Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1948 |
| Born: |
October 3 1925 (1925--) (age 82)
West Point, New York State,
United States |
| Occupation: |
Novelist, Essayist , Playwright |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Genres: |
Drama, fictional prose, essay, literary criticism |
| Literary movement: |
Postmodernism |
| Influences: |
Petronius, Apuleius, Thomas Mann, Henry James, Mark
Twain, Montaigne |
| Influenced: |
William Kennedy, Clive James,
Christopher Hitchens, Truman Capote |
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born October 3 1925)
(pronounced [gɔɹ
vəˈdɑl], occasionally [vɪˈdɑl], [vɪˈdæl], etc) is an American author of
novels, stage plays, screenplays, and essays. The scion of a prominent
political family, Vidal is an outspoken critic of the American political establishment and a noted wit and social critic. He wrote the ground-breaking The City and the Pillar in 1948, which created a stir as the first major American novel to
feature unambiguous homosexuality.
Early years
He was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal in West Point, New York, the only
child of Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. (1895–1969) and the former Nina S. Gore (1903–1978). His birth
took place at the Cadet Hospital of the United States Military Academy,
where his father was the school's first aeronautics instructor, and he was christened by the
headmaster of St. Albans, the preparatory school he would attend in
his youth.[1] His second middle name honors his maternal
grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, Democratic senator from Oklahoma.
Vidal's father, a "brawny, handsome" former West Point all-American quarterback who became the director of Commerce
Department's Bureau of Air Commerce from 1933
until 1937 during the Roosevelt administration,[2] was one of the first Army Air Corps
pilots and according to biographer Susan Butler was "the great love of Amelia Earhart's
life".[3] He also was a cofounder of three American
airlines in the 1920s and 1930s: the Ludington Line (which merged with other companies to become
Eastern Airlines), Transcontinental
Air Transport (TAT, which eventually became TWA), and Northeast Airlines (which he founded with
Amelia Earhart and the Boston and Maine
Railroad). Gene Vidal also was a veteran of the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics (where he placed seventh in the decathlon
and coached the U.S. pentathlon teams respectively).[4][5]
Nina, Vidal's alcoholic mother, was a onetime actress who made her Broadway debut in the 1928 production Sign of the
Leopard.[6] She married twice after her 1935 divorce
from Gene Vidal (one husband was Hugh D. Auchincloss, the eventual stepfather of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) and, according to her son, she had "a long
off-and-on affair" with Clark Gable.[7] She served as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1940.[8] Vidal had four half-siblings from his parents' later marriages (the Rev.
Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal Hewitt, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss Steers Straight, who was married to the
onetime spy Michael Straight) and five stepsiblings from his mother's third
marriage to Army Air Corps major general Robert Olds,
father of legendary fighter ace Brigadier General Robin Olds. His nephew Burr Steers is a writer and film director, while his nephew Hugh Auchincloss
Steers (1963–1995) was a painter whose works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art
Center, and the Denver Art Museum.
Vidal was raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School before transferring to St. Albans School. Since Senator Gore was blind, the young Vidal read aloud to him
and became his guide, thereby gaining an access, unusual for a child, to the corridors of power. The senator's steadfast
isolationism contributed to one of the major principles underlying Vidal's political
philosophy, which has been consistently critical of what he perceives as a foreign (and, by extension, a domestic) policy shaped
by the imperatives of American imperialism. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Vidal joined the U.S. Army
Reserve in 1943.
Vidal had a relationship with the bisexual writer, Anais Nin, which he describes in his
memoir, Palimpsest and Nin describes in her The Diary of Anais Nin.
For much of the late twentieth century, Vidal divided his time between Ravello,
Italy, on the Amalfi Coast and Los Angeles, California. In 2003, he sold
his 5,000 square foot (460 m²) cliffside Ravello villa (La Rondinaia, The Swallow's Nest) for health reasons, and
currently resides in Los Angeles. In November 2003, Howard Austen, Vidal's life partner since
1951, died, and in February 2005 was buried in a plot maintained for himself and Vidal at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Vidal is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
Writing career
Fiction
Vidal, whom a Newsweek critic later described as "the best all-around man of letters
since Edmund Wilson",[9] began his writing career at age of nineteen with publication of the novel Williwaw, based upon his military
experiences in the Alaskan Harbor Detachment; conventionally realistic, the novel was
well-received. A few years later, his pioneering novel The City and the
Pillar, candidly dealing with gay themes, caused a furor, and The New York Times refused to review his next five books; the novel was dedicated to "J.T."
After a magazine published rumors about J.T.'s identity, Vidal eventually confirmed they referred to his St. Albans love,
Jimmie Trimble, who had been killed in the Battle of Iwo
Jima on June 1, 1945. He later claimed Trimble was the only
person with whom he had ever been in love. Subsequently, as sales of his novels diminished, Vidal wrote plays, films, and
television series as a scriptwriter. Two such plays, The Best Man and Visit to a Small
Planet, were Broadway successes and later successful movies.
In the early 1950s, writing under the pseudonym "Edgar Box", he wrote three mystery
novels about a fictional public relations man named "Peter Cutler Sargeant II".
In 1956, Vidal was hired as a contract screenwriter for Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In
1959, director William Wyler needed re-writing of the Ben-Hur script, written by Karl Tunberg. Vidal
collaborated with Christopher Fry, reworking the screenplay on condition that MGM
release him from the last two years of his contract. Producer Sam Zimbalist's death
complicated the screenwriting credit. The Screen Writers Guild resolved the
matter by listing Tunberg as sole screenwriter, denying credit to both Vidal and Fry. Vidal later claimed that in order to
explain the animosity between Ben-Hur and Messala, he had inserted a gay subtext
suggesting that the two had had a prior relationship, but that actor Charlton Heston was
oblivious.[10] Heston denied that Vidal contributed
significantly to the script.[11]
In the 1960s, Vidal wrote three highly successful novels. The first, the meticulously researched Julian (1964) dealt with the apostate Roman
emperor, while the second, Washington, D.C. (1967) focused on a
political family during the Franklin D. Roosevelt era.
Vidal's third novel in the '60s was as daring as it was unexpected and outlandish; the satirical transsexual comedy Myra Breckinridge (1968), an
inventive, often hilarious variation on familiar Vidalian themes of sex, gender, and popular culture. In the novel, Vidal
showcased his love of the American films of the '30s and '40s, and he resurrected interest in the careers of the forgotten
players of the time including, for example, the late Richard Cromwell, of whom
he wrote, "was so satisfyingly tortured in The Lives of a Bengal
Lancer."
After two commercially unsuccessful plays, Weekend (1968) and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972), and the largely unappreciated novel Two Sisters (1970), Vidal focused on
essays and two distinct strains in his fiction. The first strain comprises novels dealing with American history, specifically
with the nature of national politics. Critic Harold Bloom wrote, "Vidal's imagination of
American politics...is so powerful as to compel awe." This series' titles include Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), Lincoln (1984), Empire (1987),
Hollywood (1990), The Golden Age (2000), and another excursion into the ancient world
Creation (1981, published in expanded form 2002).
The second strain consists of the comedic and often merciless "satirical inventions": Myron (1974, a sequel to Myra Breckinridge),
Kalki (1978), Duluth (1983),
Live from Golgotha: the Gospel according to Gore
Vidal (1992), and The Smithsonian Institution
(1998).
Vidal occasionally returned to scriptwriting cinema and television, including the television movie Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid with Val Kilmer, and the mini-series
Lincoln. He also wrote the original draft for the controversial film Caligula, but later had his name removed because director
Tinto Brass and actor Malcolm McDowell re-wrote the script, changing the tone and themes
significantly. The producers later made a futile attempt to salvage some of Vidal's vision during post-production.
Essays and memoirs
Contrary to his wishes, Vidal is — at least in the U.S. — more respected as an essayist than as a novelist. The critic John
Keates praised him as "[the twentieth] century's finest essayist." Even an occasionally hostile critic like Martin Amis admits, "Essays are what he is good at...[h]e is learned, funny and exceptionally clear-sighted.
Even his blind spots are illuminating."
Accordingly, for six decades, Gore Vidal has applied himself to a wide variety of socio-political, sexual, historical, and
literary themes. In 1987, Vidal wrote the essays titled Armageddon?, exploring the
intricacies of power in contemporary America. He ruthlessly pilloried the incumbent president Ronald Reagan as a "triumph of the embalmer's art." In 1993, he won the National Book Award for his collection of essays, United
States (1952–1992), the citation noting: "Whatever his subject, he addresses it with an artist's resonant
appreciation, a scholar's conscience, and the persuasive powers of a great essayist." A subsequent collection of essays,
published in 2000, is The Last Empire. Since then, he has 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 current administration. Vidal also wrote an 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 homosexual relations in such books as The City and The Pillar, Vidal is
often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation. Sexually Speaking: Collected
Sex Writings, a representative sampling of his views, contains literary and cultural essays that document his long campaign
to mock and subvert conventional American attitudes toward sex. Focusing on, in his view, the anti-sexual heritage of
Judaeo-Christianity, irrational and destructive sex laws, feminism, heterosexism, homophobia, gay liberation, and pornography,
the essays frequently return to a favorite Vidal motif: the fluidity of sexual identity.
Vidal argues that "although our notions about what constitutes correct sexual behavior are usually based on religious texts,
those texts are invariably interpreted by the rulers in order to keep control over the ruled." In repudiating this kind of rigid,
narrow moralism, Vidal argues that "sex is a continuum" made up of "different phases along life’s way" and thus "everyone is
potentially bisexual." He explains that "the human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy the sexual
relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. The plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting
about." Therefore, "there are no homosexual people, only homosexual acts." Given the diversity of human desire, Vidal predictably
resists any effort to categorize him as exclusively "homosexual"—either as writer or human being—and instead celebrates this
polymorphous eroticism as natural and inevitable.
Acting and Self-Promotion
In the 1960s, Vidal moved to Italy; he was cast as himself in Federico Fellini's film Roma. In 1992, Vidal appeared
in the film Bob Roberts (starring Tim Robbins)
and has appeared in other films, notably Gattaca, With
Honors, and Igby Goes Down. Like his gruffer contemporary
Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal is noted as a clever and tireless self-publicist. In an
interview he stated: "[t]here is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise". Vidal has
voiced himself on both The Simpsons and Family
Guy. In 2005, Jay Parini was appointed as Vidal's literary executor.
Political views and activities
Besides his politician grandfather, Vidal has other connections with the Democratic Party: his mother Nina married Hugh D.
Auchincloss, Jr., who later was stepfather of Jacqueline Bouvier
Kennedy. Gore Vidal is a fifth cousin of Jimmy Carter, and a distant cousin of
Al Gore.[12]
Gore Vidal appearing in
Why We Fight(2005)
As a political activist, in 1960, Gore Vidal was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress, losing an election in New York's 19th congressional district, a traditionally Republican district on the Hudson River,
encompassing all of Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Schoharie, and Ulster Counties, by a margin of 57% to 43%.[13] Campaigning with a slogan of "You'll get more with Gore", he received the
most votes any Democrat in 50 years received in that particular district. From 1970 to 1972, he was one of the chairmen of the
People's Party, and, with a half-million votes, he finished second
to incumbent Governor Jerry Brown in California's 1982 Democratic primary election to the United States Senate. Vidal's Senate bid had the backing of liberal celebrities such as
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The campaign was
documented in the film, Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No directed
by Gary Conklin.
Although frequently identified with Democratic causes and personalities, Vidal has written:
"[t]here 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."
Vidal's political views—characterized either as "liberal or progressive", and best described as radical in their disdain for
privilege and power — are well-documented. Vidal has a protective, almost proprietary attitude toward his native land and its
politics. "My family helped start [this country]", he has written, "and we've been in political life... since the 1690s, and I
have a very possessive sense about this country." Vidal considers himself a "radical reformer" wanting to return to the "pure
republicanism" of early America. As a prep school student, he was a supporter of the America First Committee; unlike other America First Committee supporters, he continues in the
opinion that the United States should not have entered World War II (though acknowledging
material assistance to the Allies was a good idea). He has suggested that President
Roosevelt incited the Japanese to attack the U.S. to facilitate American entry to the war,
and believes FDR had advance knowledge of the attack.
In 1968, ABC News hired Vidal and William F.
Buckley, Jr. as political analysts of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions, predicting that television
viewers would enjoy seeing two men of letters—famous for their acerbic wit and sarcasm—engage in on-air battle; as it turned out,
verbal and nearly physical combat were joined. After days of mutual bickering that devolved to vitriolic, ad hominem attacks, Vidal called Buckley a "pro-crypto Nazi", to which the visibly livid Buckley replied:
"Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and
you'll stay plastered."
Later, in 1969, the feud was continued as Buckley further attacked Vidal in the lengthy essay, "On Experiencing Gore Vidal",
published in the August 1969 issue of Esquire; the essay is collected in
The Governor Listeth, an anthology of Buckley's writings of the time. In a key passage attacking Vidal as an apologist for
homosexuality, Buckley wrote: "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."
Not to be outdone, Vidal responded in the September 1969 issue of Esquire, variously characterizing William F. Buckley
as "anti-black", "anti-semitic", and a "warmonger".[14]
The presiding judge in Buckley's subsequent libel suit against Vidal initially concluded that "[t]he 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." However, Vidal also strongly implied that, in 1944,
Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized a Protestant church in their Sharon,
Connecticut, hometown after the pastor's wife had sold a house to a Jewish family. Buckley sued Vidal and Esquire
magazine for libel; Vidal counter-claimed for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of Vidal's novel
Myra Breckinridge as pornography.
The court dismissed Vidal's counter-claim; Buckley settled for $115,000 in attorney's fees and an editorial statement from
Esquire magazine that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of Vidal's assertion. However, in a letter to
Newsweek magazine, the Esquire publisher stated 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."
As Vidal biographer, Fred Kaplan, later commented, "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against Esquire...
[t]he 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. [italics original.] The cash value of the settlement
with Esquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses [not damages based on libel]... " ultimately, Vidal bore the cost
of his own attorney's fees, estimated at $75,000.
In 2003, this affair re-surfaced when Esquire published Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing, an anthology that
included Vidal's essay. Buckley again sued for libel, and Esquire again settled for $55,000 in attorney's fees and $10,000
in personal damages to Buckley.
Vidal has stirred controversy by his contact with Timothy McVeigh. The two began
corresponding while McVeigh was imprisoned; Vidal believes McVeigh bombed the federal building as retribution for the FBI's role
in "spying on and murdering Americans" in 1993 at the Branch Davidion Compound in Waco Texas. [15]
Vidal is a member of the advisory board of the World Can't Wait organization,
which demands the impeachment of George W. Bush, and the charging of his administration with crimes against humanity.[16]
During an interview in the 2005 documentary,
