Catching a Buzz

The Second American Revolution and Other Essays (1976-1982)By Gore Vidal

Random House, 278 pp., $15 In this fifth collection of essays by the most literary of the recent aspirants toward the Senate seat of S. I. Hayakawa, the reader will find enough of Gore Vidal’s familiar peeves and idiolect to make him feel thoroughly at home. All the bees are still hiving under that brilliant bonnet, swat as their keeper will at them. The “hacks of Academe,” “Christers,” writers of mere description, Truman Capote, those “hustler-plagiarist” directors acclaimed as auteurs, “book-chat”—even the use of “shrill” as a verb: they’re all back for another beating.

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Thomas Mallon

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The Second American Revolution and Other Essays (1976-1982)By Gore Vidal

Random House, 278 pp., $15 In this fifth collection of essays by the most literary of the recent aspirants toward the Senate seat of S. I. Hayakawa, the reader will find enough of Gore Vidal’s familiar peeves and idiolect to make him feel thoroughly at home. All the bees are still hiving under that brilliant bonnet, swat as their keeper will at them. The “hacks of Academe,” “Christers,” writers of mere description, Truman Capote, those “hustler-plagiarist” directors acclaimed as auteurs, “book-chat”—even the use of “shrill” as a verb: they’re all back for another beating.