Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal | |
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Born | Eugene Louis Vidal October 3, 1925 West Point, New York, U.S. |
Died | July 31, 2012 Los Angeles, California | (aged 86)
Resting place | Rock Creek Cemetery |
Other names | Eugene Luther Vidal Jr. |
Education | Phillips Exeter Academy |
Occupations |
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Known for |
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Political party |
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Movement | Postmodernism |
Partners | See list
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Parents | |
Relatives | See list
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Chairman of the People's Party | |
In office November 27, 1970 – November 7, 1972 | |
Military career | |
Service/ | United States Army |
Years of service | 1943–1946 |
Rank | Warrant officer |
Battles/wars | World War II |
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (
A grandson of
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 the psychology of his characters.[2] His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship.[3]
In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world of
Early life
Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the
Vidal was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of
His father, Eugene Luther Vidal Sr., was director (1933–1937) of the
Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in Feldkirch, Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to the U.S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann.[15]
Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928.
The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal—Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and
Raised in Washington, D.C., Vidal attended the
Rather than attend university, Vidal enlisted in the
Literary career
Vidal's literary works were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity,
Fiction
Vidal's literary career began with the success of the
Vidal took the pseudonym "Edgar Box" and wrote the mystery novels Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death before Bedtime (1953) and Death Likes it Hot (1954) featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. His satirical novel
In the 1960s, Vidal published
After publishing the plays
The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as
Non-fiction
In the United States, Vidal is often considered an essayist rather than a novelist.[41] Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as Martin Amis, admitted that "Essays are what he is good at ... [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating."
For six decades, Vidal applied himself to socio-political, sexual, historical and literary subjects. In the essay anthology Armageddon (1987) he explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary United States. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and that of his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the world in the late twentieth century. In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology United States: Essays 1952–92 (1993).[42]
In 2000, Vidal published the collection of essays The Last Empire, then 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
In 2009, Vidal won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture".[43] In the same year, the Man of Letters Gore Vidal was named honorary president of the American Humanist Association.[44][30]
Hollywood
In 1956,
36 years later, in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995), 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 homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenwriter agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene.[6]: 306 In turn, on learning of that explanation, Heston said that Vidal had contributed little to the script of Ben-Hur.[45] Despite Vidal's resolution of the character's motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the "original author" of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay.[46]
Two plays, The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960, made into a
In the 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director
Politics
Political campaigns
Vidal began to drift towards the political left after he received his first paycheck, and realized how much money the government took in tax.[48] He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, then it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education.[48]
As a public intellectual, Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the old Democratic Party.[49][50]
In 1960, Vidal was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the
In 1982, he campaigned against Jerry Brown, the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate; Vidal forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate (Pete Wilson) would win the election.[54] That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No (1983), directed by Gary Conklin.
In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist
Vidal was very much against any kind of
Criticism of George W. Bush
As a public intellectual, Vidal criticized what he viewed as political harm to the nation and the voiding of the
Vidal became a member of the board of advisors of
In May 2007, while discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories that might explain the "who?" and the "why?" of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Vidal said
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.[63]
Political philosophy
In the American Conservative article "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that Vidal's favorite American politician, during his lifetime, was
Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards 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".
In a September 30, 2009, interview with The Times of London, Vidal said that there soon would be a dictatorship in the United States. The newspaper emphasized that Vidal, described as "the Grand Old Man of American belles-lettres", claimed that America is rotting away – and to not expect Barack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In this interview, he also updated his views of his life, the United States, and other political subjects.[70] Vidal had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the United States 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
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.[71]
Feuds
The Capote–Vidal feud
In 1975, Vidal sued
The Buckley–Vidal feud
In 1968, the ABC television network hired the liberal Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. as political analysts of the presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties.[74] After days of bickering, their debates deteriorated to vitriolic ad hominem attacks. During a moment of crosstalk while discussing the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, the pair argued about freedom of speech; namely, the legality of protesters to display a Viet Cong flag in America, Vidal snapped at Buckley to "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's Howard K. Smith intervened, and the debate resumed without violence.[54][75] Later, Buckley said he regretted having called Vidal a "queer", but still expressed some distaste for Vidal when he said that he was an "evangelist for bisexuality".[76]
In 1969, in Esquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in the essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" (August 1969), 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 in The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings from the time.[77]
Vidal riposted in Esquire with the September 1969 essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." and said that Buckley was "anti-black", "
The feud continued in Esquire, where Vidal implied that in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized a
In Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999), Fred Kaplan said that "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against Esquire ... [that] the 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. The cash value of the settlement with Esquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses."[84]
In 2003, Buckley resumed his complaint of having been libeled by Vidal, this time with the publication of the anthology Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing (2003), which included Vidal's essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." Again, the offended Buckley filed lawsuit for libel and Esquire magazine again settled Buckley's claim with $55,000–65,000 for the fees of his attorney and $10,000 for personal damages suffered by Buckley.[85]
In the obituary "RIP WFB – in Hell" (March 20, 2008), Vidal remembered Buckley, who had died on February 27, 2008.[86] Later, in the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal" (June 15, 2008), New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon asked Vidal: "How did you feel, when you heard that Buckley died this year?" Vidal responded:[87]
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.
The Mailer–Vidal feud
On December 15, 1971, during the recording of The Dick Cavett Show, with Janet Flanner, Norman Mailer allegedly head-butted Vidal when they were backstage.[88] When a reporter asked Vidal why Mailer had knocked heads with him, Vidal said, "Once again, words failed Norman Mailer."[89] During the recording of the talk 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 having stabbed his wife of the time.[90]
Views
Polanski rape case
In The 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 director Roman Polanski, in Switzerland, in September 2009, in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities, for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in Hollywood, 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 for elaboration, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s:[91]
The [news] media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an anti-Semitic and anti-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 Jew Polacko—that's what people were calling him—well, the story is totally different now [2009] from what it was then [1970s] ... 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."[91]
In response to Vidal's opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, a spokeswoman for the organization Survivors 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 [psychological] wounds of (the victims)" of sexual abuse.[92]
Scientology
In 1997, Vidal was one of thirty-four public intellectuals and celebrities who joined a publicity campaign waged by Scientologists against the German government, signing an open letter addressed to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published in the International Herald Tribune, alleging that Scientologists in Germany were treated "in the same way that the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews".[93] Scientologists are free to operate in Germany; the Church of Scientology, however, is not recognized as a religious body but as a business with political goals and thus monitored by the German domestic intelligence service.[94][95] Despite signing the letter, Vidal was critical of Scientology as a religion.[96]
Sexuality
In 1967, Vidal appeared in the
However, Vidal often rebutted the label of "gay," maintaining that it referred to sexual acts rather than innate sexuality. During the 1980s and 1990s, he did not express a public stance on the HIV/AIDS crisis. According to Vidal's close friend Jay 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."[98]
In the September 1969 edition of Esquire, Vidal wrote:[78][30]
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.
Personal life
In the multi-volume memoir The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–74), Anaïs Nin said she had a love affair with Vidal, who denied her claim in his memoir Palimpsest (1995). In the online article "Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anaïs Nin" (2013), author Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from Vidal to Nin, which contradicts his denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the love letter while researching Mirages, the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword.[99] Vidal would cruise the streets and bars of New York City and other locales and wrote in his memoir that by age twenty-five, he had had more than a thousand sexual encounters.[100] Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter.[6]: 290 [101] He was briefly engaged to actress Joanne Woodward before she married actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.[102]
Vidal enjoyed telling his sexual exploits to friends. Vidal claimed to have slept with Fred Astaire when he first moved to Hollywood and also with a young Dennis Hopper.[98]
In 1950, Vidal met
In the course of his life, Vidal lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail with age, he sold his Italian villa La Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest) on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno and he and Austen returned to live in their 1929[106] villa in Outpost Estates, Los Angeles.[107] Howard Austen died in November 2003 and in February 2005 his remains were re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot that Vidal had purchased for himself and Austen.[108]
Death
In 2010, Vidal began to suffer from Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, a neurological disorder caused by his years of alcohol abuse.[109] On July 31, 2012, Vidal died of pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 86.[109][110][111] A memorial service was held for him at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City on August 23, 2012.[112] He was buried next to Howard Austen in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.[113] Vidal said he chose his grave site 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.[114] Upon his death, Vidal bequeathed the entirety of his estate, valued at $37 million,[115] to Harvard University.[116]
Legacy
Postmortem opinions and assessments of Vidal as a writer varied. The New York Times described him as "an Augustan 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."[117] The Los Angeles Times said that he was a literary juggernaut whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language".[118] The Washington Post described him as a "major writer of the modern era ... [an] astonishingly versatile man of letters".[119]
The Guardian said that "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."[120] The Daily Telegraph described the writer as "an icy iconoclast" who "delighted in chronicling what he perceived as the disintegration of civilisation around him".[121] The BBC News said that 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."[122] In "The Culture of the United States Laments the Death of Gore Vidal", the Spanish on-line magazine Ideal said that Vidal's death was a loss to the "culture of the United States" and described him as a "great American novelist and essayist".[123] In The Writer Gore Vidal is Dead in Los Angeles, the online edition of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera described the novelist as "the enfant terrible of American culture" and that he was "one of the giants of American literature".[124] In Gore Vidal: The Killjoy of America, the French newspaper Le 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".[125]
On August 23, 2012, in the program a Memorial for Gore Vidal in Manhattan, the life and works of the writer Gore Vidal were celebrated at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, with a revival of The Best Man: A Play About Politics (1960). The writer and comedian Dick Cavett was host of the Vidalian celebration, which featured personal reminiscences about and performances of excerpts from the works of Vidal by friends and colleagues, such as Elizabeth Ashley, Candice Bergen, Hillary Clinton, Alan Cumming, James Earl Jones, Elaine May, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, and Liz Smith.[126]
In the 1960s, Vidal selected the
In popular culture
In the 1960s, the weekly American sketch comedy television program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In featured a running-joke sketch about Vidal; the telephone operator Ernestine (Lily Tomlin) would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedul, this is the Phone Company calling! (snort! snort!)."[128][129] The sketch, titled "Mr. Veedle", also appeared in Tomlin's comedy record album This Is a Recording (1972).[130]
Vidal provided his own voice for the animated-cartoon version of himself in The Simpsons episode "Moe'N'a Lisa".[131] He also voiced his animated-cartoon version in Family Guy.[132] He was interviewed in the Da Ali G Show; the Ali G character mistakes him for Vidal Sassoon, a famous hairdresser.[133]
The Buckley-Vidal debates, their aftermath and cultural significance, were the focus of a 2015 documentary film called Best of Enemies, as well as a 2021 play by James Graham, inspired by the film.[134][135]
In season eight, episode eight of The Office titled "Gettysburg", Oscar Martinez calls Dwight 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".
A Netflix biopic titled Gore was filmed in 2017. It was directed and co-written by Michael Hoffman, and based on Jay Parini's book Empire of Self, A Life of Gore Vidal. The film, which starred Kevin Spacey in the title role, was cancelled and remains unreleased due to sexual misconduct allegations made against Spacey.[136][137]
Selected list of works
- The City and the Pillar (1948)
- The Best Man (1960)
- Julian (1964)
- Myra Breckinridge (1968)
- Kalki (1978)
- Creation (1981)
The Narratives of Empire series (chronological order rather than release order):
- Burr (1973)
- Lincoln (1984)
- 1876 (1976)
- Empire (1987)
- Hollywood (1990)
- Washington, D.C. (1967)
- The Golden Age (2000)
Filmography
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1972 | Roma | Himself | Uncredited |
1992 | Bob Roberts | Senator Brikley Paiste | |
1994 | With Honors | Pitkannen | |
1997 | Shadow conspiracy | Congressman Page | |
Gattaca | Director Josef | ||
2002 | Igby Goes Down | First School Headmaster | Uncredited |
2009 | Shrink | George Charles |
See also
- List of Venice Film Festival jury presidents
- Politics in fiction
References
- ISBN 978-1-61902-212-6.
- ^ Murphy, Bruce. Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (4th ed.). HarperCollins Publishers (1996), p. 1080.
- ^ Terry, C. V. New York Times Book Review, "The City and the Pillar", January 11, 1948, p. 22.
- ^ Hornblower, Simon & Spawforth, Editors. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization Oxford University Press (1998), pp. 383–384.
- ^ ISBN 9780804424615. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9780679440383. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
- ^ Vidal, Gore, "West Point and the Third Loyalty Archived July 15, 2014, at the Wayback Machine", The New York Review of Books, Volume 20, Number 16, October 18, 1973.
- ^ Gore Vidal: Author Biography, Essays, History, Novels, Style, Favorite Books – Interview (2000). August 25, 2013. Archived from the original on August 27, 2013 – via YouTube.
- ^ a b Kaplan, Fred (1999). "Excerpt: Gore Vidal, A Biography". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 10, 2013. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
- ^ ISBN 9781578066735. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
- ^ "Aeronautics: $8,073.61", Time, September 28, 1931
- ^ "Booknotes -- East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart". C-SPAN. November 13, 1997. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
- ^ "Eugene L. Vidal, Aviation Leader". The New York Times. February 21, 1969. p. 43. Archived from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
- ^ South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame Profile: Gene Vidal. Archived October 16, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-385-53757-5. Retrieved December 23, 2015
- ^ "General Robert Olds Marries". The New York Times. June 7, 1942. p. 6. [dead link]
- ^ "Miss Nina Gore Marries". The New York Times. January 12, 1922. Archived from the original on June 10, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
- ^ Vidal, Gore. Point to Point Navigation, New York: Doubleday, 2006, p. 135.
- ^ "Politicians: Aubertine to Austern". The Political Graveyard. 2008. Archived from the original on December 28, 2008. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
- ^ "Maj. Gen. Olds, 46, of Air Force, Dies". The New York Times. April 29, 1943. Archived from the original on June 10, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
- ^ "Hugh Steers, 32, Figurative Painter". The New York Times. March 4, 1995. Archived from the original on April 17, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
- ^ Durbin, Karen (September 15, 2002). "A Family's Legacy: Pain and Humor (and a Movie)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 21, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
- ^ Rutten, Tim. "'The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal' Archived October 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine", Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2008.
- ^ Jay Parini, Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies: The Life of Gore Vidal (London: Little, Brown, 2015), pp. 27–28. )
- ISBN 0-313-29579-4. p. 3.
- ^ Vidal, Gore. Williwaw, "Preface", p. 1.
- ^ Clarke, Interviewed by Gerald (1974). "Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 50, Gore Vidal". The Paris Review. Vol. Fall 1974, no. 59. Archived from the original on October 28, 2010. Retrieved November 29, 2010.
- ISBN 978-1-57322-514-4. Archivedfrom the original on September 19, 2015. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
- ^ Vidal, Gore. The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (NY: Random House), p. xiii.
- ^ a b c d e f Duke, Barry (August 1, 2012). "Farewell Gore Vidal, Gay Atheist Extraordinary". Freethinker.co.uk. Archived from the original on January 8, 2018. Retrieved December 18, 2015.
- ^ Roberts, James. "The Legacy of Jimmy Trimble Archived November 5, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", ESPN, March 14, 2002.
- ^ Chalmers, Robert. "Gore Vidal: Literary feuds, his 'vicious' mother and rumours of a secret love child Archived June 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", The Independent, May 25, 2008.
- ^ Vidal, Gore. Point to Point Navigation (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 245
- ^ Décoration de l'écrivain Gore Vidal.Archived October 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Boston Globe: Diane White, "Murder, He Wrote, Before Becoming a Man of Letters", 25 March 2011. Retrieved July 11, 2011 Archived November 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Vidal, Gore. "Introduction to Death in the Fifth Position", in Edgar Box, Death in the Fifth Position (Vintage, 2011), pp. 5–6.
- ^ "Philco Television Playhouse: A Sense of Justice (TV)". The Paley Center for Media. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved January 1, 2013.
- ^ Bayard, Louis (April 12, 2015), "Review: Gore Vidal's 'Thieves Fall Out', Where Pulp Fiction and Hard Reality Met", The New York Times, archived from the original on April 13, 2015, retrieved April 12, 2015
- ^ Leonard, John (July 7, 1970). "Not Enough Blood, Not Enough Gore". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 10, 2009. Retrieved October 30, 2008.
- ^ a b "Gore Vidal Dies at 86; Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer". The New York Times. August 1, 2012. Archived from the original on January 28, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
- ^ Solomon, Deborah (June 15, 2008). "Literary Lion". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1993" Archived October 29, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
(With acceptance speech by Vidal, read by Harry Evans.) - ^ "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" Archived March 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
(With acceptance speech by Vidal and official blurb.) - ^ "Gore Vidal: The Death of a Legend | American Atheists". Atheists.org. August 1, 2012. Archived from the original on August 4, 2012. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Show Business: Will the Real Caligula Stand Up?" Archived October 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Time, January 3, 1977.
- ^ a b Vidal, Gore (2014). The History of the National Security State. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 6.
- ^ "Gore Vidal". The Nation. Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. Retrieved January 22, 2009.
- ^ Ira Henry Freeman, "Gore Vidal Conducts Campaign of Quips and Liberal Views" Archived June 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, September 15, 1960
- ^ "Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 8, 1960" (PDF). Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. 1960. p. 31, item #29. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 21, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
- ^ "1960 U.S. Presidential Election, Results by Congressional District". Western Washington University.
- ^ Freeman, Ira Henry (September 15, 1960). "The Playwright, the Lawyer, and the Voters". The New York Times. p. 20. Archived from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
- ^ a b Archived from gorevidalnow.com, in which Gore Vidal corrects his Wikipedia page
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- LCCN 70-105581.
- ^ a b Gore Vidal (September 1969). "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley Jr". Esquire. p. 140.
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- S.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.'").
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- ^ Buckley v. Vidal. Archived January 11, 2021, at the Wayback Machine. 327 F. Supp. 1051 (1971).
- ^ "Buckley Drops Vidal Suit, Settles With Esquire", The New York Times, September 26, 1972, p. 40.
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- ^ Barber, Tony (January 30, 1997), "Germany is harassing Scientologists, says US", The Independent, retrieved September 11, 2009
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- ISBN 1-55583-722-0.
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- ^ StarNewsOnline.com (blog) – On "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In", Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the telephone operator would often call "Mr. Veedle". Archived May 15, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Ernestine the Operator – TV Acres [1] – Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the Telephone Operator – ... a conversation with writer Gore Vidal as Ernestine says "Mr. Veedle, you owe us ..."
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External links
- Gore Vidal Index, by Harry Kloman
- Gore Vidal Pages
- Gore Vidal at IMDb
- Gore Vidal at the Internet Broadway Database
- Gore Vidal at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Gore Vidal at AllMovie
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Documentary, Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia:
- Gore Vidal – Obituary, New York Times
- Gore Vidal Biography and Interview with American Academy of Achievement
- Gore Vidal on Encyclopedia Britannica
- Gore Vidal, on The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
- Gore Vidal, on Open Library, Internet Archive
- Gore Vidal and Dennis Altman Speaking About Gore Vidal's 'America' on 11/07/05 at D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla, CA, 86 min, in mp3 format
- Gore Vidal on Goodreads