As a novelist, Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His style of narration evoked the time and place of his stories and delineated his characters' psychology.[3] His third novel,The City and the Pillar (1948), about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship, offended conservative book reviewers' literary, political, and moral sensibilities.[4]
In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world ofJulian the Apostate (r. AD 361–363) inJulian (1964). Julian was the Roman emperor who attempted to reestablishRoman polytheism tocounter Christianity.[5] In social satire,Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability ofgender roles and sexual orientation as social constructs established bysocial mores.[6]: 94–100 InBurr (1973) andLincoln (1984), both part of hisNarratives of Empire series of novels, each 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 national politics in the United States.[7]: 439 [6]: 75–85
Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of theU.S. Military Academy atWest Point, New York, the only child ofEugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) andNina S. Gore (1903–1978).[8][9] Vidal was born there because his father, a U.S. Army officer, was then serving as the firstaeronautics instructor at 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".[10] In his memoirPalimpsest (1995), Vidal wrote, "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."[7]: 401
Vidal was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster ofSt. Albans School, where Vidal attendedpreparatory school. The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed [into theEpiscopal faith]" at theWashington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal".[11]: xix 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 grandfatherThomas Pryor Gore], although he had a great influence on my life."[11]: 4 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.'"[10][11]: xx
Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born inFeldkirch, Austria, ofRomansh background, and came to the U.S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann.[16]
Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress inSign of the Leopard, in 1928.[17] In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. They divorced in 1935.[18] Nina Gore Vidal married two more times, toHugh D. Auchincloss and toRobert Olds. She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actorClark Gable.[19] As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the1940 Democratic National Convention.[20]
The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal—Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, andNina Gore Auchincloss—one stepbrother, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III from his mother's marriage to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and four stepbrothers, includingRobin Olds, from her marriage to Robert Olds, amajor general in theUnited States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina.[21] Through Auchincloss, Vidal also was the stepbrother once removed ofJacqueline Kennedy. Vidal's nephews includeBurr Steers, a writer and film director, andHugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), afigurative painter.[22][23]
Raised in Washington, D.C., Vidal attended theSidwell Friends School and St. Albans School. His maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, was blind, and Vidal read aloud to him and was hisSenate page and seeing-eye guide.[24] In 1939, during his summer holiday, Vidal went with some colleagues and a professor from St. Albans School on his first European trip, to Italy and France. He visited Rome, the city that came to be "at the center of Gore's literary imagination", and Paris. When theSecond World War began in early September, the group was forced to return home early. On his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, where they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain,Joe Kennedy (the father of PresidentJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy).[25] In 1940, Vidal attended theLos Alamos Ranch School. He later transferred toPhillips Exeter Academy, where he contributed tothe Exonian, the school newspaper.[26]
Rather than attend university, Vidal enlisted in theU.S. Army at age 17 and was assigned to work as an office clerk in theUSAAF. Later, Vidal passed the examinations necessary to become a maritimewarrant officer (junior grade) in theTransportation Corps and served as first mate of theF.S. 35th, a US Army Freight and Supply (FS) ship berthed atDutch Harbor in theAleutian Islands. After three years' service, Vidal sufferedhypothermia, developedrheumatoid arthritis, and was reassigned to duty as a mess officer.[27]
Vidal's literary works were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity,Petronius (d. AD 66),Juvenal (AD 60–140), andApuleius (fl. c. AD 155); and from the post-Renaissance,Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592),Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), andGeorge Meredith (1828–1909). More recent literary influences includedMarcel Proust (1871–1922),Henry James (1843–1916), andEvelyn Waugh (1903–1966).[28] The cultural criticHarold Bloom wrote that Vidal believed his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the U.S. literary community. Bloom contended that Vidal's limited recognition was more because his "best fictions" were historical novels, a subgenre "no longer available for canonization".[29]
Vidal's literary career began with the success of themilitary novelWilliwaw, a men-at-war story derived from hisAlaskan Harbor Detachment duty during World War II.[30] His third novel,The City and the Pillar (1948), caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality.[31] The novel was dedicated to "J. T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of his boyhood friend and St. Albans classmate James Trimble III, who was killed in theBattle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, and was the only person Vidal ever loved.[32][33] Critics railed against Vidal's presentation of homosexuality in the novel, as it was viewed generally at the time as unnatural and immoral.[31] Vidal said thatNew York Times criticOrville Prescott was so offended by the book that he refused to review or to permit other critics to review any book by Vidal.[34] Vidal said that, upon the book's publication, an editor atE. P. Dutton told him, "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now, you will still be attacked for it."[31] Today, Vidal is often seen as an early champion ofsexual liberation.[35]
Under the pseudonym "Edgar Box", Vidal wrote the mystery novelsDeath in the Fifth Position (1952),Death before Bedtime (1953), andDeath Likes it Hot (1954), featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist turned private eye. His satirical novelMessiah, detailing the rise of a newnontheistic religion that comes to largely replace theAbrahamic faiths, was also published in 1954. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well and earned the blacklisted Vidal a secret living.[36][37] That success led Vidal to write in other genres, including the stage playThe Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960) and the television playVisit to a Small Planet (1957). Two early teleplays wereA Sense of Justice (1955) andHonor.[38] He also wrote the pulp novelThieves Fall Out under the pseudonym Cameron Kay but refused to have it reprinted under his real name.[39]
In the 1960s, Vidal publishedJulian (1964), about the Roman EmperorJulian the Apostate (r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstatepolytheistic paganism when he saw Christianity as a threat to the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire;Washington, D.C. (1967), about political life duringFranklin D. Roosevelt's presidency (1933–1945); andMyra Breckinridge (1968), a satire of the American movie business by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by atranssexual woman, the eponymous anti-heroine.
After publishing the playsWeekend (1968) andAn Evening With Richard Nixon (1972) and the novelTwo Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), Vidal concentrated on essays and developed two types of fiction. The first is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics.[40]The New York Times, quoting critic Harold Bloom about those historical novels, said that "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe."[41] The historical novels formed the seven-book seriesNarratives of Empire: (i)Burr (1973), (ii)Lincoln (1984), (iii)1876 (1976), (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 theAxial Age (800–200 B.C.), in the novelCreation (1981). It was published without four chapters that were part of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher; Vidal restored the chapters and republishedCreation in 2002.
The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such asMyron (1974), the sequel toMyra Breckinridge;Kalki (1978), about the end of the world and the consequent ennui;Duluth (1983), analternate universe story;Live from Golgotha (1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity; andThe Smithsonian Institution (1998), a time-travel story.
In the U.S., Vidal is often considered an essayist rather than a novelist.[42] Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such asMartin Amis, wrote, "Essays are what he is good at ... [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating." He often wrote literary critical essays on contemporary literature. In a 1976 overview of postmodern fiction published in The New York Review of Books, Vidal criticized what he called the "University Novel", contrasting novels written to be read with those "written to be taught."[43] He partly blamed the rise of the "University Novel"—represented by the likes ofThomas Pynchon,William H. Gass, and others—on the French criticRoland Barthes. As the literary scholar Ben Libman has argued, Vidal associated Barthes with theNouveau roman in France and, in the U.S., withSusan Sontag, to whose literary sensibilities he was opposed.[44]
For six decades, Vidal applied himself to sociopolitical, sexual, historical, and literary subjects. In the essay anthologyArmageddon (1987) he explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary United States. His criticism of the incumbent president,Ronald Reagan, as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the late 20th century. In 1993, Vidal won theNational Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthologyUnited States: Essays 1952–92 (1993).[45]
In 2000, Vidal published the collection of essaysThe Last Empire, then such self-described "pamphlets" asPerpetual War for Perpetual Peace,Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta andImperial America, critiques of American expansionism, themilitary–industrial complex, the national security state and theGeorge W. Bush administration. Vidal also wrote a historical essay about theFounding 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 had publishedClouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories.
In 1956,MGM hired Vidal as a screenwriter with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the directorWilliam Wyler required ascript doctor to rewrite the screenplay forBen-Hur (1959), originally written byKarl Tunberg. As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, Vidal rewrote significant portions of the script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewritingBen-Hur, Vidal, on location in Italy, negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his MGM contract.[7]: 301–307
In the 1995 documentary filmThe Celluloid Closet, 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). Vidal said that Boyd was aware of the scene's homosexual subtext and that the director, the producer, and the screenwriter agreed to keep Heston ignorant of it, lest he refuse to play the scene.[7]: 306 In turn, on learning of that explanation, Heston said that Vidal had contributed little toBen-Hur.[48] Despite Vidal's resolution of the character's motivations, theScreen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with theWGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the "original author" of a screenplay rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay.[49]
Two plays,The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960, made into afilm in 1964) andVisit to a Small Planet (1955), were theater and movie successes. Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him, such asBilly the Kid (1989), aboutWilliam H. Bonney, a gunman in the New Mexico territoryLincoln County War and later an outlaw in the U.S. Western frontier, and 1979'sCaligula (based upon the life of theRoman EmperorCaligula),[50] from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed because the producer,Bob Guccione, the director,Tinto Brass, and the leading actor,Malcolm McDowell, added sex and violence to the script to increase its commercial appeal.
In the 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film directorFederico Fellini, for whom he appeared in a cameo role in the filmRoma (1972). He also appeared in the American television seriesMary Hartman, Mary Hartman and in the filmsBob Roberts (1992), a serio-comedy about areactionary populist politician who manipulates youth culture to win votes;With Honors (1994), anIvy league comedy-drama;Gattaca (1997), a science-fiction drama aboutgenetic engineering; andIgby Goes Down (2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew Burr Steers.
Vidal began to drift toward the political left after he received his first paycheck and realized how much money the government took in tax.[51] He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education.[51]
As a public intellectual, Vidal was identified with theliberal politicians and theprogressive social causes of the old Democratic Party.[52][53]
In 1960, Vidal was the Democratic nominee for Congress in the29th Congressional District of New York, a usually Republican district that included most of theCatskills and the western bank of the Hudson River, includingNewburgh. He lost to the Republican nominee,J. Ernest Wharton, 57% to 43%.[54] Campaigning under the sloganYou'll get more with Gore, Vidal received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in 50 years and outpolled John F. Kennedy (who lost the district with 38% of the vote).[55] Among his supporters wereEleanor Roosevelt,Paul Newman, andJoanne Woodward, friends who spoke on his behalf.[56]
In 1982, he campaigned againstJerry Brown, the incumbent governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. He placed second in the primary with 15% of the vote to Brown's 51%.[57] Vidal accurately predicted that the Republican nominee,Pete Wilson, would winthe election.[58] His foray into senatorial politics is the subject ofGary Conklin's 1983 documentary filmGore Vidal: The Man Who Said No.
In 2001,Vanity Fair published an article by Vidal onTimothy McVeigh. The article attempts to understand why McVeigh perpetrated the 1995Oklahoma City bombing.
In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", Gore undertook to discover why domestic terroristTimothy McVeigh perpetrated theOklahoma City bombing in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of theFirst Iraq War) had destroyed theAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building as an act of revenge for the FBI'sWaco massacre (1993) at theBranch Davidian Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis. In the article, Vidal calls McVeigh an "unlikely sole mover" and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved.[59]
Vidal strongly opposedmilitary intervention in the world.[60] InDreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002), he wrote that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provokedImperial Japan to attack the U.S. to justify its entry into World War II. He contended that Roosevelt hadadvance knowledge of theattack on Pearl Harbor.[61] In the documentaryWhy We Fight (2005), Vidal said that, during the war's final months, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, butTruman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs ... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change thebalance of power in the world. To declare war oncommunism. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war".[62]
Vidal criticized what he saw as political harm to the nation and the voiding ofcitizen's rights through the passage of theUSA Patriot Act (2001) during theGeorge W. Bush administration. He called Bush "the stupidest man in the United States" and said his foreign policy was explicitlyexpansionist.[63][64] He contended that the Bush administration and its oil-business sponsors aimed to control the petroleum of Central Asia after having gained hegemony over the petroleum of thePersian Gulf in 1991.[65]
Vidal became a member of the board of advisors ofThe World Can't Wait, a political organization that publicly repudiated the Bush administration's foreign-policy program and advocated Bush'simpeachment forwar crimes, such as theSecond Iraq War and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law.[66]
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.[67]
In theAmerican Conservative article "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman wrote that Vidal's favorite American politician, during his lifetime, wasHuey Long, thepopulist governor and senator from Louisiana, who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics and who wasassassinated by a lone gunman,Carl Weiss.[68]
Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative" with a proprietary attitude toward the United States. "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".[69][70] Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972 Vidal was a chairman of thePeople's Party of the United States.[71] In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocateRalph Nader for U.S. president in the1972 election.[72] In 2007, he endorsed DemocratDennis Kucinich for president (in 2008), because Kucinich was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates from either party and "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain".[73]
In a 2009 interview withThe Times of London, Vidal said there soon would be a dictatorship in the United States. The newspaper emphasized that Vidal, described as "the Grand Old Man of Americanbelles-lettres", claimed that America was rotting away and to not expectBarack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In this interview, Vidal also updated his views of his life, the U.S., and other political subjects.[74] Vidal had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the U.S. in his essay "The State of the Union" (1975):
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 theirlaissez-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.[75]
In 1975, Vidal suedTruman Capote for slander over the accusation that he had once been thrown out of theWhite House for being drunk, putting his arm around First LadyJacqueline Kennedy, and insultingher mother.[41] Capote said of Vidal at the time: "I'm always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day."[76] Mutual friendGeorge Plimpton observed: "There's no venom like Capote's when he's on the prowl—and Gore's too, I don't know what division the feud should be in." The suit was settled in Vidal's favor whenLee Radziwill refused to testify on Capote's behalf, telling columnistLiz Smith, "Oh, Liz, what do we care; they're just a couple of fags! They're disgusting."[76][77]
The feud between Vidal andWilliam F. Buckley Jr. (pictured) lasted until the latter's death in 2008.
In 1968, theABC television network hired the liberal Vidal and the conservativeWilliam F. Buckley Jr. as political analysts of the presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties.[78] After days of bickering, their debates devolved into vitriolicad hominem attacks. During a moment of crosstalk while discussing the1968 Democratic National Convention protests, the pair argued aboutfreedom of speech—specifically, the legality of protesters' displaying aViet Cong flag in America—Vidal snapped at Buckley, "shut up a minute". Moments later, the following exchange transpired:
BUCKLEY: Some people were pro-Nazi, and the answer is that they were well treated by people who ostracized them. And I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers.
VIDAL: As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, I would only say that we can't have—
BUCKLEY: Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.
ABC'sHoward K. Smith intervened, and the debate resumed without violence.[58][79] Later, Buckley said he regretted calling Vidal a "queer" but still expressed some distaste for Vidal when he said that he was an "evangelist for bisexuality".[80]
In August 1969, inEsquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in the essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal", 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 inThe Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings.[81]
Vidal riposted inEsquire with the September 1969 essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." and said that Buckley was "anti-black", "anti-semitic" and a "warmonger".[82] Buckley sued Vidal forlibel.[83]
The feud continued inEsquire, where Vidal implied that in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized aProtestant church inSharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown), after a pastor's wife had sold a house to a Jewish family. Additionally, Vidal later claimed to know that Buckley was "rather infatuated" with him. Buckley again sued Vidal andEsquire for libel and Vidal filed a counterclaim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization ofMyra Breckinridge (1968) as apornographic novel.[84][85] The court dismissed Vidal's counterclaim.[86] Buckley accepted a settlement of $115,000 to pay his attorney's fee and an editorial apology fromEsquire, in which the publisher and the editors said they were "utterly convinced" of the falsity of Vidal's assertions.[87] In a letter toNewsweek magazine, the publisher ofEsquire wrote, "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."[88]
InGore Vidal: A Biography (1999),Fred Kaplan wrote, "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case againstEsquire ... [that] the court had 'not' ruled that Vidal's article was 'defamatory'. It had ruled that the case would have to go to trialin order to determine, as a matter of fact, whether or not it was defamatory. The cash value of the settlement withEsquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses."[88]
In 2003, Buckley resumed his complaint of having been libeled by Vidal, this time with the publication of the anthologyEsquire's Big Book of Great Writing (2003), which included Vidal's essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." Buckley again sued for libel andEsquire again settled Buckley's claim with $55,000–65,000 for his attorney's fees and $10,000 for personal damages.[89]
In the obituary "RIP WFB – in Hell" (March 20, 2008), Vidal remembered Buckley, who had died on February 27, 2008.[90] In the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal" (June 15, 2008),New York Times reporterDeborah Solomon asked Vidal: "How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year?" Vidal responded:[91]
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.
On December 15, 1971, during the recording ofThe Dick Cavett Show, withJanet Flanner,Norman Mailer allegedly head-butted Vidal backstage.[92] When a reporter asked Vidal why Mailer had knocked heads with him, Vidal said, "Once again, words failed Norman Mailer."[93] During the recording of the show, Vidal and Mailer insulted each other over what Vidal had written about him, prompting Mailer to say, "I've had to smell your works from time to time." Apparently, Mailer's umbrage resulted from Vidal's reference to Mailer havingstabbed his wife of the time.[94]
InThe Atlantic magazine interview "A Conversation with Gore Vidal" (October 2009), by John Meroney, Vidal spoke about topical and cultural matters of U.S. society. Asked his opinion about the arrest of the film directorRoman Polanski in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for thestatutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, Vidal said: "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?"
Asked to elaborate, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s:[95]
The [news] media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an anti-Semitic andanti-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 JewPolacko—that's what people were calling him—well, the story is totally different now from what it was then ... 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."[95]
In response to Vidal's opinion about the Polanski case, a spokeswoman for the organizationSurvivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Barbara Dorris, said, "People should express their outrage by refusing to buy any of his books", called Vidal a "mean-spirited buffoon", and said 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 wounds" of sexual abuse survivors.[96]
In 1997, Vidal was one of 34 public intellectuals and celebrities who joined a publicity campaign waged byScientologists against the German government, signing an open letter addressed to German ChancellorHelmut Kohl, published in theInternational Herald Tribune, alleging thatScientologists in Germany were treated "in the same way that the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews".[97] Scientologists are free to operate in Germany, but the Church of Scientology is recognized not as a religious body but as a business with political goals and thus monitored by the Germandomestic intelligence service.[98][99] Despite signing the letter, Vidal was critical ofScientology as a religion.[100]
In 1967, Vidal appeared in theCBS documentaryCBS Reports: The Homosexuals, in which he expressed his views on homosexuality in the arts.[101] He described his style as "knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."[31]
But Vidal often repudiated the label "gay", maintaining that it referred to sexual acts, not innate sexuality. During the 1980s and 1990s, he did not take a public stance on theHIV/AIDS crisis. According to his friendJay Parini, "Gore didn't think of himself as a gay guy. It makes him self-hating. How could he despise gays as much as he did? In my company he always used the term 'fags'. He was uncomfortable with being gay. Then again, he was wildly courageous." Biographer Fred Kaplan concluded: "He was not interested in making a difference for gay people, or being an advocate for gay rights. There was no such thing as 'straight' or 'gay' for him, just the body and sex."[102]
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.
In the multi-volume memoirThe Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–74),Anaïs Nin said she had a love affair with Vidal, who denied it in his memoirPalimpsest (1995). In her 2013 article "Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anaïs Nin",Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from Vidal to Nin that contradicts his denial. Krizan said she found the letter while researchingMirages, the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword.[103] Vidal cruised the streets and bars of New York City and other locales and wrote in his memoir that by age 25 he had had more than a thousand sexual encounters.[104] He also said that he had an intermittent romance with actressDiana Lynn and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter.[7]: 290 [105] He was briefly engaged toJoanne Woodward before she marriedPaul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.[106]
Vidal enjoyed telling his sexual exploits to friends. He claimed to have slept withFred Astaire when he first moved to Hollywood and also withDennis Hopper.[102]
In 1950, Vidal metHoward Austen, who became his romantic partner for the next 53 years, until Austen's death.[107] He said the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other: "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does."[108] InCelebrity: The Advocate Interviews (1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself "gay" because he was not an adjective, adding, "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 TV that everyone is bisexual."[109]
Vidal lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail, he sold his Italian villaLa Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest) on theAmalfi Coast in theprovince of Salerno and he and Austen returned to live in their 1929[110] villa inOutpost Estates, Los Angeles.[111] Austen died in November 2003, and in February 2005 his remains were reburied at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot Vidal had purchased for himself and Austen.[112]
In 2010, Vidal began to suffer fromWernicke–Korsakoff syndrome.[113] On July 31, 2012, he died ofpneumonia at his home in theHollywood Hills, aged 86.[113][114][115] A memorial service was held for him at theGerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City on August 23, 2012.[116] He was buried next to Howard Austen inRock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.[117] Vidal said he chose his gravesite because it is between the graves of two people who were important in his life:Henry Adams, the historian and writer, whose work Vidal admired; and his boyhood friend Jimmie Trimble, who was killed in World War II, a tragedy that haunted Vidal for the rest of his life.[118] Upon his death, Vidal bequeathed the entirety of his estate, valued at $37 million,[119] toHarvard University.[120]
Postmortem opinions and assessments of Vidal as a writer vary. TheNew York Times called him "anAugustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile, or gotten more mileage from their talent."[121] TheLos Angeles Times said he was a literary juggernaut whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language".[122] TheWashington Post described him as a "major writer of the modern era ... [an] astonishingly versatile man of letters".[123]
The Guardian wrote, "Vidal's critics disparaged his tendency to formulate an aphorism, rather than to argue, finding in his work an underlying note of contempt for those who did not agree with him. His fans, on the other hand, delighted in his unflagging wit and elegant style."[124] TheDaily Telegraph called Vidal "an icy iconoclast" who "delighted in chronicling what he perceived as the disintegration of civilisation around him".[125] The BBC News said he was "one of the finest post-war American writers ... an indefatigable critic of the whole American system ... Gore Vidal saw himself as the last of the breed of literary figures who became celebrities in their own right. Never a stranger to chat shows, his wry and witty opinions were sought after as much as his writing."[126] In "The Culture of the United States Laments the Death of Gore Vidal", the Spanish online magazineIdeal wrote that Vidal's death was a loss to the "culture of the United States" and called him a "great American novelist and essayist".[127] InThe Writer Gore Vidal is Dead in Los Angeles, the online edition of the Italian newspaperCorriere della Sera called Vidal "theenfant terrible of American culture" and "one of the giants of American literature".[128] InGore Vidal: The Killjoy of America, the French newspaperLe Figaro said that the public intellectual Vidal was "the killjoy of America" but that he also was an "outstanding polemicist" who used words "like high-precision weapons".[129]
The character Brinker Hadley inJohn Knowles's 1959 novelA Separate Peace is based on Vidal. Knowles and Vidal attendedPhilips Exeter Academy together, Vidal two years ahead of Knowles.[132][133] Vidal acknowledged the connection and professed admiration for the novel in his memoir.[134]
In the 1960s, the weekly Americansketch comedy television programRowan & Martin's Laugh-In featured a running-joke sketch about Vidal; the telephone operator Ernestine (Lily Tomlin) would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedle, this is the phone company calling! (snort! snort!)."[135][136] The sketch, titled "Mr. Veedle", also appeared in Tomlin's comedy record albumThis Is a Recording (1972).[137]
The Buckley-Vidal debates, their aftermath and cultural significance, were the focus of the 2015 documentary filmBest of Enemies, as well as the 2021 play byJames Graham inspired by the film.[141][142]
In season eight, episode eight ofThe Office, "Gettysburg",Oscar Martinez callsDwight Schrute "Gore Vidal" when Dwight tries to explain his version of history naming the "Battle of Schrute Farms" as the northernmost battle in the Civil War. Dwight responds to Oscar that he doesn't "know who that is".
ANetflix biopic,Gore, was filmed in 2017. It was directed and co-written byMichael Hoffman and based onJay Parini's bookEmpire of Self, A Life of Gore Vidal. The film, which starredKevin Spacey in the title role, was canceled and remains unreleased due to sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey.[143][144]
^Mick LaSalle (October 2, 1995). "A Commanding Presence: Actor Charlton Heston Sets His Epic Career in Stone – or At Least on Paper".The San Francisco Chronicle. p. E1.
^Ned Rorem (December 12, 1999). "Gore Vidal, Aloof in Art and Life".Chicago Sun-Times. p. 18S.
^Gore Vidal, "Three Lies to Rule By" and "Japanese Intentions in the Second World War", fromDreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, New York, 2002,ISBN1-56025-502-1
^"Why We Fight (9 of 48)". Say2.org (Series of Subtitles for Documentary Video). Archived fromthe original on July 28, 2011. RetrievedNovember 7, 2011.
^Buckley v. Vidal, 327 F.Supp. 1051 (USS.D.N.Y. May 13, 1971) ("... in August 1968, Buckley made the following statement: 'Let Myra Breckinridge [referring to the novel bearing such name and thereby identifying its author, Gore Vidal, with such novel] go back to his pornography.'").
^Time International (September 28, 1992) described the 5000 ft.2 (460 m2) property as "a massive villa—in every detail of location and layout, designed to enhance concentration." p. 44.
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 48809-48810). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^abRobson, Leo (October 26, 2015)."Delusions of Candour".The New Yorker.Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. RetrievedDecember 9, 2015.
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