Gore Vidal - classic or dud?

Veedle on his pseudonymic pulp mysteries:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/gore-vidal-p-i

edmund white tells anecdote in the guardian:

Competition among writers is a strange thing. Years ago, Gore Vidal was with Johnathan Burnham from Chatto at the River Café and they used to have these big tall bottles of olive oil on the table. He mistook one for wine, poured himself a glass and drank it. He spluttered it all out and said to Jonathan: "You saw that and you didn't stop me. You want me to die so your writer Edmund White will be King Fag!"

Receiving word he has passed on.

https://twitter.com/GoreVidalNow/status/230496577435865088

http://www.gorevidalnow.com/

I need somewhere to exalt repeatedly about Lincoln instead of gumming up the ILB what are you reading thread

Alfred I'm seeing where your love of Seward comes now, dude is truly fascinating as drawn by Vidal

granted I'm only 100 pages in but I want to quit my job and LIVE in this book right now

and Lincoln and Seward become besties!

I want to be the man who adjusts Gideon Welles' wig.

I just finished the meeting between Douglas and Lincoln when Douglas reminds him of the 'lion and the eagle' where you could almost hear the cogs turning in Lincoln's mind ... and then Lincoln confronting Seward about his letter which was just riveting, all those little details that so unnerved Seward, after being so certain he could end-around Lincoln

and keeps him! it's so great!

Ooh...I think this is all the extra push I needed to finally start on his historical novels. So far I've just read some of the broader satirical work (Myra Breckinridge, Myron, Duluth) and Messiah (which was incredibly distressing in a way I really didn't expect). What's the best place to start with the historical books, or should I just follow publication order?

start with Burr or Lincoln.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLyvszhFAC4

lincoln
lincoln
lincoln

it's the only one I've read but I recommend it highly already :D

i don't think i have ever heard a line reading better than vidal's response when asked about bill buckley in that video:

'oh no, i was just joshing bill...he's a wonderful american!'

this is the opening of a vidal documentary i hadn't seen before. his hilariously dead-on FDR impression, about halfway through, almost made me fall off my chair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJMoZTN0n1I

from the new republic archives: andrew delbanco explains why 'lincoln' is different, and better, than vidal's other historical novels:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114964/andrew-delbanco-gore-vidals-empire

The others are fun but only Burr is at its level.

Doug Ireland reviews a new book on Veedle's erotic life... quite a list of conquests (Charles Laughton AND Brad Davis).

http://gaycitynews.com/love-sex-gore-vidal-dared-speak/

But Vidal undoubtedly bedded Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman, when they and Vidal shared a Hollywood house together.

As film director and Vanity Fair writer Matt Tyrnauer, one of Vidal’s closest friends, put it, “Howard’s death ended the main chapter of Gore’s existence pretty much. Gore was in perpetual mourning after Howard died.” His drinking, he said, “became epic. He drank after he finished work…he didn’t stop until he collapsed… and grieved very openly. He talked about how sweet Howard was, how much he missed him. He wore a ring of Howard’s. He talked about how wonderful and talented he was. He’d listen to recordings of him singing on CD, which he’d listen to again and again.”

I must say, my admiration's wilted a bit.

grief isn't very pretty

the inheritance thing seems like the more unforgivable blot imho

I wish he was as cold as he pretended – we need more people that cold.

But Teeman shows how Vidal mythologized this relationship, in which the sex amounted to little more than the Princeton rub.

THERE'S a bit of slang I didn't know.

"The Yale hoist"

"The Harvard grunt"

The watusie

The twist.

The Difficult Brown

the Cornell cornhole

The Dartmouth dunk

The RISD ruffle

The tootsie roll

the Penn pump

it doesn't surprise me much that vidal privately was something other than the roman consul/mr spock image he affected in public. his mental decline towards the end was visible even in interviews and tbh i'm not sure it's something anyone outside his family needed to know about.

remember Hitch's column?

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/hitchens-201002

haha, i remember that! it's largely and sadly otm, though vidal would have been entitled to write a response hatchet job, since hitch's decline was even uglier than vidal's dabbling in pearl harbor/911 truthism. vidal's polanski remark was undeniably appalling but hitch said comparably awful things on a regular basis at the height of his deranged neocon phase -- calling the dixie chicks "fat fucking slags," some pretty awful stuff about cindy sheehan.

:( at Vidal slagging off Idries Shah, altho I suppose I shouldn't be surprised

Bitchiness was an essential part of his public style. When he directed it properly, he made it a virtue, but he wasn't always wise in his use of it.

also, FRED ASTAIRE???? ewwwww

Yeah that I was wondering about.

Flying Down to Eeeeyeeeew

on the new documentary

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/how_one_sexy_gay_novel_derailed_gore_vidals_literary_career/

The new doc, available on demand, is a hagiography. Any hour spent watching YouTube clips is more entertaining.

yeah i'm certainly not gonna spend $13 to see it

https://twitter.com/JamesWolcott/status/558683822729232386

is he dead yet

lol @ "America's most controversial writer"

Alfred: he lives in the very cigarette ash you ignore.

michael mewshaw abt him on charlie rose --

i remember he was very kind to guests that we had invited to meet him at our house for dinner and he talked to these ppl uh most patiently put up with all their questions about lincoln and they were a business couple and then when we sat down to dinner he said id like to ask you a question now, and they perked up and said yes gore, "What do women think about anal intercourse?"

:D

I always want to know!