A few years ago, graciously deigning to appear on a British talk-show, Gore Vidal was irked to find himself interrupted in mid-flow by the host, Clive Anderson. “I’m not finished yet,” he snapped.

“Well, who knows?,” said Anderson. And he has a point. Vidal is never finished. Across the unbounded horizons of his masterful vision, a vast army of name-dropping anecdotes, droll aphorisms, doubtful statistics, and dubious propositions trots languidly in service of the wearily magisterial controversialist’s idiosyncratic thesis of the twentieth century, one as remarkably indifferent to humdrum reality as the man himself. In an ideal world, he might have been another Cole Porter or Noel Coward, content to glitter brilliantly on the surface. Instead, he’s the Noel Coward of conspiracy theorists, bitching queenily in the subterranean canyons of America’s dark heart.

On this side of the ocean, with two-hundred tel ...

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