"Kalki" by Gore Vidal ****

• Originally published in 1978
• USA author
• Reading this as part of a Group Read on LibraryThing.com, reading novels about closed societies

• Quotes I Liked: 
• p. 6..."It was always necessary around Hollywood to remind people that you were still in demand at whatever it was that you were celebrated for."
• p. 54...."Is he using, as we suspect, his potentially enormous influence as a religious figure to subvert the American way of life in order to serve an alien creed based on inhuman collectivism?"
• p. 120..."When I notice something ridiculous, I notice it only much later.  I do not observe a moment while I am living it.  It is only later that I go over every detail of my life."
• p. 120..."The romantic looks at a large mirror and believes it to be the sea.  The realist looks at the sea and believes it to be a mirror.  But the man with a straightforward mind says, in front of the mirror:  'It is a mirror!' and in front of the sea:  'It is the sea.' "
• p.149..."What other nation has made itself a world empire not so much through force--or sale--of arms as through the invention of the multinational corporation which owes allegiance, officially, to no nation on earth but, unofficially, is the creation of ruling class United Statesmen or persons?"
• p. 154..."C'etait pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit".....Racine
• p. 155..."I am the mind that contains all things as well as no thing or nothing.  I am, and that is all."....Kalki
• p. 186..."What really matters is that as the matter of each of us ceases to exist in its present form, it reassembles in yet another form.  Naturally, there can be no loss of anything in a constant nature.  But there is rearrangement."
• p. 211..."Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comedie en tout le rests."...Pascal

• Review:   Not just your plain everyday end of the world tale!  This novel, written in the 1970s, is more of a sociopolitical statement than a novel.  Using the Hindu concepts of Vishnu come again as avatar Kalki, to end the current era of human life on earth, the protagonist manages to manipulate the masses in order to achieve his own ends.  Not only does he manipulate the common person on the street, but he is able to successfully manipulate Congress, the Chinese Mafia, and the CIA to his own ends.  Charisma and intellect combined create a dangerous entity!  Yet, without spoiling the book for anyone, I would have to say that if the reader is not enjoying the author's sociopolitical commentary in the first two thirds of the book, the final third is just a great ending to the entire novel, satisfying in many ways!