Parini’s book chronicles Vidal’s life, from his boyhood in his grandparents’ home near Washington, D.C., to time he spent in New York, Rome and his villa near the town of Amalfi on the Italian coast. We talked and talked and talked and talked,” Parini said. He said, ‘Let’s have a drink.’ From then on we were friends. Learning that it was the great American writer who owned a prominent cliff-top mansion, Parini sent him a note, suggesting a meeting. In an interview before his talk, Parini said he met Vidal in the 1980s when he was living with his family on the Italian coast for a year as he worked on his second novel. Parini chose Vidal as his latest biographical subject for both personal and professional reasons - along with being an admirer of Vidal’s novels, screen and stage plays and essays, Parini and Vidal enjoyed a friendship that lasted more than three decades. He spoke about his 2015 biography of Vidal, called “Empire of Self,” published by Doubleday. Parini, himself a poet, novelist and biographer, was the featured speaker at the March 10 meeting of the Rancho Santa Fe Literary Society. “Here was a man who, in his time, was a meteor,” said Parini of Vidal, a novelist, essayist and public personality who died in 2012 at age 86. To Jay Parini, Gore Vidal was a great friend, a true artist and a presence in the American intellectual firmament for more than 50 years.
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