Gore Vidal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gore Vidal | |
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Vidal at a Union Square bookstore in 2009
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Born | Eugene Louis Vidal 3 October 1925 West Point, New York, U.S. |
Died | 31 July 2012 (aged 86) Hollywood Hills, California, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Other names | Eugene Luther Vidal, Jr. |
Occupation | Writer (novelist, essayist, playwright, etc.) |
Known for | Julian (1964) |
Political party
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U.S. Democratic Party |
Movement | Postmodernism |
Partner(s) | Howard Austen (1950–2003; Austen's death) |
Parents | Eugene Luther Vidal, Nina Gore |
As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal’s principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy of the National Security State reduced the country to decadent empire.[4] His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazine. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal’s topical debates, on sex, politics, and religion with other public intellectuals and writers, occasionally became continual quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Norman Mailer. As such, and because he thought that men and women potentially are pansexual, Vidal rejected the adjectives “homosexual” and “heterosexual” when used like nouns, as inherently false terms used to classify and control people in society.[5]
As a novelist Gore Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life; the polished, erudite style of narration readily evokes the time and place of the story, and perceptively delineates the psychology of the characters.[6] His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, with a dispassionately-presented male homosexual relationship.[7] In the genre of social satire, Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability of gender-role and sexual-orientation as being social constructs established by social mores.[8] In the historical novel genre, Julian (1964) re-creates the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–63), the Roman Emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism.[9] In Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), the protagonist is presented as “A Man of the People” and as “A Man” in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the U.S.[3][10]
Contents
Early life
Gore Vidal was born "Eugene Louis Vidal" in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy, at West Point, New York, and was the sole child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina Gore (1903–1978).[11] Vidal was born at the West Point cadet hospital because his first-lieutenant father was the first aeronautics instructor of the military academy. The middle name, "Louis", was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther."[12] In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "my birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal, Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."[13]In the event, Eugene Louis Vidal was not baptised until January 1939, when he was thirteen years old, by the headmaster of St. Albans school, where Vidal attended preparatory school. The baptismal ceremony was effected so that he "could be confirmed [into the Episcopal faith] at the Washington Cathedral, in February [1939] as “Eugene Luther Gore Vidal”.[14] He later said that, although the surname “Gore” was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him [maternal grandfather Thomas Pryor Gore], although he had a great influence on my life."[15] In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first-names, because he “wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader . . . I wasn't going to write as ‘Gene’ since there was already one. I didn't want to use the ‘Jr.’ ”.[12][16]
Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr., was director (1933–1937) of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, one of the first Army Air Corps pilots, and also was the great love of the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.[17][18] At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team; and an all-American basketball player. Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon, and coach of the U.S. pentathlon).[19][20] In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. co-founded three airline companies and a railroad line; (i) the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines); (ii) Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines); (iii) Northeast Airlines; and the Boston and Maine Railroad.[21]
Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a high society woman who made her Broadway theatre debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928.[22] In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr., and, thirteen years later, divorced him in 1935.[23] Nina Gore Vidal then was married two more times; to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and also had “a long off-and-on affair” with the actor Clark Gable.[24] As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention.[25]
The subsequent marriages of his mother and father, yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal — Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss — and four step-brothers from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, ten months after marrying Nina.[26] The nephews of Gore Vidal include Burr Steers, a writer and film director, and Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), a figurative painter.[27][28]
Raised in Washington, D.C., the boy Vidal attended the Sidwell Friends School and the St. Albans School. Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, and was his Senate Page, and his seeing-eye guide. The reading of history and literature, coupled to the senator's isolationism formed the principles of Gore Vidal's "America First" political philosophy, which ran counter to the contemporary geopolitical adventurism of the American Empire.[29] In 1939, Vidal left St. Albans School to study in France, but returned when the Second World War began (1 September 1939). In 1940, he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School, and later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire.[30]
In the article Gore Vidal: Sharpest Tongue in the West, Roy Hattersley said that "for reasons he never explained, he [Vidal] did not go on to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, with other members of his social class."[31] Rather than attend university, the patriotic lad, Eugene Luther Vidal, enlisted in the U.S. Army. Having failed training as a military engineer, at the Virginia Military Institute, Vidal exercised his patrician privilege of nepotism, and asked an uncle, the commander of a fighter wing at Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, Colorado, to have him assigned to the USAAF, where he worked as an office clerk.[32] In time, bored with rear-echelon clerical duties, Private Vidal memorized the elements of navigation, presented the examination to qualify as a First Mate, and became a maritime warrant-officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps, and served as first mate of the F.S. 35th, berthed at Dutch Harbor. After three years in service, Warrant Officer Gene Vidal suffered hypothermia, developed rheumatoid arthritis, and consequently was reassigned to duty as a mess officer.[33]
Writer
Fiction
The literary career of Gore Vidal began with the successful publication of the military novel Williwaw, a men-at-war story derived from his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty during the Second World War.[34] The second novel he published, The City and the Pillar (1948) caused a moralistic furor, because of the dispassionate presentation of a male homosexual relationship. The novel was dedicated to “J.T.”; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on 1 March 1945; and that Jimmie Trimble was the only person Gore Vidal ever loved.[35][36] The New York Times book critic, Orville Prescott, was so offended by The City and the Pillar, that he refused to review, or to permit other critics to review, any book by Gore Vidal.[37]In response, Vidal assumed the pseudonym “Edgar Box”, and wrote the mystery novels Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death before Bedtime (1953), and Death Likes it Hot (1954); each featured Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well, and the black-listed Vidal secretly earned a living.[38][39] That mystery-novel success then led Vidal to write in other genres, and he produced the stageplay The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960), and the television play Visit to a Small Planet (1957); two early teleplays were A Sense of Justice (1955) and Honor.[40]
In the 1960s, Vidal published three novels: (i) Julian (1964), about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstate polytheistic paganism when Christianity threatened the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire; (ii) Washington, D.C. (1967), about political life during the presidential era (1933–1945) of Franklin D. Roosevelt; and (iii) Myra Breckinridge (1968), a satire of the American movie business, by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by a transsexual man, the eponymous anti-heroine.
After publishing the plays Weekend (1968) and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972), and the novel Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), the playwright and novelist Gore Vidal then concentrated upon the essay, and developed two types of fiction. The first type is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics.[41] About those historical novels, the critic Harold Bloom said that “Vidal's imagination of American politics . . . is so powerful as to compel awe.” In the event, the historical novels formed the seven-book series, Narratives of Empire: (i) Burr (1973), (ii) 1876 (1976), (iii) Lincoln (1984), (iv) Empire (1987), (v) Hollywood (1990), (vi) Washington, D.C. (1967), and (vii) The Golden Age (2000). Besides U.S. history, Vidal also explored and analyzed the history of the Ancient World, specifically the Axial Age (800–200 B.C.), with the novel Creation (1981). The novel was published without four chapters that originally were part of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher; years later, Vidal restored the chapters to the text, and re-published the novel Creation in 2002.
The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as Myron (1974) the sequel to Myra Breckinridge; Kalki (1978), about the end of the world, and the consequent ennui; Duluth (1983), an alternate universe story; Live from Golgotha (1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity; and The Smithsonian Institution (1998), a time-travel story.
Movies
- Anonymous script doctor
Thirty-six years later, in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995), Vidal explained that Messala’s failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd). That Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene, and that the director, the producer, and the screenplay writer agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene.[43] In turn, on learning of that script-doctor explanation, Charlton Heston said that Gore Vidal had contributed little to the script of Ben Hur (1959), the very successful third version of the religious novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), by Lew Wallace.[44] Despite Vidal’s script-doctor resolution of the character’s motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the “original author” of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the actual filmed screenplay.[45]
Elsewhere, that profitable defeat soon was countered by public acknowledgement; two plays, The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960) and Visit to a Small Planet (1955) were, respectively, theatre and movie successes. Moreover, Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. Two such movies are: (i) the cowboy movie Billy the Kid (1989), about William H. Bonney a gunman in the Lincoln County War (1878), occurred in the New Mexico territory, and later an outlaw in the Western frontier of the U.S.; and (ii) the Roman Empire movie Caligula (1979), from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed, because the producer, Bob Guccione, the director, Tinto Brass, and the leading actor, Malcolm McDowell, rewrote the script, and added extra sex and violence in order to increase the commercial success of a movie based upon the life of the Roman Emperor Caligula (AD 12–41), which is the fourth biography in The Twelve Caesars (AD 121), by Suetonius.[46]
Non-fiction
In the U,S., Gore Vidal often is identified as an essayist, rather than as a novelist.[47] Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as Martin Amis, admitted that “Essays are what he is good at . . . [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating.”For six decades, Vidal the writer applied himself to many socio-political, sexual, historical, and literary subjects. In the essay anthology Armageddon (1987) Vidal explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary U.S. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and that of his Administrations, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the world in the late twentieth century. In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology United States: Essays 1952–1992 (1993).[48]
According to the citation, "Whatever his subject, he addresses it with an artist's resonant appreciation, a scholar's conscience and the persuasive powers of a great essayist."[49]
A subsequent collection of essays, published in 2000, is The Last Empire. He subsequently published such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, and Imperial America, critiques of American expansionism, the military-industrial complex, the national security state and the George W. Bush administration. Vidal also wrote a historical essay about the U.S.'s founding fathers, Inventing a Nation. In 1995, he published a memoir Palimpsest, and in 2006 its follow-up volume, Point to Point Navigation. Earlier that year, Vidal also published Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories.
Because of his matter-of-fact treatment of same-sex relations in such books as The City and The Pillar, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation.[50] In the September 1969 edition of Esquire, for example, Vidal wrote:
We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal.[51]In 1995, Jay Parini was appointed as Vidal's literary executor.[52]
In 2009, he won the annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture."[53]
Public intellectual
U.S. politics
As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the Democratic Party.[54][55] In 1960, he was the Democratic candidate for Congress, for the 29th Congressional District of New York State, a usually Republican district on the Hudson River, but lost the election to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent.[56] Campaigning under the slogan of You'll get more with Gore, Vidal received the most votes any Democrat candidate had received in fifty years. Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt, and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, friends who spoke in his behalf.[57]In 1982, he campaigned against Jerry Brown, the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election to the U.S. Senate; Vidal correctly prophesied that the opposing Republican candidate would win that election.[58] That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No (1983), directed by Gary Conklin.
In the article, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh” (2001), meant to glean why the domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), Vidal concluded that McVeigh (a politically-disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the First Iraq War, 1990–91) had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in revenge for the FBI's Waco massacre (1993) at the Branch Davidian Compound, in Texas, because the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same way as the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis.[59]
In Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney–Bush Junta (2002), Vidal drew parallels about how the U.S. enters wars, and said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked Imperial Japan to attack the U.S., in order to justify the American entry to the Second World War (1939–45), and that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the dawn-raid Attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941).[60] In the documentary Why We Fight (2005), Vidal said that, during the final months of the War, the Japanese had unsuccessfully tried to surrender to the U.S., "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but Truman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs. . . . To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the balance of power in the world. To declare war on communism. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war."[61]
As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal criticized the political harm to the nation, the voiding of the citizen's rights, by the USA Patriot Act (2001) promulgated by the Bush Administration (2001–2009). He described Bush, himself, as "the stupidest man in the United States";[62] and that Bush's foreign policy was explicitly expansionist.[63] That the Bush Administration, and their oil-business sponsors, aimed to control the petroleum of Central Asia, after having gained effective control of the petroleum of the Persian Gulf in 1991.[64]
In May 2007, in discussing the 9/11 conspiracy theories that might explain the “who?” and the “why?” of the terrorist attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C., Vidal said:
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. Everything the Bushites touch is screwed up. They could never have pulled off 9/11, even if they wanted to. Even if they longed to. They could step aside, though, or just go out to lunch while these terrible things were happening to the nation. I believe that of them.[65]In the event, Vidal became a member of the board of advisors of The World Can't Wait, a political organization who sought to publicly repudiate the foreign-policy program of the Bush Administration (2001–2009), and advocated the impeachment of President George W. Bush for war crimes, such as pre-emptively launching the Second Iraq War (2003–2011) and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law.[66]
On 30 September 2009, the British newspaper The Times published an interview with Vidal in which he said that there soon would be a dictatorship in the U.S. The newspaper emphasized that Gore Vidal, the Grand Old Man of American Belles-lettres, claimed that America is rotting away — and to not expect Barack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In that interview, Gore Vidal also up-dated his views of his life, the U.S., and other political subjects.[67] The political and cultural rot of which he spoke, he earlier had identified and described in the essay “The State of the Union” (1975), that:
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party . . . and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently . . . and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.[68]In the American Conservative article, “My Pen Pal Gore Vidal” (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that Gore Vidal's favorite U.S. politician, during his lifetime, was Huey Long (1893–1935), the populist Governor (1928–1932) of and Senator (1932–1935) for the State of Louisiana, who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics; and who was assassinated, by a lone gunman.[69]
Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards the U.S. "My family helped start [this country] . . . and we've been in political life . . . since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country."[70][71] Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972, Vidal was a chairman of the People's Party of the United States.[72] In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader for U.S. president in the 1972 election.[73] In 2004, in he endorsed the Democrat Dennis Kucinich in his candidacy for the U.S. presidency (in 2004), because Kucinich was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates, from either the Republican or the Democratic parties, and that Kucinich was "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain".[74]
Cultural politics
- The Buckley–Vidal feud
In 1969, in Esquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in the essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" (August 1969), in which he portrayed Vidal as an apologist for homosexuality; Buckley said, “The man who, in his essays, proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher." The essay is collected in The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings of that time.
In turn, also in Esquire magazine, Vidal responded to Buckley with the essay “A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr.” (September 1969), and said that Buckley was "anti-black", "anti-semitic", and a "warmonger".[51] The offended Buckley sued Vidal for libel; at trial, the judge said, that the "court must conclude that Vidal's comments, in these paragraphs, meet the minimal standard of fair comment. The inferences made by Vidal, from Buckley's [earlier editorial] statements, cannot be said to be completely unreasonable."[citation needed]
Moreover, their feud continued, and, in Esquire magazine, Vidal implied that, in 1944, William F. Buckley, Jr., and unnamed siblings had vandalized a Protestant church in Sharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown) after the wife of a pastor had sold a house to a Jewish family. The offended Buckley again sued Vidal and Esquire for libel; and Vidal filed a counter-claim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of Myra Breckinridge (1968) as a pornographic novel.[citation needed]
The court dismissed Vidal's counter-claim.[78] Buckley accepted a money settlement of $115,000 to pay the fee of his attorney, and an editorial apology from Esquire magazine, in which the publisher and the editors said that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of Vidal's assertions.[79] Yet, in a letter to Newsweek magazine, the publisher of Esquire said that "the settlement of Buckley's suit against us" was not "a 'disavowal' of Vidal's article. On the contrary, it clearly states that we published that article because we believed that Vidal had a right to assert his opinions, even though we did not share them."
In Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999), Fred Kaplan, said that “The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against Esquire . . . [that] the court had 'not' ruled that Vidal's article was 'defamatory.' It had ruled that the case would have to go to trial in order to determine, as a matter of fact, whether or not it was defamatory. The cash value of the settlement with Esquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses. . . ."
In 2003, William F. Buckley, Jr. resumed his complaint of having been libelled by Gore Vidal, with the publication of the anthology Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing (2003), which included Vidal's essay, “A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr.” (1969). Again, the offended Buckley filed lawsuit for libel, and Esquire magazine again settled Buckley's claim with $65,000 — $55,000 for the fees of his attorney, and $10,000 for personal damages suffered by Buckley.[citation needed]
In the obituary “RIP WFB — in Hell” (20 March 2008), Vidal remembered his nemesis William F. Buckley, Jr., who had died on 27 February 2008.[80] Later, in the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal" (15 June 2008), the New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon asked Vidal, “How did you feel, when you heard that Buckley died this year?” Vidal responded:
I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins, forever, those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.[81]
- The Mailer–Vidal feud
- The rights of German Scientologists
- National self-preservation
A characteristic of our present chaos is the dramatic migration of tribes. They are on the move from east to west, from south to north. Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety, or even the pursuit of happiness. But now, with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”[88]
- The Polanski rape case
Asked for elaboration, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s: “The [news] media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press — lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel, all in white, being raped by this awful Jew Polacko — that’s what people were calling him — well, the story is totally different now [2009] from what it was then [1970s]. . . . Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to American values, in the least. To [his persecutors], that seemed vicious and unnatural." Asked to explain the term “American values”, Vidal replied: “Lying and cheating. There's nothing better.”[89]
In response to Vidal’s opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, the Boston Herald published the article “Gore Vidal Rips Roman Polanski Rape Victim as ‘Hooker’ ” (1 November 2009), in which a spokeswoman for the organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Barbara Dorris, said: “People should express their outrage, by refusing to buy any of his books” . . . and called Vidal a “mean-spirited buffoon”. That, although “a boycott wouldn’t hurt Vidal financially”, it would “cause anyone else, with such callous views, to keep his mouth shut, and [so] avoid rubbing salt into the already deep [psychological] wounds of (the victims)” of sexual abuse.[90]
- Vidal the Humanist
Actor & pop-culture figure
- Actor
- Pop-culture figure
In the 1970s, in the stand-up comedy album Reality . . . What a Concept, Robin Williams portrayed Gore Vidal as a drunken shill in a Thunderbird wine commercial.
In 2005, Gore Vidal portrayed himself in Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula, a video-art piece, by Francesco Vezzoli, included to the 2005 Venice Biennale, and part of the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City.[95] Moreover, Vidal provided his own voice for the animated-cartoon versions of himself in The Simpsons and the Family Guy programs. Likewise, he portrayed himself in the Da Ali G Show; the Ali G character mistakes him for Vidal Sassoon, a famous hairdresser.
In the biographic film Amelia (2009), the child Gore Vidal was portrayed by William Cuddy, a Canadian actor. In the Truman Capote biographic film Infamous (2006), the young adult Gore Vidal was portrayed by the American actor Michael Panes.
In 2009, Vidal was the narrator for a production of Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), by Bertolt Brecht, staged by the Royal National Theatre, London.
Private life
In the multi-volume memoir The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–1974), Anaïs Nin said she had a love affair with Gore Vidal, who denied her claim in his memoir Palimpsest (1995). Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter.[96][97] Yet, regarding Nin, in the online article “Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anaïs Nin” (2013), the author Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from Gore Vidal to Anaïs Nin, which contradicts Vidal's denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the Vidal–Nin love letter whilst researching Mirages, the latest volume of Anaïs Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the “Foreword”.[98] Moreover, he briefly was engaged to the actress Joanne Woodward, before she married the actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal, in Los Angeles.In 1950, Gore Vidal met Howard Austen, who became his life-partner in a fifty-three-year relationship.[99] He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not copulate with each other: "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does."[100] In Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews (1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself "gay", because he was not an adjective, because "to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim. . . . I've said — a thousand times? — in print and on T.V., that everyone is bisexual." [101]
The literature of Gore Vidal was influenced by poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists such as Petronius (d. AD 66), Juvenal (AD 60–140), Apuleius (fl. ca. AD 155); William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), and George Meredith (1828–1909); Marcel Proust (1871–1922), Henry James (1843–1916), and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966).[102] Regarding his reputation as a substantive writer, the cultural critic Harold Bloom said that Gore Vidal had believed that his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the literary community of the U.S.; and that such limited recognition owed more to Vidal writing in the unfashionable, plot-oriented genre of historical fiction, than with whom Vidal shared a pillow.[103] Nonetheless, in 2009, the Man of Letters Gore Vidal was named honorary president of the American Humanist Association.[104][105]
In the course of his life, the author Gore Vidal lived and resided in Italy and in the U.S. In 2003, he sold La Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest), his Italian villa on the Amalfi Coast, in the province of Salerno, and he and Austen returned to the U.S. and lived in Los Angeles.[106] In November 2003, Howard Austen died; later, in February 2005, Austen was re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave meant for Vidal and Austen. Nine years later, on 31 July 2012, the eighty-six-year-old novelist, Gore Vidal, died of pneumonia, in his house in Hollywood Hills, California.[107][108]
- Post-mortem hearsay
Steers said, “I know Buckley had a file, on him, that Gore feared. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex. Gore spent a lot of time in Bangkok, after all. Gore also had a very weird take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests. He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals.”[109] Reportedly, Gore Vidal suffered alcoholic encephalopathy, derived from the illness "Wernicke-Korsakoff, a syndrome characterized by a number of symptoms, including [mental] confusion and hallucination"; and that, in the last nine years of his life, Vidal drank to excess, especially after the death, in 2003, of his companion Howard Austen.[109]
Legacy
- The post-mortem opinions about the writer Gore Vidal varied
- Domestic obituaries
- Foreign obituaries
- In memoriam
Bibliography
Non-fiction
- Rocking the Boat (1963)
- Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
- Sex, Death and Money (1969) (paperback compilation)
- Homage to Daniel Shays (1972)
- Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1977)
- Views from a Window Co-Editor (1981)
- The Second American Revolution (1983)
- Vidal In Venice (1985) ISBN 0-671-60691-3
- Armageddon? (1987) (UK only)
- At Home (1988)
- A View From The Diner's Club (1991) (UK only)
- Screening History (1992) ISBN 0-233-98803-3
- Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992) ISBN 1-878825-00-3
- United States: Essays 1952–1992 (1993) ISBN 0-7679-0806-6 — National Book Award[48]
- Palimpsest: a memoir (1995) ISBN 0-679-44038-0
- Virgin Islands (1997) (UK only)
- The American Presidency (1998) ISBN 1-878825-15-1
- Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (1999)
- The Last Empire: essays 1992–2000 (2001) ISBN 0-375-72639-X (there is also a much shorter UK edition)
- Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be So Hated, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, (2002) ISBN 1-56025-405-X
- Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunder's Mouth Press, (2002) ISBN 1-56025-502-1
- Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003) ISBN 0-300-10171-6
- Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004) ISBN 1-56025-744-X
- Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir (2006) ISBN 0-385-51721-1
- The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal (2008) ISBN 0-385-52484-6
- Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (2009) ISBN 0-8109-5049-9
Plays
- Visit to a Small Planet (1957) ISBN 0-8222-1211-0
- The Best Man (1960)
- On the March to the Sea (1960–1961, 2004)
- Romulus (adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1950 play Romulus der Große) (1962)
- Weekend (1968)
- Drawing Room Comedy (1970)
- An Evening with Richard Nixon (1970) ISBN 0-394-71869-0
- On the March to the Sea (2005)
Novels
- Williwaw (1946) ISBN 0-226-85585-6
- In a Yellow Wood (1947)
- The City and the Pillar (1948) ISBN 1-4000-3037-4
- The Season of Comfort (1949) ISBN 0-233-98971-4
- A Search for the King (1950) ISBN 0-345-25455-4
- Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) ISBN 0-233-98913-7 (see "In the Lair of the Octopus" and Dreaming War)
- A Star's Progress (aka Cry Shame!) (1950) as “Katherine Everard”
- The Judgment of Paris (1952) ISBN 0-345-33458-2
- Death in the Fifth Position (1952) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
- Thieves Fall Out (1953) under the pseudonym Cameron Kay
- Death Before Bedtime (1953) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
- Death Likes It Hot (1954) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
- Messiah (1954) ISBN 0-14-118039-0
- A Thirsty Evil (1956) (short stories)
- Julian (1964) ISBN 0-375-72706-X
- Washington, D.C. (1967) ISBN 0-316-90257-8
- Myra Breckinridge (1968) ISBN 1-125-97948-8
- Two Sisters (1970) ISBN 0-434-82958-7
- Burr (1973) ISBN 0-375-70873-1
- Myron (1974) ISBN 0-586-04300-4
- 1876 (1976) ISBN 0-375-70872-3
- Kalki (1978) ISBN 0-14-118037-4
- Creation (1981) ISBN 0-349-10475-1
- Duluth (1983) ISBN 0-394-52738-0
- Lincoln (1984) ISBN 0-375-70876-6
- Empire (1987) ISBN 0-375-70874-X
- Hollywood (1990) ISBN 0-375-70875-8
- Live From Golgotha (1992) ISBN 0-14-023119-6
- The Smithsonian Institution (1998) ISBN 0-375-50121-5
- The Golden Age (2000) ISBN 0-375-72481-8
- Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (2006) The anthology A Thirsty Evil (1956), with the additional short story “Clouds and Eclipses”
Screenplays and teleplays
- Climax!: A Farewell to Arms (1955); Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1955) (TV adaptations)
- The Best of Broadway (1955): TV adaptation of Stage Door
- The Catered Affair (1956)
- I Accuse! (1958)
- The Scapegoat (1959)
- Ben Hur (1959) (uncredited)
- Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
- The Best Man (1964)
- Is Paris Burning? (1966)
- Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)
- Caligula (1979)
- Dress Gray (1986)
- The Sicilian (1987) (uncredited)
- Billy the Kid (1989)
- Dimenticare Palermo (1989)
Pop-culture figure
- What's My Line? occasional guest (1960s)
- CBS Reports: The Homosexuals (1967)
- Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) appeared in 7 episodes, as himself
- Profile of a Writer: Gore Vidal — RM Productions (1979 documentary film)
- Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No (1983 documentary film)
- Weekend In Wallop (1984)
- Vidal in Venice — Antelope Films for Channel Four Television (1987 documentary film)
- Bob Roberts — as Senator Brickley Paiste (1992 film)
- With Honors — the pessimistic, right-wing Prof. Pitkannan (1994 film)
- The Celluloid Closet (1995 documentary film)[120]
- Gattaca — Director Josef (1997 science-fiction film)
- Shadow Conspiracy — Congressman Paige (1997 political thriller)
- Igby Goes Down Schoolmaster (2001 film)
- The Education of Gore Vidal (2003 documentary film, by Deborah Dickson) broadcast by PBS in the US.
- Thinking XXX (2004 documentary)
- Da Ali G Show (2004 TV)
- Why We Fight (2005 film)
- Inside Deep Throat (2005 film)
- One Bright Shining Moment (2005 film)
- Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula (2005 spoof trailer)
- Foreign Correspondent — with former NSW premier Bob Carr
- The U.S. Versus John Lennon (2006 film)
- Family Guy episode: "Mother Tucker" (17 September 2006)
- The Simpsons episode: "Moe'N'a Lisa" (19 November 2006)
- Alex Jones radio show
- Jon Wiener's radio program in Los Angeles[121]
- The Henry Rollins Show (2007 TV)
- Terrorstorm: Final Cut Special Edition (2007)
- Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra concert, 2 August 2007 — Narrated the Lincoln Portrait, by Aaron Copland, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
- Lateline — ABC Television Australia Interview (2 May 2008)
- Democracy Now — interview: on the Bush Presidency, History, and the "United States of Amnesia"[122] (14 May 2008)
- The South Bank Show (18 May 2008)
- HARDtalk — BBC News (22 May 2008)
- The Andrew Marr Show (25 May 2008)
- The US is Not a Republic Anymore [123] (June, 2008)
- Zero: An Investigation into 9/11 (June 2008)[124]
- Interview on the BBC's US Presidential Election Coverage with David Dimbleby (4 November 2008)[125]
- "Gore Vidal's History of the National Security State" on The Real News Network (2008)
- "Writer Against the Grain": Gore Vidal in Conversation with Jay Parini, 2009 Key West Literary Seminar (audio recording 59:09)[126]
- Real Time with Bill Maher (10 April 2009)
- Shrink (2009 film)
- "Gore Vidal's America"[127] on The Real News Network (24 December 2010)
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