I saw Gore Vidal a few years back at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. A wonderful spring day, as it always is for the festival. As was his custom, Gore (I will use his first name, if you don't mind; when I thought of his quotes I would think "Gore said," not "Vidal said.) was in the tent for The Nation, the progressive journal and book publisher. He was feeble, in a wheel chair, with odd crinkles on his cheek. The great beauty was gone but there was still that mischievous twinkle in his eye.
"Is Gore Vidal...OK?" I asked a man wearing a Nation tee-shirt nearby.
He shrugged. "He's old."
The New York Times - Gore's nemesis - published a lengthy obituary. It mentioned that Gore and his life partner Howard Austen moved from Italy back to their Hollywood Hills house to be near to Cedars-Sinai hospital. True, but tin-eared compared to Gore's saying they returned to L.A. for their "Cedars-Sinai years."
(The NYT obituary also had this head-scratcher: Gore claimed his books were blacklisted - not reviewed in the NYT - after Gore's The City and the Pillar with it's same-sex sex, "and he may have been right." May have been? Dude, get your arse out of the chair, go find the oldest reporter in the building and frigging ASK.)
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At an earlier LAT Festival of Books, also at UCLA, I got a book signed by Gore. I was a close to him as you are to your screen reading this blog when someone called out a question to him. That voice, that voice. I don't even remember what he said but the baritone still reverberates.
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Many have expressed their preference for Gore's essays to his novels, and I join that contingent. The breadth and depth and layers of his own life outshone any fictional character. Born at West Point to a Olympic medalist who later ran FDR's aviation department. Mother was daughter to Senator Gore of Oklahoma. Young Gore reading legislation to this beloved Grandfather, who was blind. Maybe the father had had an affair with Amelia Earhart; Young Gore asking her questions about their planned trip around the world. Gore's socially ambitious mother divorcing his father to marry Hugh Auchlinsloss, becoming a kinda-sorta step sibling to Jacqueline Bouvier. Etc. Etc.
The essays allowed that dry wit to come through without any filters, and also provided a platform large enough to contain his wide-ranging interests. Literature, antiquity, politics both from the inside and out, imperialism, cinema (he had - of course - a cameo role in a Fellini film)...he was human, as Terence said, and nothing human was foreign to him.
Dry, but refreshing. We're fed a non-stop diet of scam and red herrings and piety in so much of popular media; it's rare to come across someone being completely straight-forward. The first thing I remember reading by him was an op-ed piece he had in the LAT when he was running for Governor of California in the 1980's. There was a line in there about the carvings on Mount Rushmore ruining a perfectly lovely mountainside. I chuckled, but even as I did so I realized what a bold, unconventional thing it was to write. I mean, Mount Rushmore!
Turns out, that was about one of the tamest lines he ever wrote.
I won't give a top ten list of my favorite essays. Grab his National Book Award winner United States collected essays. If you like literature, start with his book reviews; political junkies, check out his State of the Union essays. The humor, the intelligence, and even the flashes of pettiness reveal a mindset that will make you see the world differently.
Finally this. Gore said the role of the writer - the artist - is to tell the truth, and the role of the politician is to not give the game away. Some things he wrote make one wince but for the large part, Gore Vidal was an artist.
Finally this. Gore said the role of the writer - the artist - is to tell the truth, and the role of the politician is to not give the game away. Some things he wrote make one wince but for the large part, Gore Vidal was an artist.
