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MYRON by Gore Vidal

MYRON

By

Pub Date: Nov. 15th, 1974
Publisher: Random House

Another one of Vidal's transsexual delicacies resurrecting Myra Breckinridge or rather altering her in a Jan-us faced fashion 25 years later when Myra becomes Myron with a ""reconstructed rehnquist between his legs but no powells."" (In the interests of Chief Justice Burger, there are no bad words -- only surrogates, and everyone's ""burgered"" off on every page or two.) Anyway Myron who was just a straight shooter serving as a Chinese caterer is infested with the persona of the late sex goddess-symbol and is whisked back in every other chapter to the golden year -- 1948 -- when John Wayne was so ""butch"" and there were all those wonderful Judge Hardy films with ""Mickey, the adorable little shaver"" wandering all over the MGM lot. And of course you remember Northside 777 -- it was so prophetic of Watergate with which this is more than a little concerned. Actually Vidal's playback of the old films is as funny as anything around and even if this wasn't your ""assiette de the"" (how couldn't it have been? Myra was numero una?) Vidal seems to be enjoying himself with the movie monde as his huitre while Myron is swallowing them by the dozen. With or without the bad words, the kink is only a kind of marceled humor losing its wave after the first half hour; and the book is ultimately just a reminder of a much earlier world of filmdom's finest hours or rather fifteen minutes when a flick was only one reel. Sans blague, sweetie.