Gore Vidal

Modified: 2007/09/26 17:32 by seth.insua@gmail.com - Uncategorized
Gore Vidal, the US novelist, essayist, and polemicist, was born October 3, 1925, in West Point, New York.

Edit

Life and Career



==Early Life and First Novels==

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. was born in the Cadet Hospital at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where his father, Gene Vidal, was an aeronautics instructor. His father was a fearless aviator and a sporting hero. His mother Nina, had a number of affairs and was fond of drink. Gore Vidal spent much of his childhood in Washington with his blind grandfather Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma. Gene and Nina Vidal divorced in 1935. Nina Vidal married Hugh Auchincloss, and hence Gore Vidal acquired a stepfather in common with Jacqueline Kennedy.

Gore Vidal was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy but was a mediocre student. He fell in love with a fellow pupil, Jimmie Trimble, who was later killed in action in 1945. In 1943 Gore Vidal joined the United States Army Reserve Corps and served on army transports in the Aleutian Islands in World War II. Army life gave him material for his first novel, Williwaw, (1946), which was published with some acclaim when he was just 19. The novel included an openly gay character. The success of the novel was helped by the support of Eleanor Roosevelt in her influential newspaper column. His second novel In a Yellow Wood, (1947), and subsequent novels were not so well received. His The City and the Pillar, (1948), was the first widely-read US novel with gay male characters, although it was ahead of its time and under pressure from his publishers he gave it a tragic ending.

==Later Works==

Gore Vidal has written detective stories under the name of Edgar Box. He wrote another story under the name Cameron Kay. He also wrote the novel A Star’s Progress under the name Katherine Everard. In the 1950s he became a prosperous television dramatist, and he went on to become a television commentator. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1960. He returned to novel writing in 1964 with Julian which purports to be autobiographical memoirs of emperor Julian. He continued with a trilogy of novels about the affairs of state with Washington, DC, (1967), Burr, (1973), and 1876, (1976). From the 1970s historical fiction was his dominant theme. His own memoirs were published as Palimpsest, (1995), and was shaped around his boyhood love, Jimmie Trimble, who was killed at Iwo Jima. His most famous novel is Myra Breckinridge, (1968), which is an outrageous account of a transexual. A film adaptation was made in 1970, directed by John Houston who also starred with Rex Reed, Raquel Welch, Mae West, Tom Selleck, and Roger Herren.



==Sexuality==

For most of his life he was reticent about his personal life. Although he showed disdain for those who paraded their homosexuality, he also mocked those who sought to legislate for morality. He rejected the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ as meaningless as categories of people. He disliked the usage of the word ‘gay’, and insisted that ‘homosexual’ is an adjective, not a noun. Men who have sex with men are ‘homosexualists’, but most of us are bisexual. He had affairs with both men and women, although his many quick tricks were men for whom he was happy to pay to avoid involvement. Howard Austen became his loyal companion in the 1940s, and they began living together in a non-sexual relationship in 1950. In 1972 he moved to live in a palazzo in Ravello, Italy. In 1982 he campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic Senate nomination in California.



Edit

Quotations



  • On Ronald Reagan: ‘A triumph of the embalmer’s art’
  • On corporal punishment: ‘I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults’
  • On Andy Warhol: ‘A genius with the IQ of a moron’
  • On parenthood: ‘Never have children, only grandchildren’
  • On Norman Mailer: ‘He is now what he wanted to be: the patron saint of bad journalism’
  • On success: ‘Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies’
  • ‘The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.’

    November 2000

  • ‘I like to think I have depths of insincerity as yet unplumbed.’

    August 2001

    • In the early 1960s he wrote to Tom Driberg: ‘I am troubled by what seems to be a new puritanism rising in England, fully blessed by socialism which does like nothing better than to involve itself in private lives under the guise of ‘morality’.’
    See the Gore Vidal message board web site:http://www.catharton.net/cgi-local/authors/YaBB.cgi?board=gorevidal



    Edit

    Work



    • Williwaw, 1946, first novel.
    • In a Yellow Wood, 1947, a novel.
    • The City and the Pillar, 1948, a novel. Revised 1965.
    • The Season of Comfort, 1949, a novel.
    • A Search for the King, 1950, a novel.
    • Dark Green, Bright Red, 1950, a novel.
    • The Judgement of Paris, 1952, a novel.
    • Messiah, 1954, a novel. Revised 1965.
    • A Thirsty Evil, 1956, short stories.
      An extract entitledPages from an Abandoned Journalis published inThe Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction.
  • Visit to a Small Planet, 1957, a television play.
  • The Best Man, 1960, a theatre play.
  • Rocking the Boat, 1962, essays.
  • Julian, 1964, an historical novel.
  • Washington DC, 1967, an historical novel.
  • Myra Breckinridge, 1968, a novel.
    Douglas Eisner, (1999), “Myra Breckinridgeand the Pathology of Heterosexuality”, in“The Queer Sixties”, edited by Patricia Juliana Smith
  • Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, 1969, essays.
  • Two Sisters, 1970, a novel.
  • An Evening with Richard Nixon, 1972, a play.
  • Collected Essays 1952-1972, 1972.
  • Burr, 1973, an historical novel.
  • Homage to Daniel Shays, 1973, essays.
  • Myron, 1974, a novel.
  • 1876, 1976, an historical novel.
  • Matters of Fact and Matters of Fiction: Essays 1973-1976, 1977.
  • Kalki, 1978, a novel.
  • Bisexual Politics, (1979), an article inThe New Gay Liberation Book.
  • Views from a Window, 1980, a series of conversations with Robert Stanton.
  • Creation, 1981, an historical novel.
  • Pink Triangle and Yellow Star and Other Essays, 1982.
  • The Second American Revolution, 1982, essays.
  • Duluth, 1983, a novel.
  • Lincoln, 1984, an historical novel.
  • Empire, 1987, an historical novel.
  • Armageddon: Essays 1983-1987, 1987.
  • Hollywood, 1989, an historical novel.
  • A View from the Diner’s Club, 1991, essays.
  • Live from Golgotha, 1992, a novel.
  • Palimpsest, 1995, memoirs, Andre Deutsch Ltd., 432 pages, ISBN 0233988912 (hardcover)/ 1996, Abacus (Little, Brown), 448 pages, ISBN 0349108005 (paperback).
    Synopsis:“This is a memoir of the first 40 years of Gore Vidal’s life, ranging back and forth across a rich history. He spent his childhood in Washington D.C., in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T.P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome and Paris in the ‘40s and ‘50s; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. His cast includesTennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt,Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward,Christopher Isherwood,Jack Kerouac, Jane andPaul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer,Leonard Bernsteinand the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others.”
  • The Smithsonian Institution, 1999, a novel, Abacus (Little, Brown), 272 pages, ISBN 0316645044 (hardcover)/0349110727 (paperback).
    Synopsis:“Good Friday, 1939. T, a 16-year-old schoolboy arrives, at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. It’s closed but he manages to slip in and it would appear that, somehow, he is expected. Exploring a Native American exhibit, he is magically drawn into the 19th century and a Sioux reservation.”
  • The American Presidency, 1998, Odonian Press, 96 pages, ISBN 1878825151 (paperback).
  • Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings by Gore Vidal, edited by Donald Welse, 1999, Cleis Press, 260 pages, ISBN 1573440825 (hardcover).
    • Sex, economics and Wilde bestir unromantic Vidalby Richard Canning inThe Independent: The Monday Review, 30th. July, 2001, page 5. “A new book of essays by Gore Vidal begs for coverage. The trouble is that fans of the great American pessimist-pugilist who snuggle down withSexually Speakingwill find themselves with some very old meat. Of the 14 essays, all but one featured in Vidal’s outstanding 1993 compendium,United States. For their money, then, fans get two pages of gay-periodical agitprop and three interviews. Two are parochial gay journalistic slog-outs from the Seventies. The third, a 1992 run-in with playwright Larry Kramer (a writer of much weaker intelligence), is more compelling.” “Gore confesses to being ‘much more interested in economics than sex’ - a true father to his cousin, the technocratic candidate, Al. Moreover, Vidal likes to ridicule those whose reputations closely depend upon their sexual selves.” “He dissented from the sanctification ofOscar Wildeas long ago as 1987. Reviewing Richard Ellmann’sFour Dubliners, Vidal memorably opened: ‘Must one have a heart of stone to readThe Ballad of Reading Gaolwithout laughing?’ The exception to this rule - a rather obsequious piece onChristopher Isherwood- proves there is such a thing as Loyalist Gore.”
    • Live and let liveby Paul Bailey inThe Sunday Times Culturemagazine, 12th. August, 2001, page 41. “The blanket, so to speak, notion of universal bisexuality apart, the book makes the strongest case possible for the virtue of disinterested thinking. The bigots are flourishing even as I write. We can overlook the prose of Richard Littlejohn, say, and the leaden humorist Mark Steyn, but when a distinguished writer such as V S Naipaul, a self-confessed erstwhile user of prostitutes, enters the nasty fray by accusingE M Forsterof going to India for the purpose of procuring young boys, it becomes an altogether serious matter. A cursory glance at P N Furbank’s magisterial biography should put Sir Vidia right on that particular score. Since I have a neighbour who shouts the word ‘queer’ after me in the street, I see what harm these varied scribes are doing. I should like to pass my copy of Sexually Speaking on to her, but she only reads the Daily Sport, I’m afraid, and Vidal’s wise and tolerant meditation on human behaviour would be of no avail.”
  • The Golden Age: A Novel, 2000, published by Little, Brown, 467 pages, ISBN 0 316 85409 3.
    • No Accidentby Zachary Leader in theLondon Review of Books, 21st. June, 2001, pages 27-29. “ ‘Of course I like my country,’ Gore Vidal has written. ‘After all, I’m its current biographer.’ With the publication ofThe Golden Age, the biography draws to a close. The novels which comprise it, to list them in order of the historical periods they cover, areBurr(1973),Lincoln(1984),1876(1976, of course),Empire(1987),Hollywood(1989),Washington, DC(1967) and nowThe Golden Age.” “Vidal can be a brilliant stylist, but inThe Golden Agethe writing labours under the enormous task he has set himself.”



      Edit

      Bibliography



    • Stephen Adams, (1980), “The Homosexual as Hero in contemporary fiction”.
      Gore Vidal’s representation of gay characters in his writing is discussed in detail.
    • Susan BakerandCurtis S. Gibson, 1997, “Gore Vidal”, Greenwood Press, 208 pages, ISBN 0313295794 (hardcover).
      Synopsis:“Gore Vidal has been entertaining - and occasionally outraging - the American public for 50 years. In the course of his long career, Vidal has set new intellectual and artistic standards for American historical fiction and has also established himself in the first rank of contemporary social satirists. This study includes Vidal’s most recent novels and has been designed to meet the needs of both general readers and students of contemporary literature. It includes discussions of ‘Lincoln’, ‘Empire’, ‘Hollywood’, and ‘Live From Golgotha’, as well as his earlier novels. The book shows that while Vidal’s books are entertaining, they are also serious examinations of a recurring theme - the decline of the West in general and the decline of the United States in particular. A biographical sketch of the writer precedes a general discussion of Vidal’s early novels. Each of the following chapters examines an individual novel, from ‘Julian’ (1964) to ‘Live From Golgotha’ (1992), with special emphasis on artistic development, and historical and intellectual context. To help the reader understand the recurring themes in Vidal’s fictions, the book groups the novels by type. First are the historical fictions, those of the ancient world (‘Julian’, ‘Creation’) and the ‘American Chronicles’, Vidal’s family saga of the United States over the course of its history. Second are the social satires, what Vidal calls his ‘inventions’, of which the best known is ‘Myra Breckinridge’. The discussion of each novel includes sections on plot and character development, thematic issues, narrative style, and an alternative critical approach from which to read the novel. A complete bibliography of Vidal’s fiction, select bibliography of his other works, and bibliography of reviews and criticism of the works examined complete the book and will be of use to students, librarians, and adult book discussion participants.”
    • Michael Bronski, (consulting editor), (1996), “Outstanding Lives: Profiles of Lesbians and Gay Men”
    • Fred Kaplan, (1999), “Gore Vidal”, Bloomsbury, 831 pages, ISBN 0747546711 (hardcover)/0747548188 (paperback).
      • Synopsis:“Novelist, culture critic, essayist, historian, comic satirist, image maker, actor, homosexual, bisexual, controversial, confrontational, unflinching, cynical, idealistic - all words to describe Gore Vidal. From his Washington childhood, with its high political and social connections, to his Exeter education and US Army experiences; from his Hollywood and TV career to his literary life as a novelist, playwright, and essayist; from his friendships and feuds withTennessee Williams, Anais Nin,Truman Capote, and William Buckley to his exploration of homosexuality and celebration of bisexuality, Gore Vidal has been both participant in and spectator at the centres of American power. Written with complete access to Vidal’s papers, diaries, and private photographs, as well as newsreel and TV footage, supplemented by interview with Vidal, this biography illuminates this literary giant.”
      • Cross him if you dareby Frederic Raphael inThe Sunday Times Culture, 17th. October, 1999, pages 34-5. “Gore Vidal’s life illustrates that, in order for writer to be famous, it is not enough to make friends who will speak well, and audibly, about him. He also needs reliable enemies with whom he can pick regular, newsworthy fights. This fat but finally seductive biography bristles with names that Vidal has dropped, and picked up, and dusted down, during more than half a century of industrious celebrity. Friendships with Paul and Joanne Newman,Tennessee Williams, Ken Tynan andChristopher Isherwoodare marching by long-running feuds with Norman Mailer,Truman Capoteand, most explosively of all, William Buckley Jr. Buckley’s studiedly condescending posture is not unlike Vidal’s, but his opinions (extremely right-wing and fundamentalist Catholic) are dramatically opposed. By calling Vidal ‘you queer’ on primetime TV, Buckley was the first to lose his complacent cool.”
      • He kisses boys and girlsby Christopher Hawtree inThe Independent on Sunday, 31st. October, 1999, page 11. “As Kaplan admits at the end of a book which he began writing less than two years ago - and that after being attacked on the Manhattan subway - he has become fond of Vidal. He is hardly going to put the boot in.”
      • Come on, let’s have all the Gorey detailsby Lachlan Mackinnon inThe Observer Review, 7th. November, 1999, page 12. “Kaplan is so mired in detail, grammatical solecism and sheer error (‘Prime Minister Bevan’) that he ends up telling us nothing. This is not a ‘life’ but a data-bank, devoid of its subject’s humour, intelligence and stylishness. One day, someone will quarry a briefer, better-shaped, more interpretative story from it, but until then, the fact that the witty, vain, self-protective Vidal authorised this book will seem like a brilliant practical joke.”
      • Bow. Wowby James Wolcott inThe London Review of Books, 3rd. February, 2000, pages 29-30. “With the exception of John Updike, no American novelist of the postwar period has shown as much disinterested devotion to criticism as a regular practice (as opposed to an easy way to keep your name in print between books).” “Before Vidal is mothballed in the geriatric ward of fading matinee idols, consider this. He may be an obscure fogey to young TV viewers and an unknown quantity in college lit. courses (where his novels are considered too commercial for the syllabuses), but his political espousals have never been more in vogue on the activist front. His constant drumbeats against American imperialism, the corruption of the democratic process (‘The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world’), the permanent war machine, and the ecological destruction wreaked by multinationals have instructed and helped motivate those tattered insurgents mobilising against globalisation.”
      • The lives and loves of the ubiquitous Gore Vidalby Jennifer Wallace inThe Times Higher Education Supplement, 18th. February, 2000, pages 18-19. “In many ways, biographer and biographee appear an odd couple. Vidal is one of the most flamboyant and well-connected people in the US. He is tall, handsome, formidably wealthy and privileged, promiscuously bisexual, a campaigner for gay rights and has, on occasion, been accused of being anti-Semitic.” “Kaplan, on the other hand, is a small, heterosexual Jewish New Yorker, who started out as an academic and still teaches English literature at New York’s City University. His previous biographies, much acclaimed, have been of classic, canonical and, as he points out, long-dead writers: Charles Dickens,Henry James, Thomas Carlyle.
      • Glasses tinkled, facts mangledby Richard Davenport-Hines inThe Times Literary Supplement, 12th. May, 2000, page 18. “There are finer insights into Gore Vidal in hisTwo Sisters: A memoir in the form of a novel(1970) than in Fred Kaplan’s book. The uninitiated reader ofGore Vidal: A biographerwill not realize from the two paragraphs allotted by Kaplan toTwo Sistersthat it is a dashing novel of ideas which is, perhaps, more intimately suggestive than Vidal’s memoir,Palimpsest(1995).”
      • Fighting, fornication and fictionby Jeffrey Meyers inThe Times Higher Education Supplement, 26th. May, 2000, page 29. “Kaplan describes Vidal’s sex life, but provides no analysis of his relations with his mother, his lost love or his lifetime companion. Vidal occasionally slept with women and even got one of them pregnant. He had sex withJack Kerouac, but drew the line atTennessee Williams.” “Kaplan also fails to judge Vidal’s stature and achievement, which has received very little attention from the academy. Like many American novelists - Mailer, Mary McCarthy,James Baldwinand John Updike - Vidal is much better as an essayist than a novelist. His best book is the massiveUnited States: Essays, 1952-1992. His greatest intellectual legacy is the liberal political ideas that he has been advocating since 1960: dialogue with one’s enemies, a smaller military budget, elimination of nuclear weapons, effective gun control, abolition of capital punishment, a fairer tax structure, more funds for schools and geater defence of civil liberties.”
    • Robert F. Kiernan, (1982), “Gore Vidal”.
    • Winston Leyland, (editor), (1975), “Gay Sunshine Interviews”, volume 1.
    • J. Parini, 1992, “Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain”, Andre Deutsch Ltd, ISBN 0233987967 (hardcover).



      Edit

      Press Cuttings



    • Cousin Gore plays the wild cardby Duncan Campbell inThe Guardian, 15th. August, 2000, page 14. “Gore won a standing ovation as the Democratic convention kicked off by telling a delighted audience that the United States had become ‘the greatest terrorist ... and the largest rogue state’ in the world. He was also applauded loudly after announcing that today ‘only corporate America enjoys representation’. This was Gore Vidal, it should be said, former Democratic politician, novelist, playwright, historian, mischief-maker and cousin of young Al. He was addressing a full house at the Leo Baeck temple just opposite that symbol of authority, the Getty Centre, as the delegates assembled for the first day of the convention.”
    • Gore Vidal accepts McVeigh invite to executionby Martin Kettle inThe Guardian, 7th. May, 2001, page 1. “Relatives of the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing reacted with outrage yesterday to the news that the novelist Gore Vidal has been given permission to attend the execution next week of the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh. Vidal was invited by McVeigh as a ‘friend’ to watch him die by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on May 16. The ‘fanatically anti-death penalty’ author intends to write an article about it for Vanity Fair magazine.”
    • Vidal to be a witness at McVeigh’s executionby Laura Peek inThe Times, 7th. May, 2001, page 11. “The writer Gore Vidal is to witness the execution of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, after striking up a friendship with him. ‘This boy has a sense of justice,’ Vidal, a renowned liberal, said. ‘That’s what attracted me to him.’ He said that he shared some of McVeigh’s views about the federal Government’s handling of the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas, in 1993 and an earlier conflict with the separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.”
    • Anger as Gore Vidal agrees to act as ‘friend witness’ at execution of Oklahoma bomberby Andrew Buncombe inThe Independent, 7th. May, 2001, page 3. “He said while he thought the experience would be awful, he was going to ‘bear witness’ as a historian.”
    • Vidal casts McVeigh as a heroby James Bone inThe Times, 8th. August, 2001, page 13. “Gore Vidal, publishing the first extracts of his death row correspondence with Timothy McVeigh, has described the executed Oklahoma City bomber as a hero and cast doubt on whether he acted alone.”
    • McVeigh a good soldier, claims Vidalby Michael Ellison inThe Guardian, 9th. August, 2001, page 13. “The writer Gore Vidal suggests today that the executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a ‘good soldier’ who might not have made or placed the explosives.” “Vidal was invited to attend McVeigh’s execution for the bombing that killed 168 people in 1995 but was unable to do so. Vidal notes in the September issue of Vanity Fair that McVeigh made no final statement but instead produced a hand-written copy of WE Henley’s poem, Invictus. Vidal refers to an anthology of Henley’s work, Lyra Heroica, published in 1892, ‘about those who had done selfless heroic deeds’.”
    • Vidal praises Oklahoma bomber for heroic aimsby Fiachra Gibbons inThe Guardian, 17th. August, 2001, page 9. “The writer Gore Vidal yesterday compared the executed Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh to Paul Revere, the hero of American Independence. In a withering address at the Edinburgh book festival, the liberal novelist and elder statesman of the Gore political dynasty, said the former soldier decorated for bravery in the Gulf war wanted to send out a warning that the government had been bought by corporate America and ‘its secret police, the FBI, were out of control... What McVeigh was saying was, ‘The Feds are coming, the Feds are coming...’”

    • ScrewTurn Wiki version 2.0.12. Some of the icons created by FamFamFam.

    Advertise on this site
    RegisterLogin