Read Online The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal by Gore Vidal - Free Book Online

“‘I’d rather have a wife than a bishopric.’”
    The plot becomes very complex. Hired to be governess to children of what turns out to be a princely cousin of Max who is married to Wilhelmina because he thinks Helena dead because Wilhelmina’s colleagues the supposed cousins of Helena were in a plot to…Enough! All turns out well, though it is touch-and-go for a while when her child, the heir to the principality, is kidnapped by the wicked cousin (Raymond Massey in
The Prisoner of Zenda
) who then attacks her. “‘You
are
mad,’ I said.” He cackles: “‘You will not live to see me rule Rochenstein, but before you die I am going to show you what kind of lover you turned your back on.’” (Mailer’s
American Dream
?)
    Finally, Helena takes her place at Maximilian’s side as consort. Each year they celebrate the night of the seventh moon, and in the year Cousin Victoria Regina dies, “What a beautiful night! With the full moon high in the sky paling the stars to insignificance…” Those stars keep cropping up in these books, but then as Bette Davis said to Paul Henreid in the last but one frame of
Now Voyager
, “Don’t ask for the moon when we have” (a beat) “the stars!” FADE OUT on night sky filled with stars.
    I have never before read a book by Herman Wouk on the sensible ground that I could imagine what it must be like: solid, uninspired, and filled with rabbinical lore. After all, one knows of his deep and abiding religious sense, his hatred of sex outside marriage, his love for the American ruling class. I did see the film of
The Caine Mutiny
(from Queequeg to Queeg, or the decline of American narrative); and I found the morality disturbing. Mr. Wouk has an embarrassing passion for the American goyim, particularly the West Point–Annapolis crowd who stand, he would seem to believe, between him and the Cossacks. In his lowbrow way he reflects what one has come to think of as the
Commentary
syndrome or: all’s right with America if you’re not in a gas chamber, and making money.
    I did see the film
Youngblood Hawke
four times, finding something new to delight in at each visit. When James Franciscus, playing a raw provincial genius like Thomas Wolfe, meets Suzanne Pleshette in a publisher’s office, he is told, “She will be your editor and stylist.” Well, she pushes these heavy glasses up on her forehead and, my God, she’s pretty as well as brilliant and witty, which she proves by saying, “Shall I call you Youngy or Bloody?” The Wise Hack at the Writers’ Table always maintained that when boy meets girl they’ve
got
to meet cute.
    The Winds of War
: 885 pages of small type in which Herman Wouk describes the family of a naval captain just before America enters the Second World War (there is to be a sequel). As I picked up the heavy book, I knew terror, for I am that rarest of reviewers who actually reads every word, and rather slowly. What I saw on the first page was disquieting. The protagonist’s name, Victor Henry, put me off. It sounded as if he had changed it from something longer, more exotic, more, shall we say,
Eastern
. But then Henry was the family name of the hero of
A Farewell to Arms
so perhaps Mr. Wouk is just having a little fun with us. Mrs. Henry is called Rhoda; the sort of name someone in New York would think one of
them
would be called out there west of the Hudson. “At forty-five, Rhoda Henry remained a singularly attractive woman, but she was rather a crab.” This means that she is destined for extramarital high jinks. “In casual talk [Rhoda] used the swooping high notes of smart Washington women.” I grew up in Washington at exactly the same period Mr. Wouk is writing about and I must demur: smart Washington ladies sounded no different from smart New York ladies (no swooping in either city).
    Captain Henry is stationed at the War