Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal was a prominent American writer, known for his diverse body of work that includes novels, essays, plays, and screenplays. Born Eugene Luther Vidal into a politically influential family, he adopted his middle name in tribute to his grandfather, a notable senator. Emerging as a significant literary figure after World War II, Vidal's early acclaim came with his war novel *Williwaw*. He gained widespread attention for *The City and the Pillar*, which offered a sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual protagonist, a groundbreaking choice at the time.
Despite facing challenges in the literary world, including fluctuating fame and financial stability, Vidal became a successful screenwriter and playwright. He later returned to novel writing, producing acclaimed historical fiction that critiques American history and politics, with notable works like *Burr* and *Lincoln*. Vidal's writing is characterized by clear prose and a sharp wit, often challenging societal norms and exploring themes of sexuality and power dynamics. He continued to engage with social and political issues through his essays until his passing in 2012. His legacy remains significant in American literature, noted for both his fiction and critical essays.
Gore Vidal
American novelist, dramatist, and nonfiction writer
- Born: October 3, 1925
- Birthplace: West Point, New York
- Died: July 31, 2012
- Place of death:Hollywood Hills, California
Biography
Regarded as one of the most promising novelists to emerge in the period after World War II, Gore Vidal not only created an important body of fiction but also became an influential man of letters, rivaling his contemporary John Updike in the scope and consistency of his work. Born Eugene Luther Vidal to a politically prominent family—he adopted his name “Gore” in honor of his grandfather, Oklahoma senator Thomas P. Gore, and was a distant cousin of former vice president Al Gore—Vidal grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended the prestigious St. Albans School and Phillips Exeter Academy. He went on to serve in the US Army. He subsequently wrote novels and essays that have the authoritative character of one steeped in politics, but he first came to prominence with the war novel Williwaw. His reputation took a sharp downturn with the publication of his third novel, The City and the Pillar, largely because of its then shockingly sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual protagonist. Several novels on both contemporary and historical themes followed, but Vidal found himself unable to make enough money as a writer or to attract the critical praise that would ensure his career as a novelist. Consequently he turned to writing for films and television, becoming one of the four or five best television writers before adapting his teleplay Visit to a Small Planet for a successful run on the Broadway stage. He wrote a number of plays for stage, screen, and television, and in 1955, he gained recognition from the Mystery Writers of America, which presented him with an Edgar Award for best episode in a TV series. {$S[A]Box, Edgar;Vidal, Gore}
Having achieved some degree of fame and financial security, Vidal returned to the novel form in 1964, publishing Julian, a brilliant historical novel that re-creates the life of a fourth-century Roman emperor who renounced Christianity. He subsequently created a dazzling series of historical novels and contemporary satires. Vidal’s fictional magnum opus is a six-volume series of novels that presents American history in the same acerbic terms as his essays. The first of the books to be written is the last chronologically, the contemporary novel Washington, D.C. The second novel, Burr, for example, sides with one of history’s losers, creating sympathy for a political leader who had none of the pomposity or hypocrisy of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson. If Vidal has an American hero, it is Abraham Lincoln, who is the subject of what is perhaps Vidal’s greatest novel. Lincoln is presented as a political genius who broke certain constitutional restraints to save the Union. Lincoln, when viewed in the context of Vidal’s other historical novels, suggests that the president’s very greatness may have contributed to the follies and abuses of power Vidal chronicles so entertainingly in 1876. Vidal concludes the series with Empire, set at the turn of the century, and Hollywood, set in the 1920’s. The series traces and reflects the history of the United States through the lives of Aaron Burr and his fictitious descendants.
Vidal’s lucid prose stands in marked contrast to the baroque experimentalism of Norman Mailer and other celebrated contemporaries. In fact, in his essays Vidal attacks much of contemporary American fiction, finding it esoteric and obscure, a literature produced for discussion in the American classroom, not a body of writing that will survive for a general audience. Vidal’s models were writers such as Edith Wharton, clear-eyed social critics and novelists of manners. Throughout his career Vidal used fiction to question the received truths of the political establishment and of what he called the heterosexual dictatorship. Having discussed homosexuality in The City and the Pillar, Vidal raised the stakes by centering Myra Breckinridge and its sequel Myron on a trans individual. In Messiah and Kalki he uses a quasi-science-fictional approach to examine human beings’ fascination with death; Kalki features a character who wipes out most of humanity. Vidal offended almost everyone with Live from Golgotha, a farcical stew of Christianity, computers, and time travel, narrated by St. Paul’s male lover. Under the pseudonym Edgar Box, Vidal also tried his hand at mystery and detective fiction with novels such as Death in the Fifth Position, Death Before Bedtime, and Death Likes It Hot. In 2015 his early crime novel, Thieves Fall Out, which was written and published in 1953 under the pen name Cameron Kay, was republished posthumously, reportedly against Vidal's wishes.
Vidal published several works of historical nonfiction in the last years of his life, including Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003), Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004), and Snapshots in History's Glare (2009). He also produced a memoir entitled Point to Point Navigation (2006).
For many literary critics, Vidal the essayist predominated over Vidal the novelist. Indeed, The Second American Revolution and Other Essays, 1976-82 earned him a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982, and his United States: Essays 1952-1992 won the 1993 National Book Award for nonfiction. In some of his fiction, characterization seems weak, and he often seems more interested in the points he has to make than in the people he has created. There are, however, major exceptions to this judgment. Burr, in which the historical figure’s voice blends perfectly with Vidal’s, is a triumph—as is Lincoln, in which Vidal restrains his sarcasm in favor of a sober yet lively narrative that reveals Lincoln’s political intelligence in all of its magnificence.
Vidal outlived his partner of a half-century, Howard Austen, by nearly a decade and suffered a protracted decline due to dementia, congestive heart failure, and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. He died on July 31, 2012, at his home in Hollywood Hills, California.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Williwaw, 1946
In a Yellow Wood, 1947
The City and the Pillar, 1948, revised 1965
The Season of Comfort, 1949
A Search for the King: A Twelfth Century Legend, 1950
Dark Green, Bright Red, 1950
The Judgment of Paris, 1952, revised 1965
Death in the Fifth Position, 1952 (as Edgar Box)
Thieves Fall Out, 1953, 2015 (as Cameron Kay)
Death Before Bedtime, 1953 (as Box)
Death Likes It Hot, 1954 (as Box)
Messiah, 1954, revised 1965
Julian, 1964
Washington, D.C., 1967
Myra Breckinridge, 1968
Two Sisters: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, 1970
Burr, 1973
Myron, 1974
1876, 1976
Kalki, 1978
Creation, 1981
Duluth, 1983
Lincoln, 1984
Empire, 1987
Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920’s, 1990
Live from Golgotha, 1992
The Smithsonian Institution, 1998
The Golden Age, 2000
Short Fiction:
A Thirsty Evil: Seven Short Stories, 1956
Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories, 2006
Drama:
Visit to a Small Planet: A Comedy Akin to a Vaudeville, pr. 1957
The Best Man: A Play About Politics, pr. 1960
Romulus: A New Comedy, pr., pb. 1962
An Evening with Richard Nixon, pr. 1972
Screenplays:
The Catered Affair, 1956
Suddenly Last Summer, 1959 (with Tennessee Williams)
The Best Man, 1964 (adaptation of his play)
Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots, 1969
Caligula, 1977
Teleplays:
Visit to a Small Planet, and Other Television Plays, 1956
Dress Gray, 1986
Nonfiction:
Rocking the Boat, 1962
Reflections upon a Sinking Ship, 1969
Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays, 1952-1972, 1972
Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays, 1973-1976, 1977
The Second American Revolution and Other Essays, 1976-1982, 1982
At Home: Essays, 1982-1988, 1988
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992
Screening History, 1992
United States: Essays, 1952-1992, 1993
Palimpsest: A Memoir, 1995
Virgin Islands, A Dependency of United States: Essays, 1992-1997, 1997
Gore Vidal, Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings, 1999
The Last Empire: Essays, 1992-2000, 2000
Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, 2002
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, 2002
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 2003
Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, 2004
Conversations with Gore Vidal, 2005 (Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole, editors)
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 2006
The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, 2008 (Jay Parini, editor)
Snapshots in History's Glare, 2009
I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics, 2012 (with Jon Wiener)
Miscellaneous:
The Essential Gore Vidal, 1999 (Fred Kaplan, editor)
Bibliography
Altman, Dennis. Gore Vidal’s America. Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2005. Comprehensive look at every aspect of Vidal’s life that includes a chapter on his career as a writer, including the works written as Edgar Box. Bibliographic references and indexes.
Baker, Susan, and Curtis S. Gibson. Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. A helpful book of criticism and interpretation of Vidal’s work. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Dick, Bernard F. The Apostate Angel: A Critical Study of Gore Vidal. New York: Random House, 1974. An entertaining and perceptive study, based on interviews with Vidal and on use of his papers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Dick focuses on Vidal’s work rather than on his biography. The book contains footnotes and a bibliography.
Harris, Stephen. The Fiction of Gore Vidal and E. L. Doctorow: Writing the Historical Self. New York: P. Lang, 2002. Discusses Vidal’s strong identification with history as reflected in his writing.
Joshi, S. T. Gore Vidal: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2007. A comprehensive volume containing annotations of nearly every piece of writing by and about Vidal. Includes analysis of his fiction and summaries of the articles and essays he has written.
Kaplan, Fred. Gore Vidal: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1999. A comprehensive biography of the novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, essayist, and political activist who helped shape American letters during the second half of the twentieth century.
Kiernan, Robert F. Gore Vidal. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982. This study of Vidal’s major writings tries to assess his place in American literature and gives astute descriptions of the Vidalian style and manner. The book, which uses Vidal’s manuscript collection, contains a brief note and bibliography section.
Parini, Jay, ed. Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Vidal’s distaste for much of the academic study of modern fiction has been mirrored in a lack of academic study of his work. Jay Parini sought to redress the balance by compiling this work, which deals with both Vidal’s fiction and nonfiction.
Stanton, Robert J., and Gore Vidal, eds. Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1980. A compilation of interviews excerpted and arranged along themes. Vidal comments on his and other authors’ works, on sexuality, and on politics. Vidal edited the manuscript and made corrections, with changes noted in the text.
Vidal, Gore. Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir. New York: Doubleday, 2006. Covers the years 1964 to 2006, detailing Vidal’s experiences and his reflections on writing (his own and others’), as well as culture generally.