ministry for peace - Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace:

Gore Vidal would not be Gore Vidal if he left the topic of this book at merely proving the more than 200 instances of United States "pre-emptive strike" military incursions that have taken place since the end of World War Two, proving the existence of the philosophy in the Pentagon that is sarcastically referred to by the title of the book. Vidal traces the dangerous link between Timothy Mcveigh and Osama bin Laden to moral anamolies in American foreign and domestic policy in much the same way one could trace the otherwise unrelated illnesses of heart disease and lung cancer to cigarette smoking. In so doing he demands us, whether or not we come to the same conclusions, to look at our own cultural selves and our country's leaders with new eyes: the eyes of much of the rest of the world.

Vidal is often too postmodern for his own good. As he approaches his late seventies (he is the author of twenty-two novels, tons of essays, plays and screenplays and was one of President Kennedy's best friends) his all too self-conscious "ascerbic wit" has begun to have a harder than necessary edge to it. You can almost see how the conversations he is writing for us have really become conversations he is having with himself, in the way a wise old man, slowly but inexplicably driving to Curmudgeonville after giving up on his audience or would-be students ever getting a clue would do. Yet the pearls of wisdom that thread through both this work and his infinitely insightful mind makes the book immeasurably important, and go a lot further in explainnig the souce of both his cynicism and the repressed, near uncontrollable passion he has for his country.

Something is missing in America today, something deeply important for the American soul. When that thing is concentrated or exaggerated to the point of absurdity in an individual (in inverse proportion to its absence in the culture) it produces the actions of the men who form the subject of several of his essays. But the value of this unnamed thing--and the fact that it is missing from our culture in areas where it is needed: our relationship with the non-rich world in and outside of our boundaries--comes clear with every page. That is the magic of great writers: making something invisible felt between every written word.

Vidal is a master whose talent nor reputation have ever been overstated. This book, which shockingly though unfortunately understandably could not be published in America when it was first written, is another of his gifts to the country he loves so much.