Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal, who was one of my few literary heroes, died yesterday.

He was the largest American legend who has died since Michael Jackson, but he won't receive nearly the amount of media coverage that MJ received partly because his work and his personality weren't suitable for everyone. He was an unabashed elitist-- a sort of American aristocrat, and this quirk in his personality was reflected in his work. He lamented that he wasn't accepted by the American mainstream and literature professors at universities. Yet his abrasive criticisms about people and his outspoken nature about politics and social issues distanced himself from many of his contemporaries and people who might otherwise embrace him. When my father speaks about him he often says, "Great writer, but such a damn liberal."

I actually agreed with Vidal about many of his political opinions, but sometimes his views were bizarre. He believed, as many left-leaning people such as myself believe, that most wars that the first world engages in are contrived for the benefit of a few select multinational corporations that hold the reins of power. If you want to read more about these opinions, I suggest that you read his 2002 book: "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta" (a very, very subtle title to be sure). However, he extended this belief to World War II (which I believe was the most purposeful American war aside from maybe the American Revolution), and he even damned Franklin Roosevelt for the "needless" deaths of so many talented men from his generation. He also believed that former Louisiana governor Huey Long-- a weird poseur and tyrannical figure who was famously assassinated in public-- would have been a much better president than Roosevelt during the '40s. I guess that he was entitled to have these strange beliefs because he himself was a World War II veteran.

He had famous battles with his contemporaries. Norman Mailer despised him. During one confrontation, he even head-butted him. When Mailer confronted him again and punched Vidal in the face at a party years later, he said (from his supine position on the floor), "Once again, words have failed Norman Mailer." According to Truman Capote's biographies, Vidal initiated their famous feud by criticizing his mannerisms constantly. Capote let it be known that when he and Vidal were very young and unknown Vidal told him that he wanted to be a famous and rich author, then buy a mansion in California. It all came true-- and Vidal took this account of their conversation as a betrayal and an accusation that he was a sort of intellectual sellout. In turn, he claimed that Capote himself was a chronic liar and fraud whose true name was Truman Persons. Capote, who at first traded insults with him, later withdrew because it bored him. But Vidal was petty and relentless. When Capote eventually killed himself during the early '80s someone asked Vidal if he could explain his decline. He was merciless: "He had run out of lies."

Vidal was boldly unapologetically gay during an era when people expected gays to shut up about their "condition." He also maintained a decades-long relationship with a man during a time when gays often had a sort of "black widow" behavior in which they had sex a few times or even ONCE then completely distanced themselves from each other because they didn't want the public to catch on. But he was a sort of William Burroughs gay-- a masculine figure who despised the effeminate nature of someone such as Capote.

Vidal claimed that "Creation" is his best work. I have read it, and I won't argue. It isn't easy to read: it requires a great deal of knowledge about the history of Western civilization, much of which I researched while I read it. Also, Vidal had a way of flexing his vast vocabulary when he wrote it and other books that might render his writing foreign to modern readers. Even the qualifications for what passes as intellectualism have declined since Vidal's heyday, which is made painfully obvious when one reads through his oeuvre. I also suggest "Burr" to people; it's one of my father's favorite novels.

I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I must state that I believe that the end of the triumvirate of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal during the last five years marks the definitive end of whatever remained of America's printed literature era. We have made a complete transition into film, which is the new version of literature (although Vidal scoffed at this suggestion during the early '80s when an interviewer asked him if film would overtake literature).