Gore Vidal's memoirs

God, yes.

OP, merely being a bitch isn't enough to get you a Datalounge following.

You've got to have a sense of fun, or glamour, or ridiculousness on top of the glamour, and Vidal had none of those. Well, maybe some ridiculousness, but not enough to be fun.

bitch was sour

He was a lair and a blowhard.

He had some talent on the page but needed a strict editor.

The first OUT man?

he refused to call himself gay

Bitter man.

I'd forgive some of his sourness -- a product of his time.

His vicious snobbiness was hard to take, despite how amusing he could be.

His mother never wanted him when he was a child (or when he was an adult), and he took that out on everyone else for the rest of his life.

I gave up on his fiction after a couple of abortive attempts at the novels. People in the know kept saying how sensational he is, so maybe I should read his non-fiction instead.

I've dug into a collection of his essays... and my opinion hasn't changed that much. He uses 10 words where he could/should use 2. Maybe things will pick up?

FWIW, his sworn enemy Truman Capote was a much bigger dysfunctional mess and every bit as much of a vanity case as Vidal, but I love some of his writing.

Vol. 1 of his memoirs was, as I recall, enjoyable. Vol. 2 was a mess--he was getting gaga.

He wanted it both ways.

That characteristic is a problem with many snoots who also want to be known as artistic wits and people of letters. Rather like Princess Margaret farting and encouraging uproarious laughter about it when drunk and then expecting to be called "Ma'am" at breakfast. Well, lunch. His desire to tell truth to power conflicted with his need to be seen as patrician as a Roman senator. And his double-talk about homosexuality was perverse.

But worst of all, he was a truth-stretcher, so his memoirs lack the astringent pleasure of veracity. Jackie "demonstrating" a douche, for example, yielded a particular image that was most likely not what occurred. Jackie, after all, was private enough that the Kennedys used to laugh because she'd run water in the powder room sink at Hyannisport when she peed because it was placed so that everyone could hear what was occurring there.

He lied all the time. He claimed he was related to Jimmy Carter when Carter was in the White House, and no one could discover any sort of familial connection.

He hated his mother. From his descriptions (and that in itself is revenge- tattling) she sounded bi-polar, and would start Karen-like scenes at the drop of a hat.

It sounded like he avoided his parents whenever possible.

Not very impressive as a novelist, better as an essayist and memoirist, probably most successful as a celebrity—ironically, what he held Capite in contempt for.

Even he's kissed more boys than I ever will.

How did he get involved in the Caligula debacle?

The great love of his life was a 16 yo prep school schoolmate that he claims he jacked off with once for all of five minutes in the stall of the boys bathroom.

R18, l I love it -- now that's true romance.

Read his essay collection - United States. How I wish I could read his take on the Trump presidency.

I remember thinking 'Myra Breckinridge' was rather funny knockabout comedy. But his historical tomes looked fat, longwinded and indigestible.

Isherwood's 'Single Man' included a few pages of political point-scoring and was obviously written under the influence of Mister Gore.

He once met Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and they had a conversation in Ancient Greek for the news cameras.

(Those were the days. The current Australian Prime Minister can barely speak English.)

I'm a big fan of his, both his novels and his essays. Pink Triangle, Yellow Star is one of his greatest essays.

As for the novels, Live From Golgotha is a fantastic send up of media, TV and religion. It's just so well done. Creation is good too, as he writes about the grandson of Zoroaster coming into contact with every major Asiatic religious figure would have been around at that time. The Narratives of Empire series of novels are good, but some are better than others. Best to read them in chronological order rather than the publishing order.

Whitlam was another poseur just like Vidal.

Whitlam pretended to represent the working class of Cabramatta but lived above the harbour in Sydney's ritziest suburb.

[quote] Does this patrician bitch have any fans on Datalounge?

Honey, Gore Vidal is the Godfather of Datalounge. Of course he has fans here, he's the patron saint of pointless bitchery.

I'm a big Gore Vidal fan - of his work and him personally.

R6 He was from an era were a lot of people simply didn't do that.

R6 Vidal said so-called heterosexual men performed homosexual sex acts in prison or if they were living in isolation.

Vidal said every man in the world had the potential to do homosexual sex. He said 'homosexual' was a way to have sex and not a lifestyle.

He said it was an adjective and not a noun.

R24, Whitlam enjoyed the pose of poseur, but he had the goods.

He lived above the harbour (with panoramic, uninterrupted views of the Opera House) ONLY when (a) PM and (b) on visits to Sydney, because Kirribilli House is the PM's official Sydney residence. His main residence as Prime Minister was the Lodge in Canberra.

Prior to being elected Prime Minister, he lived in his Western suburbs electorate. Before winning that seat he lived in Cronulla, a pleasant but very ordinary suburb, in a house purchased with a war service loan. His family had money, but he chose to live in his electorate.

And now we return you to our program on Vidal...

Huge fan here. Just calling William Buckley on his fake patrician airs earned him my undying love.

[quote]I've dug into a collection of his essays... and my opinion hasn't changed that much. He uses 10 words where he could/should use 2.

R10 I remember when he appeared on William Buckley's "Firing Line." The two of them tried out outdo each other with their verbosity and grandiloquence. What a couple of prisspots.

Arch isn't the best ship to ride for 87 years when you're a long time between Addison deWitt barbs.

Whatever you may think of Gore Vidal personally, he was a lifelong liberal Democrat who loathed Republicans and conservatism. And he never missed an opportunity to tear the loathsome William F. Buckley a new one.

He was brilliant witty as an essayist....and he knew so much about the classical world. I do wish he were here to write about Donald Trump and his crowd--Gore could have correctly placed them in the classical context of mad emperors and their disgusting families, and the fall of an empire.

Ultra high society elite Vidal always seemed like an unlikely candidate to be an Italophile -- and I've met my share -- but there ya go.

I read his first novel The City And The Pillar - the revised version with the different (and I think, better) ending. Pretty impressive that he would write such a book in the late 1940s knowing it would not help his career. The writing style is also more concise vs. his later writing.

Are you a writer, r12?

R21. Herr Issuvoo was writing fiction and honing his distinctive long before Gore decided to skip college. Isherwood may have been influenced by writers (Woolf, Forster, Mann), but he was a far better writer of narrative and earlier to get started than second-rather Mr. Veedal, as Ernestine Tomlin would address him.

Right. If anything, it was Isherwood that influenced Vidal.

[quote] In 1947, Gore Vidal sent a copy of his soon-to-be-published novel, The City and the Pillar, to a number of established writers. Christopher Isherwood was one of them.

[quote] Vidal, then 22, and his publishers expected negative press due to the book’s frank depiction of homosexuality. Isherwood, then 43, sent an appreciative letter to Vidal, but objected to the novel’s violent ending, in which the protagonist kills his high school obsession. For Isherwood, the book’s climax reinforced the public’s notion that gay men could not be happy and could not love one another. The American edition of The City and the Pillar was already published, however, and Vidal did not act on Isherwood’s advice. Years later, Vidal would revise the ending.

His favorite writer was Henry James which is why he would prefer to use 10 words instead of two.

Though an italophile I understand his Italian itself was rather rudimentary. It was his partner Howard who was the fluent one.

He was a fat queer cunt.

R12, you tried so hard, didn’t you? So very hard. Well, lunch.

Go away now.

OP’s pic of GV looks like an interesting composite of Skeet Ulrich and Ben Affleck.

R16 Girls. Boys kiss girls.

R37 Virginia Woolf owned the company that published some of Forster as well as Isherwood’s ‘Sally Bowles’ and ‘Lions and Shadows’. She described young Isherwood as a ‘small, red-cheeked, jockey’, a ‘merry little bird’ and one of ‘the bugger boys’.

I don’t think he was influenced by her because he described her as a ‘poetess’ rather than a ‘writer of narrative’. But then I wouldn’t describe him as much as a ‘writer of narrative’ but more as a mere reporter or diarist. Look at his works. There are multiple, repetitive publications cribbed from the lives of his friends, his sex-partners, his employer and his parents.

He said he was ‘a camera’ which doesn’t requires imagination.

[Quote] There are multiple, repetitive publications cribbed from the lives of his friends, his sex-partners, his employer and his parents.

You talkin' 'bou me?

[Quote] There are multiple, repetitive publications cribbed from the lives of his friends, his sex-partners, his employer and his parents.

You talkin' 'bou me?

His sense of entitlement was enormous.

^ Gorgeous 20 year olds are entitled to be entitled. But this one kept up the attitude for another half-century.

Some of his historical novels I liked. Some of his essays not so much because verbose. Memoirs: if they open with douching, no, I'll pass.

He's the pre-Granddaddy of Datalounge.

Some people discuss certain literary figures far more often than they actually read them.

Gore Vidal strikes me as one of these fashionable writers: increasingly, he's become a symbol among gay men in search of some hyperarticulate, worldly, iconoclastic gay folk hero. Some Vidal fans I've encountered can share the quotes, the family connections, and the outrageous anecdotes, but have not really read much of his work. They just love some abstract notion of Gore Vidal.

Dear R51, I think 80% of people discuss certain literary figures far more often than they actually read them.

Reading an actual 'novel' is much harder than some chat group post.

Does any video of the Buckley/Vidal debates still exist?

R53: They all do, both at the Miami Republican convention and the Chicago Democratic one where Vidal trolls old queen Buckley to near fisticuffs, you QUEER. Here's Day One of the Republican one.

I miss his voice. Everything he said about the corporate class and the military has come to pass. He tended to beat the same drum over and over but his literary reviews are funny and on point. His American history novels beginning with 1876 and ending with Washington DC are an amazing achievement.

He was a liar, and a sad drunk (especially after his partner died) but I love that he gave absolutely no fucks. I was watching a documentary about Roy Cohn the other day, and there was a TV talk show clip from (I think) the 80s where Vidal and Cohn are on a panel together, and at one point Vidal says something like, “The only good thing I ever heard about Joe McCarthy was when a senator once assured me that McCarthy was a full time homosexual.” When Cohn protests, saying something about how homosexuality is Vidal’s favorite topic, Vidal shoots back an insinuation that Cohn is gay. I miss people like Vidal and Hitchens who just didn’t give a fuck when confronting idiots and conservative assholes on tv or at public events.

I read his “Lincoln” when I was a little kid and I think it was part of the reason I fell in love with history. Lincoln had always been something of a god chiseled in stone for me growing up, and Vidal made me understand him as a complicated human being.

Would that America had but one neck ...

Would that Gore had but one original thing to say ...

I can't seem to get away from the pansies ...

I usually need a can of beer to be around him.

His first memoir was great, but his second quite repetitive. By that point, his mind had started to go - I hated seeing his later appearances on TV, it felt exploitative. Then again, the old queen loved attention.

Burr, Lincoln, and Myra Breckinbridge and the sequel Myron are all excellent. I'm reading Creation now, and have Julian on my list too.

Don't bother finishing Creation. It's been overtaken by events.

Yeah R61 I remember seeing a YouTube video of him doing an event at the end of his life. He wasn’t all there and I was horrified that they had let him do it. He was asked what he thought of Al Franken, and responded that whenever he thought of Minnesota he always thought of great men like La Follette. When someone in the audience shouted out, “That’s Wisconsin!” Vidal seemed totally confused. I remember he got so much basic stuff wrong in his remarks. It was totally exploitative.

You'd certain know something about not finishing a book, Truman.

He must have been senile when that nude young man was photographed at his feet near the pool.

Read his essays when I was 17, loved them. Read a couple of the novels too. His talent as a novelist didn't match up to his opinion of himself (he once said he and Norman Mailer were the only two post-war American novelists worth reading, and he felt bad because the general public had stopped reading on their watch). He was patchily, if classically, educated, had little knowledge of and, often, total contempt for trends in literature, criticism, and philosophy, since the 1950s, had no grasp of cinema as a proper art form in its own right. But! he was a strong critic (from a position of real personal privilege) of the development of US capitalism during his lifetime: one of the first critical and intellectual voices I encountered that really examined the political and economic foundations on which society was built and found them wanting. I was fascinated by the fact that he was willing to write somewhat favorably of Timothy McVeigh. He could craft a putdown like no other and slide it into his opponent like a stiletto: some of his takedowns of US conservatism, the Reagans and so on are screamingly funny. I would have loved and would still love to be an essayist like him.

The Jimmy Trimble story as sad. Reading it as a naive and sheltered 17 year old I couldn't quite see how these two 1930s apparently-straight prep school boys managed to get it on. Later on I heard a suggestion that he had made most or all of the Trimble stuff up, apparently this is a theory floated by a biographer, anyone know any more?

Oh yeah, I saw him speak at the Oxford Union once and got two books signed. I was shy and wanted to tell him how much I admired his writing, but at the same time didn't want to come across as a drippy starstruck undergraduate, so he just said 'hi' grumpily to me, signed the books and that was that.

There was an awkward moment when the President of the Oxford Union, who was leading the discussion, tried to ask him some questions about his work, and in answering, Vidal said "well, have you read.... (whatever title)?" and it became apparent that the President hadn't read a single page of anything he had written.

Never read any Vidal? That's called good time management in my book.

I will say also in the current climate that I admired his frank self-examination of the evolution of his views on race, his admission that his Southern family held the views common to most white southern families at the time, to his recognition of the prevalence of structural anti-black racism in US society, though many have criticised some of his other remarks on Asians.

Who let a dirty little animal in the room?

Hung?

He recycled a lot of anecdotes from the first memoir in the second. The first was filled with resentment but entertaining. The second was just petty and depressing. He had an interesting life, but the claims of being Jimmy Carter's eighth cousin, etc. were a bit much. That he was such a genius and didn't realize that the Kennedys demanded loyalty shows how pathetically naive he was.

Mother and I had to turn a bed down when Gore and Lee visited us once. They wanted to put us up in a hotel. Can you IMAGINE?

Oooh, while digging for info on the above, i came across this interesting tidbit. Leaving his fortune all to harvard does sound like something he would do.

Senile

I have read many of his novels and would say they fall into 3 categories. The first ones are those written for the literary taste makers, and he counted himself amongst them. Willowaw is an example of this type. The second are those written to educate readers on how the US national myths deviate from historical actualities. I felt that was one of his reasons for writing the US history series- that and because they made money. My favourite of these is 1876 mainly because he has so much fun with the narrator, and had in it a line I just love-'I was ravashed by the irony'. The third are his gleeful shit stirring books, in which he creates some perverse alternative reality and really shows his teeth. I loved Duluth (where once someone dies they appear on a soap opera broadcast to still living family and acquaintances), Live from Galgotha, (where television, time travel and Jesus collide!) and lots of others too because they could be great fun. He would have been a different writer if City and the Pillar had been differently recieved but there you have it.

I’m with R25: Does Vidal have any fans on DL indeed!

It might fun to do a remake of Myra Breckinridge.

I truly enjoyed reading his writing and reading about him. I do believe earlier post re: Jimmy Carter missed the mark. He was related to the Gores and mentioned his connection to Al Gore when Al was running for President. I do believe he had a crush on JFK and said that he turned against him because of politics but I believe it was unrequited love.; His relationship with Jackie was so complicated, he compared her unfavorably to Hillary whom he liked.

I wonder why didn't use the name 'Eugene Vidal'?

Well, if the Jimmy Trimble stuff is true, good on Gore, because that boy was young-Ryan Phillippe beautiful.

"Later he says that he was the only member of his family who didn't condemn Jackie for marrying Onassis because he once accepted $10 from a man who gave him a blowjob, and it was the same principle. "

WTF? I don't get it.

[quote] Though an italophile I understand his Italian itself was rather rudimentary. It was his partner Howard who was the fluent one.

I can't imagine Mr. Vidal having the patience for the often incompetent slowness of Italian culture.

^ Because Jackie's marriage to Onassis was also ultimately transaction for money and other benefits. Onassis gave them and he received the cache of being married to her.

The Jimmy Carter thing, true or not was simply pathetic. Vidal needed to present some connection, however, tenuous to the rest of the "ruling class".

The account of his partner Howard's death is heartbreaking. I'm not sure if their relationship was ever based on sex, from how Vidal would speak about him. Howard seemed like a fun queen - he loved is show tunes and wrote The Myra Breckinridge Cookbook

There is a completed film, titled "Gore," that has been embargoed by Netflix due to the titled character Kevin Spacey's molestering.

My personal friend, Michael Stuhlbarg, co-starred as Howard, and speaks below to the disappointing controversy.

Can’t believe that about Jackie and her douching...this was the same woman that ran water in the bathroom sink while she took a shit so that people couldn’t tell she was making a #2...

People of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's class do not have lower GI functions! That's only for the peasants!

He was very smart of course and I gather a good writer although I could not (can not) stand his style. It’s the kind of writing where the author seems always to be saying,”see how brilliant I am”. He also lied and exaggerated a lot. Essentially a very angry ambitious man- and alcoholic. Capote was the better writer, although the bigger boozer and fantasist. Both were egomaniacs masking a lot of self loathing.

I give both of them a pass on the self loathing, considering the generation and the era that they came from. Just imagine what it was like, even for gay people from well-off families it was often hellish.

Think of the misery and the self-loathing in Boys In the Band. Capote and Vidal were from the generation previous to that, so it was even worse, if you can believe it.

There were a lot of men and women who were not self loathing- and even more important they did not become harpies over it.

Vidal and Capote both had serious mommy issues. Mommies can make or break a queen.

Vidal's mother was a toxic bitch, just a horrible person.

Vidal definitely loses points for leaving his entire estate to Harvard. (I'm willing to attribute it to his senile dementia.) Vidal, of course, didn't attend Harvard.

I'm of the opinion that no one should leave billion-dollar institutions like Harvard their money, at least not until tuition is free for deserving undergrads. I just heard of about another wealthy elderly queen (an acquaintance of acquaintances) who has willed millions of dollars to Dartmouth. Now, with record unemployment in this country, and our infrastructure self-destructing. Of course, he didn't get into or attend Dartmouth, either.

Is there no more deserving cause to these people than elitist universities?

This is part of a larger trend of misanthropy in the US. This old queen like Vidal was seeking prestige even in death.

R87, they should cast Chris Pine to play Gore Vidal. He sort of resembles a young Vidal.

I don't know if he can pull off playing the quintessential acid-tongued gentleman bitch.

Pine lacks the depth to portray a man like Gore Vidal.

Pine lacks the depth to portray a man like Gore Vidal.

He'd have the pool drained after Rock Hudson swam in it, to avoid the AIDS. One guest said Vidal was obsessed with Buckley and that an evening with Vidal was like an evening with Norma Desmond. He changed his name from Gene Vidal.

R99 Chris Pine has wrinkles already and he looks natural whereas the tiresome preening Vidal was wrinkle-free until his 60s.

Eugene Vidal was a desperate snob. Changing his name. Leaving his money to Harvard. WTF?

He idolized his father yet it seems clear that his father didn't have much of a relationship with him.

His father though the boy was a fairy with no future.

'Vidal' sounds effeminate or Hungarian.

I love how bitchy Miss Gore can be. His novel Myra Breckinridge is a masterpiece.

Vidal had a weird familial relationship with Jackie (and Lee). There was no blood relationship but Hugh D. Auchincloss had been the second husband of each of their mothers, so at different points in time, Auchincloss had been stepfather to each of them.

Is their even a word to describe that type of relationship?

Midway through and he claims to have fucked the notoriously homophobic Jack Kerouac at the height of his rough-trade beauty ... and it's at least somewhat believable, though I'm not sure I believe it.

R105, yes, and Vidal's daddy was wrong.

Hugh Auchincloss gave Jackie away to JFK at their marriage, because, as expected, Jackie's father Black Jack Bouvier showed up so drunk he couldn't stand unassisted, much less walk her down the aisle.

Kerouac was one of the most notoriously repressed homosexual men who ever lived. All his friends both personal and professional were gay. He was torn with his Catholic Church upbringing and later Buddhist interests. And his wives and mother.

R96 - Tuition is free to all poor "deserving" people admitted to the Ivy League. They meet full financial need and it is not loans. The rich and upper middle class pay through the nose.

R109 I don't believe he fornicated with the late Kerouac. Just as much as I don't believe the nonsense he was prattling about 'Ben-Hur' against the late Chuck Heston.

Any fool can make up lies when the dead can't take them to court to curtail their lies.

Kerouac wouldn't have been turned on by Gore.

Gore Vidal made up new lies to tell about himself and others every day of is life. I wouldn't believe anything he ever said.

He was a bright rich guy who swanned around and wrote occasionally. He certainly had a lot to say about everything.

I can see him bending over so quickly and then spending days trying to pray the gay away, r114. Isn't that his 1940s navy enlistment photo from Wikipedia?

And wasn't the gay subtext thing in Ben Hur always acknowledged by Vidal, Wyler, and Stephen Boyd? Heston was a smart guy, no matter how right wing. I think he got it and went along for the ride. Great part, great script. Heston wasn't the dummy we usually take him to be. He allegedly put out for parts early in his career.

To follow on from R114. Kerouac was very handsome!

No, R117, it was NOT always acknowledged by Vidal, Wyler, and Stephen Boyd!

The lousy Vidal waited until all three were safely dead before he brought out his prissy minatory prattling.

Gore famously called him Charlatan Heston when they had their back-and-forth during the Ben Hur kerfuffle. I believe the L.A Times reported of their feud at the time.

Gore was correct about that much R120.

Heston turned out to be a [bold]REAL[/bold] asshole.

Vidal = bitchy, spiteful, queen.

OK, r117 here. I stand corrected on all public/press accounts of Ben Hur at the time

I still think Heston had been around the block a few times and knew exactly what he was doing with Ben Hur.

And yes, r121, he was indeed a REAL asshole.

I just think he always knew exactly what he was doing.

R123 I can understand you saying Chuck Heston was an old, dull-witted, egomaniac.

But you use the word 'asshole' as if he did something to personally offend you.

What?

Heston didn't personally offend me. I am very careful about to whom I give that power.

You are not even close yourself.

Did Miss Gore have a minty fresh mangina?

The one thing that would argue for the Kerouac story being true would be that Kerouac was willing to try anything once and esp. if he was loaded.

One commenter here seems to have a real hardon for hating Gore Vidal. What's the matter, Toots? She tell you your writing sucked?

Ginsburg seems like a much more fun fuck than Vidal.

[quote] Vidal = bitchy, spiteful, queen.

And?

DL should be dedicated to Vidal. The patron saint of gay bitchy comments. But smart. Love him as a figure more than as a person. And he had balls.

He was regular at the gas station. Never any complaints. Sweet guy.

He spent his entire life whining about the fading WASP elite. He's no better then the white conservative hierarchy establishment. If your liberal, you don't worry about the WASP establishment fading away.

He was a white supremacist from day one, till the moment of his last breath.

Nah. I wouldn't call him a white supremacist. He had his faults, but racism is not one of them.

[quote] Anais Nin wrote, in her fourth Diary, "Gore has a prejudice against Negroes." To which Gore Vidal responded (in a review of the book from 1971), "Oh dear. Well, I was brought up by my grandfather, a Mississippi-born senator. I have since matured. I now have a prejudice against whites."

He always called out the wealthy WASP class that he was a member of, and he did it until his death.

He was brutal towards Republicans - he hated Reagan and both Bushes. Loved him for that.

R134 and R135 you need to read the write-up slate did on Vidal after he died. It doesn't show him in a nice light.

He was a complicated man and could be a real asshole, but that doesn't change my opinion of certain things I admired about him.

R136, that hit-piece by David Greenberg wasn't that credible. You can tell his main gripe was Vidal being extremely critical of Israel and Zionism.

Critical of Zionism doesn't equate to racism.

Regardless, Vidal was a total dochebag, esp. in his twilight years.

Vidal's biological father, Eugene Vidal. Well known college athlete in his youth, later a member of FDR's administration as an advisor on aviation and best known for being an early promoter and investor in commercial aviation. Long rumored to have been a long term lover of the bisexual Amelia Earhart.

I think he's very hot. The family resemblance is definitely there. Do we know much about Gore's relationship with his father? All I see is how much he justifiably hated his cunt of a mother Nina.

I mentioned in R21 that Isherwood's 'Single Man' of 1964 was obviously written under Vidal’s influence.

Now I don’t know how much influence but the main character George ruminates over some pages that those people complaining in 1964 about being oppressed should NOT be generalised as being all worthy of society’s veneration.

...um, what? R141?

R142 I suggest you read Isherwood's words and make your own conclusion. (I don't have a copy on hand as I borrowed it from a library)

Gore could craft fun stories but his jealousy of Jackie could be seen from space. HE wanted to have Jack’s children. HE wanted to give the TV tour of the White House in a little red number.

I’d read somewhere that Vidal regretted what he called his homosexualist acts believing that, had he been straight, he would have gone further in his political career and had a wider audience for his novels. He claimed that The NY Times didn’t review his work for thirty years after he wrote The City and the Pillar. His sharp, incisive critique of the Establishment rose from his perceived outsider status.

His contrarian illogical adamant elide that gayness does not exist - only bisexuality - was a form of self-loathing. He had issues - but for his time, he deserves a lot of credit for not being a complete closet case.

R145: No, he did not 'regret' it. Also, it wasn't a belief, he WAS blackballed by the Times for over 30 years. That is absolute fact.

Mary Renault wrote a great review of Creation. Vidal rarely praised other authors - Dawn Powell, Kurt Vonnegut and Renault stand out for me as writers he admired.

Dear R146 read what is said at R27.

He said all that back in the 80s when mature homosexuals were jibbing at the use of this newly-invented word 'gay'. They said this new word 'gay' was fey, flippant and disrespectful.

I read somewhere (it could've been here) years ago that Gore fucked Brad Davis, and this was in the early 80s when Brad was in his prime. Has anyone heard of this rumor?

Gore vidal was a classist.

Gore vidal was a classist.

R151 and R152. Yes you're right. He hated dumb people and stupid people. He said American taxes paid for a decent education and anyone who scorns a good free eduction deserves his withering scorn (unless they're pretty).