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Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal; October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and
known for his
wit, and polished style of writing.
Vidal was born t his maternal grandfather, , served as United States senator from Oklahoma ( and ). He was a
politician who twice s first to the United States House of Representatives (New York, 1960), then to the U.S. Senate (California, 1982).
As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a . His political and cultural essays were published in , the , the , and
magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of
and . As such, and because he thought all men and women are potentially , Vidal rejected the adjectives "homosexual" and "heterosexual" when used as nouns, as inherently false terms used to classify and control people in society.
As a novelist Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His polished and
style of narration readily evoked the time and place of his stories, and perceptively delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel,
(1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, with a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the
genre, Vidal re-created in
(1964) the imperial world of
(r. AD 361–63), the Roman emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan
to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism. In the genre of social satire,
(1968) explores the mutability of gender role and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by . In
(1973) and
(1984), the protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the U.S.
Eugene Louis Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the
at , the only child of
(). Vidal was born there because his first lieutenant father was the first
instructor of the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."
Eugene Louis Vidal was not baptized until January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of
school, where Vidal attended preparatory school. The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed [into the Episcopal faith]" at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal". He later said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him [maternal grandfather ], although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader ... I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. I didn't want to use the 'Jr.'"
Vidal in 1948
Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. was director (1933–37) of the 's
during the , and also was the great love of the aviator . At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain
basketball player. Subsequently, he competed in the
and in the
(seventh in the , and coach of the U.S. pentathlon). In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. co-founded three airline companies (i) the
(later ); (ii)
(later ); (iii) ; and the . Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in , Austria, of
background, and had come to the U.S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann.
Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a
woman who made her Broadway theatre debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr., and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. Nina Gore Vidal then was ma to
and to . She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor . As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the .
The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal – Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and
– and four step-brothers from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the
(USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina. The nephews of Gore Vidal include , a writer and film director, and
(1963–95), a .
Raised in Washington, D.C., Vidal attended the
and the . Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator , of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, and was his , and his seeing-eye guide. In 1939, during his summer holiday, Vidal went with some colleagues and professor from St. Albans School on his first European trip, to visit Italy and France. He visited for the first time Rome, the city which came "at the center of Gore's literary imagination", and Paris. When the
began in early September, the group was forced to
on his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, and they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain,
(the father of , later the President of the United States of America). In 1940 he attended the
and later transferred to , in , where he contributed to , the school newspaper.
In the article Gore Vidal: Sharpest Tongue in the West,
said that "for reasons he never explained, he [Vidal] did not go on to , , or , with other members of his social class." Rather than attend university, Vidal enlisted in the
and worked as an office clerk within the . Later, Vidal passed the examinations necessary to become a maritime warrant officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps, and subsequently served as first mate of the F.S. 35th, berthed at . After three years in service, Warrant Officer Gene Vidal suffered , developed
and, consequently, was reassigned to duty as a mess officer.
The literary works of Gore Vidal were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity:
(d. AD 66),
(AD 60–140), and
( ca. AD 155); and from the post-Renaissance:
(). More recent literary figures by whom his work was influenced include:
(1903–66). The cultural critic
has written that Gore Vidal believed that his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the literary community in the United States but Bloom contends that such limited recognition owed more to Vidal writing in the unfashionable, plot-orientated genre of , than with whom Vidal shared a pillow. In 2009, the Man of Letters Gore Vidal was named honorary president of the .
Vidal at the , 2008
The literary career of Gore Vidal began with the success of the
, a men-at-war story derived from his
duty during the . His third novel,
(1948) caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality and a male homosexual relationship. The novel was dedicated to "J. T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of , killed in the
on March 1, 1945 and that Jimmie Trimble was the only person Gore Vidal ever loved.
Critics railed against Vidal’s presentation of homosexuality in The City and the Pillar as natural, a life viewed generally at the time as unnatural and immoral. Vidal claimed that New York Times critic
was so offended by it that he refused to review or to permit other critics to review any book by Vidal. Vidal said that upon publication of the book, an editor at
told him "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now, you will still be attacked for it".
Vidal took the pseudonym "Edgar Box" and wrote the mystery novels Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death before Bedtime (1953) and Death Likes it Hot (1954) featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well and earned black-listed Vidal a secret living. That mystery-novel success led Vidal to write in other genres and he produced the stageplay
(1960) and the television play
(1957). Two early teleplays were A Sense of Justice (1955) and Honor. He also wrote the pulp novel Thieves Fall Out under the pseudonym "Cameron Kay" but refused to have it reprinted under his real name during his life.
In the 1960s, Vidal published
(1964), about the Roman Emperor
(r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstate
when Christianity threatened the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire,
(1967), about political life during the presidential era (1933–45) of
(1968), a satire of the American movie business, by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by a
woman, the eponymous anti-heroine.
After publishing the plays
(1968) and
(1972) and the novel Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), Vidal concentrated upon the essay and developed two types of fiction. The first type is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics. About those historical novels, the critic
said that "Vidal's imagination of American politics ... is so powerful as to compel awe". The historical novels formed the seven-book series, : (i)
(1973), (ii)
(1976), (iii)
(1984), (iv)
(1987), (v)
(1990), (vi)
(1967) and (vii)
(2000). Besides U.S. history, Vidal also explored and analyzed the history of the ancient world, specifically the
(800–200 B.C.), with the novel
(1981). The novel was published without four chapters that were part of the manuscript he submit years later, Vidal restored the chapters to the text and re-published the novel Creation in 2002.
The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as
(1974) the sequel to ;
(1978), about the end of the world and
(1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity and
(1998), a time-travel story.
In the U.S., Gore Vidal is often considered an essayist, rather than a novelist. Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as , admitted that "Essays are what he is good at ... [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating."
For six decades, Vidal applied himself to socio-political, sexual, historical and literary subjects. In the essay anthology Armageddon (1987) Vidal explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary U.S. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. President, , as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial , and that of his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the
realities of the world in the late twentieth century. In 1993, Vidal won the
for the anthology
According to the citation, "Whatever his subject, he addresses it with an artist's resonant appreciation, a scholar's conscience and the persuasive powers of a great essayist."
In 2000 Vidal published the collection of essays, , then such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta and Imperial America, critiques of American expansionism, the , the national security state and the . Vidal also wrote a historical essay about the U.S. founding fathers, . In 1995, he published a memoir
and in 2006 its follow-up volume, . Earlier that year, Vidal had published .
Because of his matter-of-fact treatment of same-sex relations in such books as The City and The Pillar, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of . In the September 1969 edition of Esquire, for example, Vidal wrote
We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal.
In 2009, he won the annual
from the , which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture".
hired Gore Vidal as a
with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the director
required a
to rewrite the screenplay for
(1959), originally written by . As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, Vidal rewrote portions of the script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewriting the Ben-Hur screenplay, on location in Italy, Vidal negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his four-year contract with MGM.
Thirty-six years later, in the documentary film
(1995), Vidal explained that Messala's failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur () and Messala (), that Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenplay writer agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene. In turn, on learning of that script-doctor explanation, Charlton Heston said that Gore Vidal had contributed little to the script of Ben Hur. Despite Vidal's script-doctor resolution of the character's motivations, the
assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the , which favored the "original author" of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay.
Two plays,
(1960, made into a
in 1964) and
(1955) were theatre Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. Two such movies are the cowboy movie
(1989), about
a gunman in the
(1878), occurred in the New Mexico territory and later an outlaw in the Western frontier of the U.S. and the Roman Empire movie
(1979), from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed, because the producer, , the director,
and the leading actor, , rewrote the script and added extra sex and violence to increase the commercial success of a movie based upon the life of the
(AD 12–41), which is the fourth biography in
(AD 121), by .
As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the
social causes of the old Democratic Party. In 1960, he was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the
of New York, a usually Republican district on the Hudson River but lost to the Republican candidate , by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. Campaigning under the slogan of You'll get more with Gore, Vidal received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in fifty years. Among his supporters were
and , friends who spoke on his behalf.
Vidal and ex-senator
at the , August 26, 2009
In 1982, he campaigned against , the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. S Vidal forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate would win the election. That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film
(1983), directed by .
In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist
perpetrated the
in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the , 1990–91) had destroyed the
as an act of revenge for the FBI's
(1993) at the
Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis.
In Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002), Vidal drew parallels about how the U.S. enters wars and said that President
to attack the U.S. to justify the American entry to the
(1939–45). He contended that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the dawn-raid attack on
(December 7, 1941). In the documentary
(2005), Vidal said that, during the final months of the war, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but
wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs.... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the
in the world. To declare war on . Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war".
As a public intellectual, Vidal criticized what he viewed as political harm to the nation and the voiding of the citizen's rights through the passage of the
(2001) during the
(). He described Bush as "the stupidest man in the United States" and said that Bush's foreign policy was explicitly . He contended that the Bush Administration and their oil-business sponsors, aimed to control the petroleum of , after having gained hegemony over the petroleum of the
Vidal became a member of the board of advisors of , a political organization who sought to publicly repudiate the foreign-policy program of the
() and advocated Bush's
for , such as the
() and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law.
In May 2007, while discussing
that might explain the "who?" and the "why?" of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Vidal said
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. 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.
— Gore Vidal
In a September 30, 2009 interview with
of London, Vidal said that there soon would be a
in the U.S. The newspaper emphasized that Vidal, described as "the Grand Old Man of American ", claimed that America is rotting away – and to not expect
to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In the interview, also up-dated his views of his life, the U.S., and other political subjects. Gore had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the U.S. in his essay, "The State of the Union" (1975),
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more
than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently ... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.
— Gore Vidal
In the American Conservative article, "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that Gore Vidal's favorite U.S. politician, during his lifetime, was
Governor (1928–32) and Senator (1932–35) from , who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics and who was assassinated by a lone gunman.
Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards the U.S. "My family helped start [this country] ... and we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country". Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972, Vidal was a chairman of the
of the United States. In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocate
for U.S. president in the . In 2004, he endorsed the Democrat
in his candidacy for the U.S. presidency (in 2004), because Kucinich was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates, from either the Republican or the Democratic parties and that Kucinich was "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain".
The Truman Capote–Vidal feud
In 1975 Vidal sued
for slander over the accusation that he had been thrown out of the White House for being drunk, putting his arm around the first lady and then insulting Mrs. Kennedy's mother. Said Capote of Vidal at the time: "I'm always sad about Gore – very sad that he has to breathe every day". Mutual friend
observed "There's no venom like Capote's when he's on the prowl – and Gore's too, I don't know what division the feud should be in." The suit was settled in Vidal's favor when
refused to testify on Capote's behalf, telling columnist , "Oh, Liz, they're just a couple of fags! They're disgusting".
The Buckley-Vidal feud
In 1968, the
hired the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative
as political analysts of the presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. Their commentaries led to Buckley threatening to assault Vidal. After days of bickering, their debates degraded to vitriolic
attacks. In discussing the , the
argued about the
of American political protesters to display a
flag, when Vidal told Buckley to "shut up a minute", after Buckley had interrupted him and in response to Buckley's reference to "pro-Nazi" protesters, said "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of
I can think of is yourself". Buckley replied, "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered". Their quarrel was interrupted by the ABC News anchorman-moderator
and they returned to providing the political analysis and commentary for which they had been hired. Later, William F. Buckley said he regretted having called Gore Vidal "a queer" yet said that Vidal was an "evangelist for bisexuality".
In 1969, in Esquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in the essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" (August 1969), in which he portrayed Vidal as a Buckley said, "The man who, in his essays, proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher". The essay is collected in The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings from the time.
Vidal riposted in Esquire with the essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." (September 1969) and said that Buckley was "anti-black", "" and a "warmonger". Buckley sued V at trial, the judge said, that the "court must conclude that Vidal's comments, in these paragraphs, meet the minimal standard of . The inferences made by Vidal, from Buckley's [earlier editorial] statements, cannot be said to be completely unreasonable".[]
The feud continued in Esquire and Vidal implied that in 1944, William F. Buckley Jr. and unnamed siblings had vandalized a
church in Sharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown) after the wife of a pastor had sold a house to a Jewish family. Buckley again sued Vidal and Esquire for libel and Vidal filed a counter-claim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of
(1968) as a
novel. The court dismissed Vidal's counter-claim. Buckley accepted a money settlement of $115,000 to pay the fee of his attorney and an editorial apology from Esquire, in which the publisher and the editors said that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of Vidal's assertions. In a letter to Newsweek magazine, the publisher of Esquire said that "the settlement of Buckley's suit against us" was not "a 'disavowal' of Vidal's article. On the contrary, it clearly states that we published that article because we believed that Vidal had a right to assert his opinions, even though we did not share them".
In Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999),
said that "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against Esquire ... [that] the court had 'not' ruled that Vidal's article was 'defamatory'. It had ruled that the case would have to go to trial in order to determine, as a matter of fact, whether or not it was defamatory. The cash value of the settlement with Esquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses... ."
In 2003, William F. Buckley Jr. resumed his complaint of having been libelled by Gore Vidal, with the publication of the anthology Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing (2003), which included Vidal's essay, "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." (1969). Again, the offended Buckley filed lawsuit for libel and Esquire magazine again settled Buckley's claim with $55,000–65,000 for the fees of his attorney and $10,000 for personal damages suffered by Buckley.
In the obituary "RIP WFB – in Hell" (March 20, 2008), Vidal remembered his nemesis William F. Buckley Jr., who had died on February 27, 2008. Later, in the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal" (June 15, 2008), the New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon asked Vidal, "How did you feel, when you heard that Buckley died this year?" Vidal responded
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.
— Gore Vidal
The Buckley-Vidal debates, their aftermath and cultural significance, were the focus of a 2015 documentary film called .
The Mailer-Vidal feud
On December 15, 1971, during the recording of , with ,
allegedly head-butted Vidal when they were backstage. When a reporter asked Vidal why Mailer had knocked heads with him, Vidal said, "Once again, words failed Norman Mailer". During the recording of the talk show, Vidal and Mailer insulted each other, over what Vidal had written about him, prompting Mailer to say, "I've had to smell your works from time to time". Apparently, Mailer's umbrage resulted from Vidal's reference to Mailer having stabbed his wife of the time.
The rights of German Scientologists
In 1997, Gore Vidal was one of thirty-four public intellectuals and celebrities who signed an open-letter addressed to , the Chancellor of Germany, published in the International Herald Tribune, protesting the treatment of . Despite that stance as a dispassionate intellectual, Gore Vidal was fundamentally critical of
as religion.
National self-preservation
In 1999, in the lecture "The Folly of Mass Immigration", presented in Dublin, Vidal said
A characteristic of our present chaos is the dramatic migration of tribes. They are on the move from east to west, from south to north. Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety, or even the pursuit of happiness. But now, with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.
— Gore Vidal
The Polanski rape case
In The Atlantic magazine interview, "A Conversation with Gore Vidal" (October 2009), by John Meroney, Vidal spoke about topical and cultural matters of U.S. society. Asked his opinion about the arrest of the film director , in Switzerland, in September 2009, in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities, for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for the
of a thirteen-year-old girl in Hollywood, Vidal said, "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?"
Asked for elaboration, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s
The [news] media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an
thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel, all in white, being raped by this awful Jew
– that's what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now [2009] from what it was then [1970s]... . Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to American values, in the least. To [his persecutors], that seemed vicious and unnatural.
— Gore Vidal
Asked to explain the term "American values", Vidal replied, "Lying and cheating. There's nothing better."
In response to Vidal's opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, a spokeswoman for the organization , Barbara Dorris, said, "People should express their outrage, by refusing to buy any of his books", called Vidal a "mean-spirited buffoon" and said that, although "a boycott wouldn't hurt Vidal financially", it would "cause anyone else, with such callous views, to keep his mouth shut, and [so] avoid rubbing salt into the already deep [psychological] wounds of (the victims)" of sexual abuse.
Vidal the Humanist
In April 2009, Vidal accepted appointment to the position of honorary president of the
he succeeded the novelist .
In the 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director , for whom he appeared in a cameo role as himself in the film
(1972). He acted in the movies
(1992), a serio-comedy about a
populist politician who manipulates youth
(1997), a science- and
(2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew, .
Pop-culture figure
In the 1960s, the weekly American
television program
featured a running-joke sketch about V the telephone operator Ernestine () would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedul, this is the Phone Company calling! (snort! snort!)". The sketch, titled "Mr. Veedle" also appeared in Tomlin's comedy record album
In 1967, Vidal appeared on the
, , in which he expressed his views on
in the arts.
In the 1970s, in the stand-up comedy album Reality ... What a Concept,
portrayed Vidal as a drunken shill in a
commercial.
In 2005, Vidal portrayed himself in Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula, a video-art piece by
included to the 2005
and part of the permanent collection of the
in New York City. Moreover, Vidal provided his own voice for the animated-cartoon versions of himself in
programs. Likewise, he portrayed himself in the ; the Ali G character mistakes him for , a famous hairdresser.
In the biographic film
(2009), the child Vidal was portrayed by William Cuddy, a Canadian actor. In the Truman Capote biographic film
(2006), the young adult Vidal was portrayed by the American actor .
In 2009, Vidal was the narrator for a production of
(1939), by , staged by the , London.
Vidal as a young man
In the multi-volume memoir
(1931–74),
said she had a love affair with Vidal, who denied her claim in his memoir Palimpsest (1995). Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress , and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter. Yet, regarding Nin, in the online article "Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Ana?s Nin" (2013), author
said she found an unpublished love letter from Vidal to Nin, which contradicts his denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the love letter while researching Mirages, the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword. Moreover, he was briefly engaged to the actress
before sh after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.
In 1950, Gore Vidal met , who became his partner for the next 53 years. He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other, "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does." In
(1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself "gay" because he was not an adjective, adding "to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim... . I've said – a thousand times? – in print and on TV, that everyone is bisexual".
In an interview with Esquire in 1969, Gore said "Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word natural, not normal." Commenting his life's work and his life, he described his style as "Knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."
In the course of his life, Vidal lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail with age, he sold his Italian villa La Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest) on the
in the province of Salerno and he and Austen returned to . Howard Austen died in November 2003 and in February 2005 his mortal remains were re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot that Vidal had purchased for himself and Austen.
In 2010 Vidal began to suffer from , a brain disorder often caused by alcoholism. On July 31, 2012 Vidal died of
at his home in the
at the age of 86. A memorial service was held for him at the
in New York City on August 23, 2012. Vidal's body was buried next to Howard Austen in , in Washington, D.C.
Postmortem opinions and assessments of Gore as a writer varied.
In Gore Vidal Dies at 86; Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer,The New York Times described him as "an
figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile, or gotten more mileage from their talent". In Gore Vidal, Iconoclastic Author, Dies at 86, The Los Angeles Times said that he was a literary juggernaut whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language". In Gore Vidal D imperious gadfly and prolific, graceful writer was 86, The Washington Post described him as a "major writer of the modern era ... [an] astonishingly versatile man of letters".
In the Gore Vidal Obituary, The Guardian said that "Vidal's critics disparaged his tendency to formulate an aphorism, rather than to argue, finding in his work an underlying note of contempt for those who did not agree with him. His fans, on the other hand, delighted in his unflagging wit and elegant style". In "Gore Vidal", The Daily Telegraph described the writer as "an icy iconoclast" who "delighted in chronicling what he perceived as the disintegration of civilisation around him". In Obituary: Gore Vidal, the BBC News said that he was "one of the finest post-war American writers ... an indefatigable critic of the whole
... Gore Vidal saw himself as the last of the breed of
who became celebrities in their own right. Never a st his wry and witty opinions were sought after as much as his writing." In "The Culture of the United States Laments the Death of Gore Vidal", the Spanish on-line magazine Ideal said that Vidal's death was a loss to the "culture of the United States", and described him as a "great American novelist and essayist". In The Writer Gore Vidal is Dead in Los Angeles, the online edition of the Italian newspaper
described the novelist as "the enfant terrible of American culture" and that he was "one of the giants of American literature". In Gore Vidal: The Killjoy of America, the French newspaper
said that the public intellectual Vidal was "the killjoy of America" but that he also was an "outstanding polemicist" who used words "like high-precision weapons".
On August 23, 2012, in the program a Memorial for Gore Vidal in Manhattan, the life and works of the writer Gore Vidal were celebrated at the , with a revival of The Best Man: A Play About Politics (1960). The writer and comedian
was host of the Vidalian celebration, which featured personal reminiscences about and performances of excerpts from the works of Gore Vidal by friends and colleagues, such as ,
Rocking the Boat (1963)
Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
Sex, Death and Money (1969) (paperback compilation)
Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays,
(1972)  
Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1977)
Sex is Politics and Vice Versa (1979), limited edition by
Views from a Window Co-Editor (1981)
The Second American Revolution (1983)
Vidal In Venice (1985)  
Armageddon? (1987) (UK only)
At Home (1988)
A View From The Diner's Club (1991) (UK only)
Screening History (1992)  
Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)  
United States: Essays
(1993)   –
Palimpsest: a memoir (1995)  
Virgin Islands (1997) (UK only)
The American Presidency (1998)  
Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (1999)
The Last Empire: essays
(2001)   (there is also a much shorter UK edition)
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be So Hated, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, (2002)  
Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunder's Mouth Press, (2002)  
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003)  
Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004)  
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir (2006)  
The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal (2008)  
Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (2009)  
Buckley vs. Vidal: The Historic 1968 ABC News Debates (2015)  
(1957)  
On the March to the Sea (04)
Romulus (adapted from 's 1950 play ) (1962)
Drawing Room Comedy (1970)
(1970)  
On the March to the Sea (2005)
(1946)  
(1948)  
(1949)  
(1950)  
(1950)   (see "In the Lair of the Octopus" and Dreaming War)
A Star's Progress (aka Cry Shame!) (1950) as "Katherine Everard"
(1952)  
Death in the Fifth Position (1952) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
Thieves Fall Out (1953) under the pseudonym Cameron Kay
Death Before Bedtime (1953) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
Death Likes It Hot (1954) under the pseudonym Edgar Box
(1954)  
(1956) (short stories)
(1964)  
(1967)  
(1968)  
(1970)  
(1973)  
(1974)  
(1976)  
(1978)  
Three by Box: The Complete Mysteries of Edgar Box (1978)  
(1981)  
(1983)  
(1984)  
(1987)  
(1990)  
(1992)  
(1998)  
(2000)  
(2006) The anthology A Thirsty Evil (1956), with the additional short story "Clouds and Eclipses"
: A Farewell to Arms (1955); Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1955) (TV adaptations)
(1955): TV adaptation of
(1959) (uncredited)
(1987) (uncredited)
occasional guest (1960s)
(1976) appeared in 7 episodes, as himself
Profile of a Writer: Gore Vidal – RM Productions (1979 documentary film)
(1983 documentary film)
Vidal in Venice – Antelope Films for Channel Four Television (1987 documentary film)
– as Senator Brickley Paiste (1992 film)
– the pessimistic, arrogant left-wing Prof. Pitkannan (1994 film)
(1995 documentary film)
– Director Josef (1997 science-fiction film)
– Congressman Paige (1997 political thriller)
Schoolmaster (2001 film)
(2003 documentary film, by ) broadcast by PBS in the US.
(2004 documentary)
(2005 film)
(2005 film)
(2005 film)
- Documentary Host (May 11, 2005) appeared in the series' final episode, "Legacy"
(2005 spoof trailer)
– with former NSW premier
(2006 film)
episode: "" (September 17, 2006)
episode: "" (November 19, 2006)
radio show
's radio program in Los Angeles
Terrorstorm: Final Cut Special Edition (2007)
concert, August 2, 2007 – Narrated the , by Aaron Copland, conducted by .
– ABC Television Australia Interview (May 2, 2008)
– interview: on the Bush Presidency, History, and the "United States of Amnesia" (May 14, 2008)
(May 18, 2008)
– BBC News (May 22, 2008)
(May 25, 2008)
The US is Not a Republic Anymore (June 2008)
Zero: An Investigation into 9/11 (June 2008)
Interview on the BBC's US Presidential Election Coverage with David Dimbleby (November 4, 2008)
"Gore Vidal's History of the National Security State" on
Network (2008)
"Writer Against the Grain": Gore Vidal in Conversation with Jay Parini, 2009 Key West Literary Seminar (audio recording 59:09)
(April 10, 2009)
(2009 film)
"Gore Vidal's America" on
Network (December 24, 2010)
(2013 documentary)
(2015 documentary)
. Loc.gov. February . Vidal, Gore (v?-D?L)
. BookBrowse. July 25, .
Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest: A Memoir Random House, New York (1995) p. 439.
Wiener, Jon. I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics Counter Point P Berkeley (2012) pp. 54–55
Wieder, Judy. Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews Advocate Books (2001) p. 127.
Murphy, Bruce. Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (Fourth Edition) HarperCollins Publishers (1996) p. 1,080.
Terry, C.V. New York Times Book Review, "The City and the Pillar" January 11, 1948, p. 22.
Hornblower, Simon & Spawforth, Editors. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization Oxford University Press. (1998) pp. 383–84.
Kiernan, Robert F. Gore Vidal Frederick Ungar Publishing, Inc. (1982) pp. 94–100.
Kiernan, Robert F. Gore Vidal Frederick Ungar Publishing, Inc. (1982) pp. 75–85.
Vidal, Gore, "", The New York Review of Books, Volume 20, Number 16, October 18, 1973.
. August 25, 2013 – via YouTube.
Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest (1995), p. 401.
Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, Conversations with Gore Vidal, (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. xix.
Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, Conversations with Gore Vidal, (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), page 4
Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, Conversations with Gore Vidal, (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. xx.
"Aeronatics: $8,073.61", Time, September 28, 1931
. Booknotes. Archived from
on April 14, .
. The New York Times. February 21, 1969. p. 43.
October 16, 2007, at the .
Vidal, Gore Palimpsest (1995) p. 12.
Parini, Jay (2015). . New York: Penguin Random House.  . Retrieved December 23, 2015
. The New York Times. June 7, 1942. p. 6.[]
. The New York Times. January 12, 1922.
Vidal, Gore. Point to Point Navigation, New York: Doubleday, 2006, p. 135.
. The Political Graveyard. .
. The New York Times. April 29, 1943.
Jay Parini, Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies. The Life of Gore Vidal (London: Little, Brown, 2015), 27-28. )
Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion Susan Baker, Curtis S. Gibson. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997.  . p. 3.
Hattersley, Roy. . Daily Mail. London.
Vidal, Gore. Williwaw, "Preface", p. 1.
Bloom, Harold (1994). . Riverhead Books. p. 20.   2012.
. Atheists.org. August 1, 2012. Archived from
on August 4, .
Duke, Barry (August 1, 2012). . Freethinker.co.uk 2015.
Vidal, Gore. The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (NY: Random House), p. xiii.
Roberts, James. "", ESPN, March 14, 2002.
Chalmers, Robert. "", The Independent, May 25, 2008.
Vidal, Gore. Point to Point Navigation (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 245
Boston Globe: , Retrieved July 11, 2011
November 27, 2011, at the .
Vidal, Gore. "Introduction to Death in the Fifth Position", in Edgar Box, Death in the Fifth Position (Vintage, 2011), pp. 5–6.
. The Paley Center for Media 2013.
Bayard, Louis (April 12, 2015), ,
Solomon, Deborah (June 15, 2008). . The New York Times Magazine 2008.
. . Retrieved .
(With acceptance speech by Vidal, read by Harry Evans.)
. amazon.com 2013.
October 13, 2008, at the .
Gore Vidal (September 1969). "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley Jr". Esquire. p. 140.
. National Book Foundation. Retrieved .
(With acceptance speech by Vidal and official blurb.)
Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest: A Memoir Random House, New York (1995) pp. 301–307.
Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest: A Memoir Random House, New York (1995) pp. 306–306.
Mick LaSalle (October 2, 1995). "A Commanding Presence: Actor Charlton Heston Sets His Epic Career in Stone – or At Least on Paper". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. E1.
Ned Rorem (December 12, 1999). "Gore Vidal, Aloof in Art and Life". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 18S.
. The Nation 2009.
Ira Henry Freeman, , The New York Times, September 15, 1960
(PDF). Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. 1960. p. 31, item #29 2012.
Freeman, Ira Henry (September 15, 1960). . New York Times. p. 20.
, in which Gore Vidal corrects his Wikipedia page
Gore Vidal, . Vanity Fair, September 2001.
Gore Vidal, "Three Lies to Rule By" and "Japanese Intentions in the Second World War", from Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, New York, 2002,  
. Say2.org (Series of Subtitles for Documentary Video). Archived from
on July 28, .
Osborne, Kevin. . City Beat 2010.
. Youtube.com. January 12, .
. Video.google.com. November 1, 2006. Archived from
on May 19, .
. Archived from
on April 26, .
Close (May 5, 2007). . . London 2009.
The Times September 30, 2009
Gore Vidal (1977). Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays 1973–76. Random House. pp. 265–85.  .
Kauffman, Bill (September 14, 2012) , The American Conservative
Real Time With Bill Maher, Season 7, Episode 149, April 10, 2009
Gore Vidal, "Sexually Speaking: Collected Sexual Writings", Cleis Press, 1999.
. Wtp.org 2008.
Vidal, Gore
January 5, 2010, at the .,
. The Nation. November 8, .
. The New York Times. August 1, 2012.
Maer Roshan (April 8, 2015). . The Hollywood Reporter.
Kloman, Harry. . University of Pittsburgh 2009.
. Time. August 22, .
Buckley v. Vidal,
13 May 1971) (“...in August 1968, Buckley made the following statement: 'Let Myra Breckinridge [referring to the novel bearing such name and thereby identifying its author, Gore Vidal, with such novel] go back to his pornography.'”).
Athitakis, Mark (February 23, 2018). .
327 F. Supp. )
"Buckley Drops Vidal Suit, Settles With Esquire", The New York Times, September 26, 1972, p. 40.
Kloman, Harry. . University of Pittsburgh 2016.
. Truthdig. March 20, .
Solomon, Deborah. . New York Times. 15 June 2008.
Veitch, Jonathan (May 24, 1998). . Los Angeles Times 2011.
Cavett, Dick (January 23, 2003). . cnn.com. Archived from
on August 7, 2012.
. Slate.com 2012.
Drozdiak, William (January 14, 1997). , The Washington Post, p. A-11.
Baker, Russ. April 1997. ,
Browne, Anthony (April 30, 2003). . Opendemocracy.net 2011.
John Meroney (October 28, 2009). . The Atlantic.
. . November 1, 2009.
. American Humanist Association. April 20, .
StarNewsOnline.com (blog) – On "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In",
Ernestine the Operator – TV Acres [] – Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the Telephone Operator - ...a , you owe us ..."
Record album: This is a Recording,
CBS/Mike Wallace (March 3, 1967).
(Television) 2016.
. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Archived from
on October 26, .
Vidal, Gore Palimpsest, p.290.
Joy Do Lico and Andrew Johnson, , The Independent, May 25, 2008.
October 9, 2010, at the .
Krizan, Kim (September 27, 2013). . The Huffington Post 2013.
Balaban, Judy. . Vanity Fair. Condé Nast 2016.
"What I've Learned", Esquire magazine, June 2008, p. 132.
Robinson, Charlotte. . Outtake Blog 2012.
Wieder, Judy (2001). Wieder, Judy, ed. Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews. New York City, New York: Advocate Books. p. 127.  .
Time International (September 28, 1992) described the 5000 ft.2 (460 m2 property as "a massive villa – in every detail of location and layout, designed to enhance concentration". p. 44.
Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations ). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Robson, Leo (October 26, 2015). . The New Yorker 2015.
by Tina Fineberg, USA Today, August 1, 2012
Hillel Italie and Andrew Dalton, , Associated Press, August 1, 2012.
'Memorial for Gore Vidal in Manhattan', New York Times, August 23, 2012.
'Gore Vidal's Grave', 'Huffington Post', August 1, 2012.
Charles McGrath (August 1, 2012). . The New York Times 2012.
Elaine Woo (August 1, 2012). . The Los Angeles Times 2012.
Michael Dirda (August 1, 2012). . The Washington Post 2012.
Jay Parini (August 1, 2012). . London: Guardian 2012.
. London: Telegraph.co.uk. August 1, .
Alastair Leithead (August 1, 2012). . Bbc.co.uk 2012.
. Ideal.es 2012.
Redazione online. . Corriere.it 2012.
[Gore Vidal: The Killjoy of America] (in French). Lefigaro.fr. January 8, .
McGrath, Charles (August 23, 2012). . New York Times 2013.
Bryant, Christopher (August 15, 2009). . Polari Magazine 2011.
. The Nation. May 21, .
. Democracy Now!. May 14, .
. Insight-info.com. Archived from
on October 3, .
. Zero 9/11 Movie 2011.
. BBC. November 4, .
Haskell, Arlo (July 3, 2009). . Key West Literary Seminar. Archived from
on December 3, .
. The Real News. December 24, .
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