Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, has died in Los Angeles…
His works included hundreds of essays; the best-selling novels Lincoln and Myra Breckenridge; the groundbreaking The City and the Pillar, among the first novels about openly gay characters; and the Tony-nominated political drama The Best Man, revived on Broadway in 2012.
Tall and with a haughty baritone not unlike that of his conservative arch-enemy William F Buckley Jr, Vidal appeared cold and cynical on the surface. But he bore a melancholy regard for lost worlds, for the primacy of the written word, for “the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action”.
He was widely admired as an independent thinker in the tradition of Mark Twain and HL Mencken about literature, culture, politics and, as he liked to call it, “the birds and the bees”. He picked apart politicians, living and dead; mocked religion and prudery; opposed wars from Vietnam to Iraq; and insulted his peers like no other…
Vidal had an old-fashioned belief in honour but a modern will to live as he pleased. He wrote in the memoir Palimpsest that he had more than 1,000 “sexual encounters” – nothing special, he added, compared with the pursuits of such peers as John F Kennedy and Tennessee Williams.
Vidal was fond of drink and alleged that he had sampled every major drug once. He never married and for decades shared a scenic villa in Ravello, Italy, with companion Howard Austen.
He was a rhetorician. His condemnations of bigotry and imperial arrogance were always worth quoting. His defense of liberty and advocacy for democratic rights never relented. He will be missed.
The world has lost a truly great personality.
Gore Vidal: The man Milton Friedman took down in one small conversation.
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
Milton Friedman
I guess greatness is subjective.
kjb434, thank you.
Always sad to see independent thinkers pass away.
Sadly, the % sheeple population just went higher 🙁
I always like reading and watchi Vidal.
Love this quote he made (with trademark humor):
“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half.”
Your headline lists Mr. Vidal’s death date as “2102”. You’re making me feel older by the minute!
Fixed!
Gore Vidal passes away at the age of 177.
His disputes with Buckley and Mailer rose to a level I don’t see in todays culture. Then–men of letters. Today–twitters.
By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.
R. Buckminster Fuller
I’m not a student of politics or political history, but when I think about political parties, indeed, I don’t seen much different.
when I was a kiddie, seemed to me there was a lot of news about what planks made up the political parties platforms? Haven’t seen that issued even mentioned in a number of years now–certainly not focused on in the televised party elections.
Too similar to one another to be a “party” by anachronistic standards? I think so. Nowadays–just the two sides of the same bought and paid for corporate coin.
Yea, verily. xxxx Crap! Why was that too easy to say? Still lots of key differences between Puke and dumbo. The fact that they have been corrupted by the same love of self seeking power and outside money doesn’t make them the same.
So easy to lose track of details.
I will have good company in Hell.
rest in peace……
survivingsurvivalism.com
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
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.
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
Gore Vidal
When Gore Vidal and John F Kennedy were having a discussion about assassinations the US president replied that Vidal’s death would be “no great loss”
He was wrong.
Gore Vidal’s reputation far exceeded his actual body of work.
Two more spam bots with poor translations. 🙁
No. Al Gore was not his husband.
http://commentarymagazine.com/article/the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name/
He fooled The Nation into letting him write a Jewhating screed.
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