Hollywood
by Gore Vidal

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Book Reviews of Hollywood

Book Review: An Uneven But Gifted Sequel
Summary: 3 Stars

Vidal's main focus, the joining of Hollywood and Washington as collaborating sources in producing a particular type of propaganda -- America as it must and shall be -- is only forcefully embraced at the end of the novel. Earlier chapters set in the movie capitol, though meant to support this thesis, are unfocused and star-struck. Trivial personalities, simply because they were stars 80 years ago, are given the bulk of Vidal's precious pages. The deft and conceited Caroline, one of Vidal's best all-time creations, is really not allowed to say that much.

Instead, horribly, she becomes a movie star. Nevermind that she is co-publisher of the most powerful newspaper in Washington and, if she were a more realistically fleshed out charachter, might prefer to stay there. Added to this she is given a filmmaker boyfriend.

"Yes, this was her lover. Women, Blaise noted, not for the first time, had no taste in men." With his own pen Vidal dismisses Caroline's love interest, the hapless Timothy X. Farell. As we are inclined to do also.

In spite of its flaws, Hollywood is a necessary read for those won over by its brilliant predecessor Empire. Strangely enough some of its finest writing centers around the lowly charachters of the Harding Administration -- as swinish, one senses, as their day.

Washington is Vidal's comfort zone, the place where his writing reads the most accurately, where his charachters speak the most assuredly. In Hollywood much of those gifts are wasted.

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