Writer Gore Vidal dead at 86
Gore Vidal in 2008 / Getty Images
(AP) Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, has died at the age of 86, his nephew said Tuesday.
Vidal died at his home in the Hollywood Hills at about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday of complications from pneumonia, Burr Steers said. Vidal had been living alone in the home and had been sick for "quite a while," he said.
Along with such contemporaries as Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, Vidal was among the last generation of literary writers who were also genuine celebrities — fixtures on talk shows and in gossip columns, personalities of such size and appeal that even those who hadn't read their books knew who they were.
His works included hundreds of essays; the best-selling novels "Lincoln" and "Myra Breckenridge"; the groundbreaking "The City and the Pillar," among the first novels about openly gay characters; and the Tony-nominated play "The Best Man," revived on Broadway in 2012.
Tall and distinguished looking, with a haughty baritone not unlike that of his conservative arch-enemy William F. Buckley, Vidal appeared cold and cynical on the surface. But he bore a melancholy regard for lost worlds, for the primacy of the written word, for "the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action."
Vidal was uncomfortable with the literary and political establishment, and the feeling was mutual. Beyond an honorary National Book Award in 2009, he won few major writing prizes, lost both times he ran for office and initially declined membership into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, joking that he already belonged to the Diners Club. (He was eventually admitted, in 1999).
But he was widely admired as an independent thinker — in the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken — about literature, culture, politics and, as he liked to call it, "the birds and the bees." He picked apart politicians, living and dead; mocked religion and prudery; opposed wars from Vietnam to Iraq and insulted his peers like no other, once observing that the three saddest words in the English language were "Joyce Carol Oates." (The happiest words: "I told you so").
The author "meant everything to me when I was learning how to write and learning how to read," Dave Eggers said at the 2009 National Book Awards ceremony, when he and Vidal received honorary citations. "His words, his intellect, his activism, his ability and willingness to always speak up and hold his government accountable, especially, has been so inspiring to me I can't articulate it." Ralph Ellison labeled him a "campy patrician."
Vidal had an old-fashioned belief in honor, but a modern will to live as he pleased. He wrote in the memoir "Palimpsest" that he had more than 1,000 "sexual encounters," nothing special, he added, compared to the pursuits of such peers as John F. Kennedy and Tennessee Williams.
Vidal was fond of drink and alleged that he had sampled every major drug, once. He never married and for decades shared a scenic villa in Ravello, Italy, with companion Howard Austen.
Vidal would say that his decision to live abroad damaged his literary reputation in the United States. In print and in person, he was a shameless name dropper, but what names! John and Jacqueline Kennedy. Hillary Clinton. Tennessee Williams. Mick Jagger. Orson Welles. Frank Sinatra. Marlon Brando. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.
Mike Wallace is pictured with author Gore Vidal in the CBS newsroom, April 6, 1978.
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At least he didn't have Lincoln sitting in the Oval Office life that numbskull O'Reilly (it wasn't added to the WH then).
Well, we are a pro-choice and freedom loving nation...
R.I.P., Gore Vidal! I didn't always agree with you, but I never doubted your intelligence or your passion....
It's also a shame that more and more literary-type works are being absconded in favor of whiz-bang flashy video... Indeed, as schools stop teaching even handwriting, a skill that takes a rudimentary amount of patience and detail, and replace it with more whiz-bangy things, I fear that today's issues will pale by the time the next generation comes of age...
Still, we offshore opportunities and then say nobody wants to study. With a cost-conscious collective we are, why would anyone waste money for fields that are vanishing?
But I digress.
May Gore RIP. I think he knew more than what he was telling...
No One Greater to Interpret the present
No,
No One Greater in Revealing the Past
"In Times of Universal Deceit, Telling THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT!" (George Orwell)
and it's SCALIASCUM!
Maybe it's me, but I just don't get it about Gore Vidal. He chose an impressive sounding name, but that's about it.
Where's the beef?
Since they haven't yet responded to my application to join The Really, Really Smart People's Club, I must continue to consider myself to be ordinary people, and I really appreciated his style, his irreverent humor, his often quirky viewpoints...and his English.
RIP Gore Vidal...You will surely be remembered, although at times possibly as someone young people will be encouraged NOT to read...
But hey...the ones who do will be your readers for life