes off as a defense against, and an explanation for, all of the bitterness and cold-heartedness Vidal chose to wield as his shield and sword. This no doubt resulting from a lifetime of being an outsider, an unflinching intellectual, and an ardent critic.

Despite his personal misfortunes, Vidal never held back in his public or intensely private life, he never allowed himself an ounce of sympathy. Up until his death he was taking public appearances and producing works. Despite his follies for drink, vulgarities (which I enjoyed reading), and prostitution (which I won't go into), Vidal's lifelong body of work is a testament to his industriousness and talent. Meshaw reveals Vidal's flaws and humanity, the mush behind the hard metal, and because of this the novel solidified Vidal as a new personal hero of mine -- it presented him as a man, not as an idol or a devil but an imperfect man full of vitality and a sense of justice.

[Robert Corbett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A corrective to the mythography of Vidal, both of his togetherness towards the end of his time (he did go the way of Capote, Faulkner, Mailer et al) and his patrician anti-emotionalism. Palimpsest was brill, but Mewshaw reveals it to be a mosaic of previous writing. The second half is harrowing, tho I did appreciate Gore's shots at the previous admin in their time. He could rise above his choices even towards the end, but this memoir does better to explain why Gore also seemed stuck then.

[Stephanie Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose there's quite a lot of "truth" in this remembrance of Gore Vidal He was an alcoholic and more miserable than he needed to be. That said, he wrote some very fine books and essays and he lived to be 86. All the best lines in this book are Vidal's. Mister Meshaw is right about his own writing. He's strictly mid-list.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pure candy, filled with bite after delicious bite of gossip, but best of all filled with Vidal's bon mots and acid wit.

[Bob Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag on this one. On the one hand, there are a lot of great stories and a lot of celebrity name dropping. Through most of the period covered by the book, 1975 until his death in 2013, Vidal lived in Italy and he held court to variety of actors and writers who came to Italy to vacation. Vidal because it was cheaper to live in Europe and he was able to evade income taxes and hide financial transactions from the Italian government. (Both tactics would come back to haunt him when he ran for Congress in his later life.) He ran his own circus in Italy. He played the "bad boy" to the hilt and was well rewarded for it. The author meets him at the height of his power, at his home for dinner and is overwhelmed by the experience.

By 1975 Vidal was in the middle of his series of books of historical fiction that's known as the American Empire. By any measure the man was a prolific writer. Books, essays, book reviews and movie screenplays. He was also a television celebrity in the early days of the medium, when talk shows like Jack Paar and Dick Cavett showcased authors and intellectuals, and Vidal was made for the part. Probably most famous for his live on-air dispute with William F, Buckley on ABC's coverage of the 1968 Democratic presidential convention. Vidal was one-of-a-kind, and he knew it.

Mewshaw captures the mood of the period and the power that Vidal had over the others in his orbit. But Menshaw also captures the beginning of Vidal's end, his drinking. This is the other side of the story, Vidal's own choice of his method of suicide, as he called it. That part of the story is about an old man, slowing loosing his abilities. It is depressing and Menshaw captures that, as well.

If you're a fan of Vidal you'll find this a fascinating read. If you're interested in the history of pop culture in the 1970's and 1980's you'll enjoy the inside stories of Hollywood and New York. My one drawback are the number of sexual comments. Vidal was well known as a homosexual through most of his adult life and he used outrageous sexual comments as a shield against people he didn't want to converse with. That's all fine, how many examples are enough to prove the point? Vidal was a great intellect and a 20th century writer of the first level. It just not necessary.

[Byron F · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hugely important little biography about an even more important man and his overwhelming personality. Nobody could write like Gore Vidal if they didn’t care greatly and deeply about human beings. That being said, it’s hard to read some of Gore’s comments or essays and not feel like you’ve just been smacked in the face (perhaps you deserved it?). This book humanizes him while revealing some personal stories of the author’s relationship with him. The stories aren’t all flattering. This isn’t that kind of book. This is a superbly written biography that will have you laughing, crying, and maybe, just maybe, blushing. If you are a fan of the man and his works, this book is for you; if you aren’t a fan, this book is definitely for you.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biography of the last half of Gore's life and its very sad ending. I loved to hear him talk and never missed an appearance. If every word in the book is truth and, yet, written by a friend...I suppose it is justified but somehow I am sorry to have my memory of the man tainted by the sometimes scurrilous accounts of episodes in his life. Still, I read to the end wishing he was not gone, wishing that Gore was still here to comment on Trump's Presidency.

[Tameron Keyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was very interesting. Mewshaw was friends with Gore for 40 years and spent lots of time with him. First I read Fred Kaplan authorized biography, then I read Gore auto biography then I read Sympathy for the Devil. All three were good and I'm glad I read them in the order that I did. Each book filled in a little more information. Gore was an interesting man. I wish I had known him.

[Richard Pearce · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mean-spirited tabloid hack look at a remarkable author, it was distressing to read about his failings, and there were no insights into his writing. What a terrible thing to do a dead friend who had showed the author so much kindness.

[Christina Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review is more due to the subject , not the author . Gore Vidal is quickly becoming the most fascinating person , I never knew about ! It’s almost as if he could see into the future of what America politics is all about …..

[G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unnecessarily cruel book about the decline of a “friend.” Some interesting anecdotes and observations it devolves in the second half.

[Justin Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since two major biographies of Gore Vidal were written with either his involvement or from a friendly admirer, such as Fred Kaplan’s 1999 study or Jay Parini’s 2015 book, they leave the reader with a rather public-facing study, with little on how he lived his life. There’s a lack of intimacy, something Vidal often tried to avoid in his public persona as well. Nevertheless, there is one book on Vidal that provides readers with a personal look into his life, especially the latter half of it.

Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal by Michael Mewshaw (2015) comes from a fellow author and one of Vidal’s closest friends during his years in Italy. You get to see Gore in his element with friends, chatting about rival authors and thinking through ideas for his books. You also see his kindness, not something usually associated with the acerbic visage he often displayed, assisting Mewshaw with his book projects and even lending him his home in Ravello for a time.

Unfortunately, you also see one key aspect of his darker side, something not usually discussed in biographical material on Vidal: his intense alcoholism. Starting in the early 1980s, Vidal began to become a more intense drinker, with late night binges that would completely eviscerate him. Mewshaw documents the many times he would drink way too much, stumble to walk, and become incomparably dark in his thoughts. His drinking would escalate throughout his later years, so much so that he developed a neurological disorder that made it increasingly difficult to write and speak effectively. His mother, Nina Gore, was also an intense alcoholic, so there’s evidence to suggest that it was hereditary. Despite his struggles with alcohol, Vidal nevertheless would honor his promises to Mewshaw and countless other friends.

Gore Vidal was a man of many faces, public and private, and Mewshaw’s memoir of his friendship with the legendary author displays the highs and lows of being one of America’s most engaging provocateurs.

[Ci · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had not previously read any of Michael Mewshaw's works, fiction or non-fiction, nor even essays. But I admire the sinewy, urban, vivid turn of phrases. Here are a few examples: "... a parallax yawned between his handsome, haughty persona and the paunchy, disconsolate man he was turning into.", or "It was rare for any writer, particularly one who had enjoyed early commercial and critical success, to develop an altogether different degree of mastery, to keep reaching for the next rung on the ladder.", and the best one so far "But then visits to the homes of dead writers always fill me with a sense of woe. Like locust shells, they lack everything that previously animated them— the buzz, the voracious appetite, the ambitious flights."

Yet the question is still about Gore Vidal. Shall I read his work? Given his enormous popularity, is it a requisite to read some "cannon" from his large body of works? The problem is always the question of "worth". In this book, we are given a memoir of Mewshaw's long acquaintances with Vidal, mostly in Italy, yet the picture of Vidal is largely in his social milieu. That is to say this is not a memoir about the intellectual life of Vidal, even though we are treated with some clever quotations -- Vidal seemed to the supreme one-man quotation industry-- this book is still a social diary. There are many segments of pungent prurience and bathetic vanity that this book has safely pushed down my original desire to read Vidal if not Mewshaw himself.

[False · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I was predisposed to love this book, but that's not always a guarantee. In this case, it was. I believe the author tried to write with heart and honesty, and he reported much of what I believe Vidal desperately wanted to veneer over or deny. A really heartfelt report on a figure of celebrity and controversy. I am sure I will read it again one day, and I intend to seek out the work of the author as I really enjoyed his style.


I did go back and re-read this in 2018 to write a piece about author's archives and correspondence (the future of research when you only have email, etc.) Vidal is still not buried and he's been dead since 2012. From what I understand Vidal left everything to Harvard ($30 million) despite promises to family and friends. His former villa in Italy is a ghosty fade to rot and ruin. His nephew did not get the promised home in L.A. When Howard Auster was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. that funeral and grave were not fully paid for and part of the hang up in burying Vidal. Vidal was not buried because 1) money was still owed for Howard and 2) there was no money offered up for Vidal. So there his ashes sit in a mortuary in Los Angeles with an empty grave with stone in Washington--six years later. You would think Harvard could cough up the $9,000 due, wouldn't you?

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been pointed out often that when a writer gains fame at very young age, he is stuck with a public persona for the rest of his life that becomes increasing ill-fitting. For Gore Vidal, such a facade was useful since according to one of his long-time friends and this book's author, Michael Mewshaw, he had trouble knowing what he felt, if he felt much at all. His public persona was of someone well above the fray, who looked upon other writers with disdain and America with contempt, especially its educational system, and foreign policy since World War II.

Vidal disliked Truman Capote with such fervor, it makes you wonder if he saw too much of himself in Capote. Both had distant, narcissistic mothers, who ultimately rejected their sons. There are many differences, too, but both were famous when very young and needed affirmation on a grand scale. That they were both non-heterosexual at a time when that often attracted hostility, also forced them to devise methods of self-protection.

Some reviewers loyal to Vidal, the writer, dislike this book as a gossipy tell-all. I consider it a view from the inside -- a rare glimpse of the man, not the persona.

[Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having met Gore Vidal in 2009 at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books I was thrilled to read this portrait of him from someone who spent time with him and proposed to write an authentic portrait. Poignant in some passages, this was a book I am certainly glad to have read about a man who gifted the world with so much. His personal life? Well we are all what we come from in our roots and then what we mix in of our adult choices in life. I can emphathize with the child who said to Gore Vidal, "I want to eat you". This was a book to devour.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a bubble burster of a book. I'd feel crumby if I wrote this book and had to be the one to out Gore Vidal's quirks and airs. I did enjoy the dinner guest like intimacy Michael Meshaw presented while writing about his encounters with Vidal and Howard Austen. Overall it felt like a Tell all book but somehow it was done with compassion and respect. This humanized portrayal of him adds to the overall picture of the Gore Vidal that I've been in awe of for years.

[David Seligman · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in Gore Vidal, his books, sarcasm, astute political and cultural analysis, this is a must read. Fascinating but also very sad

[York Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's trashy gossip disguised as biography. There are scandalous tales peppered with minor compliments--fulfilling the quota required to be reviewed as "unsentimental."

It's a fun read.

[Trent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly interesting and made me less inclined to think of Gore Vidal as a self-hating monster, although I still don't really like him as a person.