SOURCE: “Gentleman's Relish,” in New Statesman & Society, October 8, 1993, pp. 33-4.

In the following review of United States, Kaveney praises Vidal's intelligence, wit, and adamance, though argues that his writings are at times overly condescending and irritating.

Reading this book [United States] is an intrusion, an eavesdropping on a private dialogue between America’s greatest living belle-lettriste/agitator and the United States of his ideals, or perhaps of his fantasies. He would like to talk to America, to the Just Republic. But failing that, knowing that it never existed, he will talk to Americans and, most often, talk down to them from the height of his arrogance, intelligence and wit.

His reviews are a serious and sober call to read better; his polemics a call to Americans to discard illusions about politics, religion, history and sex; his more general essays a call for that joie de vivre debauched out...