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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Books: Elegant Hell
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 26, 2009 12:49am |
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| Category | Review |
| Author | R.Z. Sheppard |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Monday, March 27, 1978 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Kalki by Gore Vidal; Random House; 254 pages; $10
The Bhagavad-Gita reckons a day in the life of the creator god Brahma as roughly 311 trillion, 40 million years. This twitch in the flank of eternity is divided into a thousand cycles of four ages. The first is golden with virtue, wisdom and religion. Vice is introduced in the second age and the universe goes downhill thereafter. We are, according to the ancient Vedic text, some 5,000, years into Kaliyuga, the final, corrupt age. This cycle should all be over in about 427,000 years.
Gore Vidal cannot wait. His latest novel is an apocalyptical extravaganza that craftily combines feminism, homosexuality, mysticism, science fiction, fiction science, the second law of thermodynamics, the first law of survival, high fashion and low animal cunning. The plot is diabolically clever. Theodora (Teddy) Ottinger, the world's leading female pilot and bisexual author of the bestselling Beyond Motherhood, stumbles into the service of Jim Kelly, a golden-haired Viet Nam vet who fancies himself Kalki, the Hindu god whose job it is to ring down the curtain on the material universe. Teddy needs the money; she is behind in alimony payments to her ex-husband.
Financed by drug profits from Southeast Asia, Kalki/Kelly launches a publicity blitz that includes a spectacular death act in Madison Square Garden. The smashing of an atom is projected as a blinding light show. A Kalki/Kelly double and the horse he rode in on are blown to shreds, an event that tens of millions get to examine in endless TV replays. It is, notes an L.A. viewer, "the biggest thing that's hit the Hollywood Hills since what's-his-name walked on the moon." |
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