« June 2003 | Main | February 2011 »
Find out the movies a man saw between ten and fifteen, which ones he liked, disliked, and you would have a pretty good idea of what sort of mind and temperament he has.
"Gore Vidal, The Art of Fiction No. 50" The Paris Review. No. 59 (1974) Interviewed by Gerald Clarke
Every writer of my generation has been influenced by films. I think I’ve written that somewhere.
Ibid.
Photo: Gore Vidal with Italian film director Federico Fellini during the filming of Roma. Photograph: AP
| | | |
| | |
You might recall how Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has said that she first became a Republican as a result of her disgust at reading a "snotty" Gore Vidal novel. So what does Gore Vidal think?
As we reported last week, Bachmann told a Republican crowd in Michigan that she cast off her youthful Democratic roots after reading Gore Vidal's novel Burr.... (We later discovered that Bachmann had told this story before -- and that in an earlier version of the tale, she said it had been a different Vidal novel, 1876.)
| | | |
| | |
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
These books are a great deal harder to read than they were to write.
- on Sufi spiritualist writer Idries Shah; as quoted in "Gore Vidal Leaves the Ring," The New York Times, August 1, 2012
This is not at all bad, except as prose.
- on a paragraph by Herman Wouk; Ibid.
On Truman Capote:
Truman made lying an art form—a minor art form.
.....
A relentless liar ought to be, if not stopped, curbed.
.....
Every generation gets the Tiny Tim it deserves.
- Vespa, Mary. People. June 25, 1979. Vol. 11 No. 25.
[Capote's death] was a good career move.
- Davis, Deborah. Party of the Century: the fabulous story of Truman Capote and his black and white ball. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2006. p. 256.
[Capote] lived for gossip, and he was also a marvellous liar. No fact ever gave him pause.
- Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 2006.
A great zircon in the diadem of American literature.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
He's a magnum of chloroform.
- on Hugh D. Auchincloss, Gore Vidal's and Jacqueline Lee "Jackie" Bouvier Kennedy's stepfather; Views From a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal (ed. Robert J. Stanton), 1980
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.
- Diary: May 5 | Books | The Guardian (online). May 5, 2007
[When I heard that William F. Buckley had died,] 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.
- Solomon, Deborah. "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal." The New York Times. June 15, 2008
She never baked a pie, but she did manage to drink, in the course of a lifetime, the equivalent of the Chesapeake Bay in vodka.
- on his mother, Point to Point Navigation (2006)
Reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery.
- on Eisenhower speaking at the Republican Convention (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
[Princess Margaret] was far too intelligent for her station in life. She often had bad press, the usual fate of wits in a literal society.
- Point to Point Navigation (2006)
She's just another dum-dum waddling along the pike. And she is not demure. If she were demure, she'd realize that there are whole areas in which a 10th-rate member of Congress ought to keep her trap shut. Nobody cares about her views.
- on Congresswoman Michelle Bachman (R-Minnesota). Interview with Timothy Hodler. Details. March 2011
[Tennessee Williams' writings had] a tone of voice the like of which had not been heard since Mark Twain. Each was a comic genius within a dark universe that the innocent persist in calling "home sweet home."
- Point to Point Navigation (2006)
[Ayn Rand] has declared war not only on Marx but on Christ. Now, although my own enthusiasm for the various systems evolved in the names of those two figures is limited, I doubt if even the most anti-Christian free-thinker would want to deny the ethical value of Christ in the Gospels. To reject that Christ is to embark on dangerous waters indeed.... Though Miss Rand’s grasp of logic is uncertain, she does realize that to make even a modicum of sense she must change all the terms. Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.
- Esquire. July, 1961
Image: Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams and John F. Kennefy, Palm Beach, 1958
| | | |
| | |
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
- "Writing Plays for Television," New World Writing, #10, 1956.
I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
- The Sunday Times Magazine, Setember 16, 1973.
I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diner's Club.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag.
- "Writing Plays for Television," New World Writing, #10, 1956.
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
- quoted by Martin Amis, "Mr. Vidal: Unpatriotic Gore" (1977) in The Moronic Inferno (1987)
I wouldn't use the word aristocratic [to describe my background].... My family was ruling class through holding office (Senate, Cabinet) as well as providing generals and admirals for the various wars.... The Auchinclosses are regarded by the egregious Birminghams as aristocratic because they have had money or married money for the last three quarters of a century...and to the extent that I was Hugh D. Auchincloss's stepson from ten to sixteen, it can be said that I was brought up as an American aristocrat at Bailey's Beach, Newport; the Warrenton Hunt; 1925 F Street club, Washington D.C.; etc. But I like ruling class better . . . partly because that excludes almost all the Auchinclosses!
- 1979 interview in Views From a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal (ed. Robert J. Stanton), 1980.
Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
- The Times Online, September 30, 2009.
Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.
- Screening History, 1992.
I was never an expatriate. I was never considered to be that by anyone except for the far right. I had a house in southern Italy and another house in southern California--but in right-wing circles, that's enough to be considered an expat. America was what I always wrote about.
- "An American Icon: Gore Vidal on Italy, Iraq - and Why He Hates George Bush," by Peter Popham. The Independent, June 23rd, 2006.
I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.
- "For Gore Vidal, A Last, Long Look From the Heights," Joseph Giovannini. The New York Times, August 26, 2004.
| | | |
| | |
Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.
- "Sex Is Politics" (1979), in The Second American Revolution, 1983.
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single...frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years.
- Appendix, At Home, 1988.
| | | |
| | |
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.
- "William Dean Howells" (1983) in At Home, 1988.
I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.
- "Oscar Wilde: On the Skids Again" (1987) in At Home, 1988.
Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
-"Dawn Powell: The American Writer" (1987) in At Home, 1988.
I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.
- Screening History, 1992.
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
| | | |
| | |
We are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.
- "The State of the Union," The Nation, September 13, 2004.
My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").
- "On Flying," 1985, in At Home, 1988.
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.
- "The State of the Union" (1975) in Matters of Fact and Fiction, 1978.
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
- The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992.
We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.
- "Gore Vidal and the Mind of the Terrorist," interview by Ramona Koval, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National, 2001.
Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.
-The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992.
You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.
- Interview with Paul Jay, The Real News, July 5, 2009.
Any individual who is able to raise [enough money] to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent...whatever moneyed entities are paying for him.... Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.
- The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992.
All that area from which the Gore family comes was solid Democrat and progressive under Roosevelt for several decades. So they just didn't become Republicans because they all wanted to be bankers. They became Republicans because they didn't like black people, and they thought the Democrats were pushing integration too fast. And that's how the great split came about, to the shame of the whole country.
- Interview with Paul Jay, The Real News, July 5, 2009.
"Liberal' comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.
- "The Great Unmentionable: Monotheism and its Discontents," The Lowell Lecture, Harvard University, April 20, 1992.
Little Bush says....we are at war on terror. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.
- "An American Icon: Gore Vidal on Italy, Iraq - and Why He Hates George Bush," by Peter Popham. The Independent, June 23rd, 2006.
| | | |
| | |
The unfed mind devours itself.
- "Gore's Lore," Vanity Fair, September 1992.
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
- Interview by Michiko Kakutani, "Vidal: 'I'm at the Top of a Very Tiny Heap,'" The New York Times, March 12, 1981.
Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.
- as quoted by Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's, October 1978.
Advice I would never give today in the age of AIDS and its television equivalent Fox News.
- Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 2006
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
Envy is the central fact of American life.
- "Gore Vidal," interview by Gerald Clarke, 1974, The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 5th series, 1981.
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
- (Source attribution sought; contact gorevidalpages-at-gmail.com)
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
- Gerard Irvine, "Antipanegyric for Tom Driberg," memorial service, December 8, 1976.
Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.
- "Sex Is Politics" (1979)
Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.
- Palimpsest : A Memoir, 1995.
Robert STANTON: [Y]ou once said something...about your first sexual experience. Do you recall it?
Gore VIDAL: Yes, I was asked if my first sexual experience was homosexual of heterosexual. I said I was too polite to ask.
- 1979 interview in Views From a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal (ed. Robert J. Stanton), 1980; referencing a televised interview with David Frost; also quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine, September 16, 1973
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
- "Sex and the Law," Partisan Review, Summer 1965.
The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about. - "Sex Is Politics" (1979) in The Second American Revolution, 1983.
Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.
- "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Case" (1980) in The Second American Revolution, 1983.
| | | |
| | |
Essays and non-fiction
Rocking the Boat (1963)
Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
Sex, Death and Money (1969) (paperback compilation)
Homage to Daniel Shays (1972)
Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1977)
Views from a Window Co-Editor (1981)
The Second American Revolution (1982)
Vidal in Venice (1985)
Armageddon? (1987) (UK only)
At Home (1988)
A View From The Diner's Club (1991) (UK only)
Screening History (1992) ISBN 0-233-98803-3
Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992) ISBN 1-878825-00-3
United States: essays 1952–1992 (1993) ISBN 0-7679-0806-6
Palimpsest: a memoir (1995) ISBN 0-679-44038-0
Virgin Islands (1997) (UK only)
The American Presidency (1998) ISBN 1-878825-15-1
Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (1999)
The Last Empire: essays 1992–2000 (2001) ISBN 0-375-72639-X
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be So Hated, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, (2002) ISBN 1-56025-405-X
Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunder's Mouth Press, (2002) ISBN 1-56025-502-1
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003) ISBN 0-300-10171-6
Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004) ISBN 1-56025-744-X
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir (2006) ISBN 0-385-51721-1
The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal (2008) ISBN 0-385-52484-6
Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (2009) ISBN 0-810-95049-9
Novels
(*Part of the Narratives of Empire series.*)
Williwaw (1946; University Of Chicago Press, 2003) ISBN 0-226-85585-6
In a Yellow Wood (1947)
The City and the Pillar (1948; Vintage 2003) ISBN 1-4000-3037-4
The Season of Comfort (1949) ISBN 0-233-98971-4
A Search for the King (1950) ISBN 0-345-25455-4
Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) ISBN 0-233-98913-7
The Judgment of Paris (1952) ISBN 0-345-33458-2
Messiah (1954; Penguin Classics 1998) ISBN 0-14-118039-0
A Thirsty Evil (1956) (short stories)
Julian (1964; Vintage 2003) ISBN 0-375-72706-X
*Washington, D.C. (1967; Vintage 2000) ISBN 0-316-90257-8*
Myra Breckinridge (1968; Penguin Classics with Myron, 1997) ISBN 1125979488
Two Sisters (1970) ISBN 0-434-82958-7
*Burr (1973; Vintage 2000) ISBN 0-375-70873-1*
Myron (1974; Penguin Classics with Myra Breckinridge, 1997) ISBN 0-586-04300-4
*1876 (1976) ISBN 0-375-70872-3*
Kalki (1978) ISBN 0-14-118037-4
Creation (1981; Vintage 2002) ISBN 0-349-10475-1
Duluth (1983) ISBN 0-394-52738-0
*Lincoln (1984; Vintage 2000) ISBN 0-375-70876-6*
*Empire (1987) ISBN 0-375-70874-X*
*Hollywood (1990; Vintage 2000) ISBN 0-375-70875-8*
Live from Golgotha: The Gospel according to Gore Vidal (1992) ISBN 0-14-023119-6
The Smithsonian Institution (1998) ISBN 0-375-50121-5
*The Golden Age (2000) ISBN 0-375-72481-8*
Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (2006) ISBN 978-0786718108
Screenplays
Climax!: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1954) (TV adaptation)
The Catered Affair (1956)
I Accuse! (1958)
The Scapegoat (1959)
Ben Hur (1959) (uncredited)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
The Best Man (1964)
Is Paris Burning? (1966)
Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)
Caligula (1979)
Dress Gray (1986)
The Sicilian (1987) (uncredited)
Billy the Kid (1989)
Dimenticare Palermo (1989)
Plays
Visit to a Small Planet (1957) ISBN 0-8222-1211-0
The Best Man (1960)
On the March to the Sea (1960–1961, 2004)
Romulus (adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1950 play Romulus der Große) (1962)
Weekend (1968)
Drawing Room Comedy (1970)
An Evening with Richard Nixon (1970) ISBN 0-394-71869-0
On the March to the Sea (2005)
Novels under pseudonyms
A Star's Progress (aka Cry Shame!) (1950) as Katherine Everard
Thieves Fall Out (1953) as Cameron Kay
Death in the Fifth Position (1952; Vintage/Black Lizard 2011) as Edgar Box
Death Before Bedtime (1953; Vintage/Black Lizard 2011) as Edgar Box
Death Likes It Hot (1954; Vintage/Black Lizard 2011) as Edgar Box
Principal source: Wikipedia, February 2011.
Image: Arnold Newman. Gore Vidal, NY, 1947, 1947. The Gore Vidal Papers / Houghton Library, Harvard University. (March 2011 update: Image available as JPEG here.)
| | | |
| | |
