In the following negative review of Palimpsest, Simon condemns the “self-aggrandizement,” vituperation, and disingenuousness of Vidal's memoir, particularly Vidal’s characterizations of various friends, writers, celebrities, and lovers.

In the following review, Bayley offers a positive evaluation of Palimpsest.

Gore Vidal, at twenty-five, occupies and enviable position in American letters. Not only is he the youngest of the group of new writers whose first books began attracting attention right after the war, but he has already produced as large and varied a body of work as many of his contemporaries may be expected to produce comfortably in a lifetime. (p. 170) Williwaw—written when Vidal was nineteen and still in the Army—was a slight and unpretentious book about the war. It was done in the clipped...

In the following review of United States, Raphael commends Vidal's “moral courage,” though finds fault in his smugness and antagonism.

In the following review, Hillier offers a positive evaluation of Palimpsest.

In the following review of The Essential Gore Vidal, Brownrigg praises Vidal's diverse and provocative oeuvre, though finds shortcomings with the volume's critical introductions and selections by editor Fred Kaplan.

In the following review, Raban offers a positive assessment of Vidal's essay collection United States.

In the following review, Mantel offers a positive evaluation of A View from the Diner's Club.

In more than thirty volumes of novels, stories, plays, and essays Gore Vidal … has exposed and ridiculed the power of superstition from the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century to the destructive force of various religious cults today. In each of the last three decades of Vidal's career, one novel stands out for its satire of religious superstition. In the fifties Vidal published Messiah (1954) which mocks Christianity with the success of a death-worshipping cult that spreads quickly ...

In the following review of Palimpsest, McCourt finds Vidal's memoir lacking, though commends his discussion of a boyhood friendship, which to McCourt's regret is not elaborated upon.

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.

In the following review of United States, MacIntyre offers a largely positive assessment of Vidal's essays, though he argues that Vidal is a “snob” whose writings sometimes suffer from his “aloofness.”

In the following review, Reeves offers a generally positive assessment of Hollywood, though he argues that Vidal's observations about the relationship between Washington and Hollywood are not particularly original.

In the following review, Brogan offers a positive assessment of Palimpsest.

In the following review, See offers a positive assessment of Hollywood.

In the following review, Koenig offers a generally positive assessment of United States.

In the following review of A View from the Diner’s Club, Lefkowitz commends Vidal's “pronouncements on politics and life,” though finds his literary criticism less interesting.

In the following review, Adair offers unfavorable assessment of Screening History, which he describes as “a rambling, inconsequential book that fails absolutely to do justice to its title.”

In the following review, Christiansen offers a positive assessment of Virgin Islands, though he argues that some of Vidal's themes are repetitive and predictable.

[Julian] brings together and dramatizes more effectively and with much greater authority than ever before preoccupations that have been present in [Gore Vidal's] fiction almost from its beginnings. Indeed, despite the complete dissimilarity of ostensible subject, form, period and setting, Julian in a real sense recapitulates the themes and attitudes of The Judgment of Paris, which appeared in 1952. That novel was a modern version precisely of the judgment of Paris, who, in Vidal's pages, is a ...

In the following review, Taylor offers a negative assessment of The Smithsonian Institution.

["Creation"] takes the form of the memoir-autobiography of one Cyrus Spitama, a half-Persian, half-Greek grandson of the prophet Zoroaster. Spitama regards himself as a "counter-historian," which is not a bad description of Gore Vidal, who has offered his own interpretation of Roman and American history in such novels as "Julian," "Burr" and "1876," not to mention his numerous graceful essays. "Myra Breckenridge" had a histo...

Few American writers can display the virtuosity of Gore Vidal: saline essays on popular arts and letters; our best political play, The Best Man; intimate analyses of politics, ranging from his observations chez Kennedy to the limitations of Ronald Reagan; futuristic visits to a small planet; revisionist appraisals of America's past imperfect in Burr and 1876; and, of course, the sexual vaudeville of Myra Breckenridge, Myron, and, though he has shrewdly disowned it, the film Caligula, loosely based on...

In the following review, LaHood offers a positive assessment of Palimpsest.

Gore Vidal is rapidly becoming his own worst enemy, no small feat for a veteran of so many literary feuds and friendships that have gone sour. For years, Vidal has been railing against such abominations as the Non-Fiction Novel, the New Novel, and the University Novel. These literary forms, Vidal contends, may have some worth, but not as fiction. His own work, with one or two exceptions, has generally been in the traditional form exemplified by his favorite American novelist, Henry James. Since the publicat...

[In Julian] Gore Vidal has resurrected that unacknowledged humanists' culture-hero, Julian the Apostate—though perhaps "resurrected" is an unfortunate word to use in connection with the Emperor who called Christians "Galileans" and their churches "charnel-houses."… Vidal has one rather ambiguous advantage …: unlike most Emperors, Julian wrote a great deal that was not only sedulously applauded during his lifetime, but actually survived fo...

Vidal says, "Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult." Such is certainly the case with [Matters of Fact and of Fiction], which presents the many glittering facets of a truly witty mind. Some will object to his recurrent use of epithets such as the "Great Golfer" and the "First Criminal" to refer to recent Republican presidents. Others will object to his incurable habit of name dropping, his penchant for sweeping generalizations, and his...

The idea behind ["Views from a Window"] is one of such obvious wit and utility that one can only marvel at the fact that no one seems to have tried it before—but people undoubtedly said the same thing about the invention of the wheel. Gore Vidal, who has been interviewed by just about every publication claiming some connection to literature during the past 20 years, has selected the choicer tidbits from many of the interviews and arranged them not in chronological order but according to...

Edgar Box was the pen name of Gore Vidal, who wrote [the mysteries, "Death in the Fifth Position," "Death before Bedtime," and "Death Likes It Hot," in the early fifties], and then dropped the genre. Each features the public-relations man Peter Cutler Sargeant III. Each has characters who move in relatively high society: great ballet dancers, Washington moguls, East Hampton Social Register types. Box/Vidal tried to get a breezy style … into his Sargeant, who ...