(Eugene Luther) Gore Vidal - Biography, Political views, Trivia, Bibliography
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925) is a prolific, versatile American writer of novels, stage plays, screenplays, and essays, and, of late, a liberal political pundit.
Biography
He was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. in West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal Sr.
Vidal's father, a "brawny, handsome" former West Point all-American halfback who became the director of Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce from 1933 until 1937 during the Roosevelt administration, was one of the first Army Air Corps pilots and according to biographer Susan Butler was "the great love of Amelia Earhart's life".. Gene Vidal also was a veteran of the Olympics games of 1920 (where he placed second in the pentathalon) and 1924 (where he coached the U.S. pentathalon teams).
Nina, Vidal's alcoholic mother, was a onetime actress who made her Broadway debut in the 1928 production "Sign of the Leopard". She married twice after her 1935 divorce from Gene Vidal (one husband was Hugh D. 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.
Vidal was raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended 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 US Army Reserve in 1943.
For much of the late twentieth century, Vidal divided his time between Ravello, Italy on the Amalfi Coast and Los Angeles, California.
Vidal is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
After a magazine published rumors about J.T.'s identity, Vidal eventually confirmed they referred to his St. Albans love, Jimmie Trimble, who'd been killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on June 1, 1945. Subsequently, as sales of his novels diminished, Vidal wrote plays, films, and television series as a scriptwriter.
In 1956, Vidal was hired as a contract screenwriter for MGM. Vidal collaborated with Christopher Fry, reworking the screenplay on condition that MGM release him from the last two years of his contract. Actor Charlton Heston was displeased with the veiled homosexuality of a scene Vidal wrote and denies that Vidal contributed significantly to the script ().
In the 1960s, Vidal wrote three highly successful novels.
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, 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, Vidal focused on essays and two distinct strains in his fiction. Critic Harold Bloom wrote, "Vidal's imagination of American politics .
Vidal occasionally returned to scriptwriting cinema and television, including the television movie Billy the Kid with Val Kilmer, and the mini-series Lincoln. The producers later made a futile attempt to salvage some of Vidal's vision during post-production.
Contrary to his wishes, Vidal is — at least in the U.S. — more respected as an essayist than as a novelist.
Accordingly, for six decades, Gore Vidal has applied his wit, intelligence, polymathy, and inimitable voice to a wide variety of socio-political, sexual, historical, and literary themes. Vidal also wrote an historical essay about the U.S.'s founding fathers, Inventing A Nation. 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 and unrelenting champion of sexual liberation. Focusing on 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." 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.
In the 1960s, Vidal moved to Italy;
Besides his politician grandfather, Vidal has other connections to the Democratic Party: his mother Nina married Hugh D. Gore Vidal is a fifth cousin of Jimmy Carter, and is also a distant cousin of Al Gore.
In 1960, Gore Vidal was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress, losing a very close election in a traditionally Republican district on the Hudson River. Although frequently identified with Democratic causes and personalities, Vidal has written: "[t]here is only one party in the United States, the Property Party .
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.
Political views
Vidal has a protective, almost proprietary attitude toward his native land and its politics.
In 1968, ABC News hired Vidal and William F. After days of mutual bickering that devolved to childish, ad hominem attacks, Vidal called Buckley a "pro- crypto Nazi", to which the visibly livid Buckley replied: "Now listen, you queer.
Later, in 1969, Buckley apologized to Vidal in the lengthy essay,"On Experiencing Gore Vidal", published in the August 1969 issue of Esquire; 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.
Not to be outdone, Vidal responded in the September 1969 issue of Esquire, variously characterizing W.F. 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 Breckenridge 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.
Vidal has stirred controversy with his relations with Timothy McVeigh. Vidal believes McVeigh either had accomplices or was framed for the Oklahoma City terrorist attack. Vidal also has suggested that the attack may have been carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to promote legislation of stronger anti-terrorist laws.
In 1994, Vidal contributed a preface to Israel Shahak's highly controversial book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, which has been criticized by Talmudic scholars, academics, and the ADL.
In his preface, Vidal states that: "(s)ome time in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian John Fitzgerald Kennedy told me how, in 1948, Harry S Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president.
Vidal is a member of the advisory board of the World Can't Wait organization, which demands the impeachment of George W.
During an interview in the 2005 documentary, Why We Fight, Vidal claims that during the final months of World War II, the Japanese had tried to surrender to the United States, but to no avail. Though Japan did sue for peace, the surrender to which Vidal referred was not their famous unconditional surrender after the bombing of Nagasaki, but rather one with status quo ante bellum terms that would have averted, among other things, military occupation.
Views on September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States
Vidal is strongly critical of the George W. Specifically regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vidal writes how such an attack, which he claims American intelligence warned was coming, politically justified the plans that the administration already had in August 2001 for invading Afghanistan the following October.
The factors Vidal cites in support of his theory include NORAD's delay in mobilizing fighter airplanes to intercept the hijacked airliners, compared with the time one might expect after a hijacking report.
Vidal concluded that it was possible that the administration let the attacks happen.
On October 24th 2006, Gore Vidal expanded on these views on the Alex Jones Show, stating that he was certain that the Bush administration had "let it happen on purpose", citing the head of the Pakistani ISI bankrolling the hijackers while also meeting with U.S. government officials in the week before and on the morning of 9/11. He said, "What made no sense is that CNN wouldn't follow up on why the fighter planes had not been scrambled and gone up to stop the hijacking - that's the law of the land you don't need the President to order you, you don't need a general - those are your instructions - I know, my father wrote them." ()
Trivia
Vidal was portrayed briefly in the film Infamous (2006) by Michael Panes.
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