VOICES OF PACIFICA VOL 5 Gore Vidal

The Pacifica Foundation, which predates the founding of NPR, has been a purveyor of leftist agitprop and experimental radio programming for most of its checkered history. Now it is dipping into that history to publish noteworthy recordings from its archives. This volume contains speeches by and interviews with novelist, playwright, and pundit Gore Vidal. Always provocative, Vidal dispenses more wit than wisdom in these excerpts, though there are sharp insights to be gleaned from his fascinating but biased rhetoric. Predictably, Pacifica has done a slapdash job of assembling the audio, cutting off the excerpts at arbitrary points, adding badly written and badly delivered introductory patter. Nonetheless, Vidal is a superb public speaker and an influential part of our recent political past. Y.R. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 00]