“The pages of our life are blurred palimpsest, new lines are wreathed on others half erased and those on older still and so forever…..”
The novelist Anaïs Nin claimed an involvement with Vidal in her memoir The Diary of Anaïs Nin but Vidal denied it in his memoir Palimpsest.
In a recent WSJ magazine spread (june 2010) there is an article entitled Estate of Grace, a story about Mitchell Denburg’s hacienda beneath a dormant volcano in Antigua, Guatemala.
“He’s an avowed fan of the architecture here, and can wax nostalgic about the Antiguqa that existed before Guatemala’s 35 year civil war broke out in 1960; a Central American hideout for the international jet set, with a generous helping of bohemianism. This was, after all, where Gore Vidal came to stay in the late 1940’s taking over the ruins of a Carmelite convent, living with Anaïs Nin and according to local legend, turning his self-imposed Antiquan exile into an ongoing party” —Mark Rozzo