RIP GORE VIDAL

Paris Review Q&A:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3917/the-art-of-fiction-no-50-gore-vidal

best vidal urban legend:

He and brute Norman Mailer were at a party when Mailer laid him out with one punch. From the floor, Vidal looked up at him, and (the precise quotation varies) intoned like a total catty bitch, “Words fail Norman Mailer once again.”

Taking a dead man to task for not having more gay sex?

You people.

um that was not my point

Taking a dead gay man to task for not having more straight sex?

You people.

His greatest book might be Palimpsest though

I've had it sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years. I guess I should finally get around to reading it.

Lincoln praise seconded, thirded, etc.

RIP

Haven't read this yet, but it looks promising.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/105655/christopher-buckley-his-fathers-old-nemesis-gore-vidal

one was left to wonder what it was within him that animated such hatred in him, at such a late stage? I speculated that it might be envy over the outpouring of respect and admiration for WFB—from all corners, by the way, of the ideological map.

or maybe it was WFB's eloquent suggestion that people with AIDS be branded and quarantined?

It seems so weird to me that someone would refer to his father with initials.

Bill Buckley seems like the kind of guy who would refer to himself with initials. when he wasn't using the royal "we"

skimmed through some of that norman podhoretz attack on him from the early '80s, the one that apparently convinced conservatives that vidal was an 'anti-semite.' it's pretty rife with ugly, homophobic stuff.

theres a horrible NRO thing from whats his face that speculates that vidal wanted to fuck wfb

By Jonah Goldberg

I’m getting a lot of dyspeptic feedback from folks who’re mad that NRO isn’t doing more to mark the death of Gore Vidal (though we do have an excellent little item from Rick Brookhiser). I’m torn about the matter. I’ve been trying to stick to the policy of not speaking too ill, too soon, of the dead. It’s a policy I haven’t always stuck to, but I think it’s worth trying. True fidelity to that principle would require complete silence after typing the phrase “Gore Vidal is dead.”

I think though it’s at least worth recalling that Vidal himself showed no respect to such a principle when his better in every regard, William F. Buckley, passed away.

Also, I rather like the idea that Vidal’s passing is not being hailed as all that big a deal, because it isn’t.

Remembering that Buckley's book about his parents was called Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, between WFB and Pup, WFB suddenly doesn't seem so bad.

Also, I rather like the idea that Vidal’s passing is not being hailed as all that big a deal, because it isn’t.

Silly--it was the lead story on CNN's main page for much of the day.

brookhiser:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312887/my-visit-gore-vidal-richard-brookhiser

About WFB and Vidal and 1968 — I did not see the famous clash on ABC, though there are clips on YouTube and I read the apologia that WFB wrote for Esquire. God, they hated each other. My speculation is that Bill was enraged because he sensed that Vidal wanted to sleep with him, and Vidal was enraged because he knew that would never happen.

gross. those fucking assholes.

at least Brookhiser ate some of Vidal's cheese.

in that book Pup comes across better than Mum because she was, in her son's estimation, a heartless snob and difficult i.e. a total bitch

i don't know how you guys can stand to look at that site even for fun -- my teeth would have fallen out by now from constant grinding.

theres a horrible NRO thing from whats his face that speculates that vidal wanted to fuck wfb

ugh

J.D., for me it's like replenishing bullets at an armory. I still have batshit relatives.

leaving aside the sheer homophobic creepiness of that, the implication that WFB was somehow out of vidal's league looks-wise is pretty wtf

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yh0p83tykh0/TThbGRcHFwI/AAAAAAAAADQ/kGwJp0qcfv4/s1600/william-f-buckley-jr.jpg

well i think the implication is more that WFB didnt sleep with men

ratfaced bastard xp

Rick Brookhiser looks like a fucking '50s space alien btw

I'll defend Brookhiser's The Outside Story, his acocunt of the '84 campaign. Good bon mots.

Vidal was an attitudinizer who would say anything to be noticed, including shots at his own side.

ah yes his "side"

the AP obit called Vidal a liberal, con't think he wd be pleased.

I rather like the idea that Vidal’s passing is not being hailed as all that big a deal, because it isn’t.

yeah well, neither was JFK's. (except maybe it helped the civil rights bills along)

irl loled at this in that paris review thing alfred posted:

INTERVIEWER
Have you ever thought of acting, as Norman Mailer does?

VIDAL
Is that what he does?

yeah well, neither was JFK's

You don't really believe this, do you? Forgetting about politically, even--on a cultural level, if nothing else.

yeah, one of umpteen times class whore America lost her innicence yadda yadda

Yikes. I want to quote a line from Sweet Smell of Success, but I won't.

no really, there was a mournful "ppl watching Dallas '63 on the store window TV" scene when I saw The Wanderers recently, and I nearly yelled "Spare me."

was Malcolm X a cookie full of arsenic?

you wanna be up high where the air is balmy

It's a Gore Vidal thread, I don't want to sidetrack it, but I would hardly know where to begin disputing this. Maybe start with the PBS Warhol biography, the part that describes how the assassination affected him, and then go from there.

the key word with Warhol is "affect"

my favorite opening to a vidal essay:

Most Americans of a certain age can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing on October 20, 1964, when word came that Herbert Hoover was dead. The heart and mind of a nation stopped.

hahaha

Mr Veedle: "Andy Warhol is the only genius I've met with an IQ of 60."

really clem, you picked the wrong thread to cluck over ppl being poisonous.

Last word I'll say on the matter, promise. The segment I'm thinking about starts at 1:47:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljlHbHL8KUo

No, I don't expect that this will be worth anything to you. But "I don't know what this means" is a very good question, even though it's not a question.

GV on JFK:

"Jack Kennedy... was a good friend—-witty, sharp, and very smart. I would rather be with him than practically anybody now alive. But what did he do for us in a thousand days? He invades Cuba, fucks up, and brings the world close to a nuclear collision over the so-called missiles down there in Cuba. Deplorable."

(btw, he said Teddy's legacy "was nothing," which I disagree with)

KLOMAN: What kind of president would Bobby Kennedy have been?

VIDAL: Pretty sinister. A little Machiavellian. Not Machiavellian, he was Savonarola, he was highly moral, obsessed, vengeance. Jack had a funny story about him. Nobody could stand him, they put up with him because of John. And somebody came up to Jack and was complaining about Bobby's behavior. And Jack says (slipping into a hauntingly good Kennedy impersonation): "Look, you've got to remember, Bobby's a policeman, he's gotta arrest somebody. If he hasn't arrested somebody, he'll go home at night and he'll arrest Rose."

i find the cult of robert kennedy even more odious than any JFK sentimentalism -- the whole camelot thing has been pretty well discredited, but hard-nosed liberals will still get all weepy thinking of 'what could've been.'

thankfully he's still an odious shit in the new Caro volume.

doesn't come off too well in Nixonland either.

(it took me 11-1/2 months to read)

at the same time we're in no position to tell black liberals that they have no right to their affection for the buck-toothed Savonarola once he converted to liberalism in the late sixties though.

still need to read nixonland. nixon's inspired more great books than any other politician, hasn't he? 'the selling of the president,' the HST campaign book, jonathan schell's stuff, 'nixon agonistes.'