Post: #1

Quotes below taken from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug...sfeed=true

1. I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
2. It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
3. A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
4. Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.
5. Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice like, Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin."
6. Envy is the central fact of American life.
7. Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
8. The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.
9. 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.
10. Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60.
11. A good deed never goes unpunished.
12.All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
13. Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
14.Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
15. Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
16.The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
17.The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
18.The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
19.Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.
20. 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.
21. As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not
the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to
be these days.
22. Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
23. Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
24. There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person.
25. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
26. There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Post: #2

His views on straight and gay kind of bothered me. He was also one of those low-energy types who feels very free to criticize anything and everything without actually doing something. I never really liked the guy. I can generally admire a cynic though.
R.I.P Gore Vidal.

Post: #3

He was the most amazing conversationalist--look him up on Youtube.

Post: #4

The greatest essayist America has had.

Post: #5

(08-01-2012 05:19 AM)Hades Wrote:  He was also one of those low-energy types who feels very free to criticize anything and everything without actually doing something. I never really liked the guy.

Not everyone picks up a shovel. "Doing something" was writing a load of novels and essays and being a cultural critic. That's what used to be called an intellectual, back when our culture still produced them.

I admired his forthright criticism of Bush and the Iraq war back when he was almost alone in the US in his views, and his insouciance and wit. Truly the last survivor of another age, he combined the best American political traditions of the past with a European sensibility. A cross between Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde, he was able to offend and charm everybody at the same time.

Post: #6

I remember watching Gore Vidal on TV once and thinking, "How is that in one minute he says something profoundly true, and in the next minute says something completely stupid and superficial?"

Of course, it's because he had no core set of beliefs or principles. It was all about being a raconteur rather than a true public intellectual who started with a set of fundamental principles and reacted to the world around him based on those. It was all about the schtick of being snide and cynical, yet because he was so smart, he would have some pretty profound insights. But they were nuggets of gold nestled in a pile of shit.

Post: #7

(08-01-2012 09:19 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  I remember watching Gore Vidal on TV once and thinking, "How is that in one minute he says something profoundly true, and in the next minute says something completely stupid and superficial?"

Of course, it's because he had no core set of beliefs or principles. It was all about being a raconteur rather than a true public intellectual who started with a set of fundamental principles and reacted to the world around him based on those. It was all about the schtick of being snide and cynical, yet because he was so smart, he would have some pretty profound insights. But they were nuggets of gold nestled in a pile of shit.

Yep. I loved it when Buckley called him a queer

Post: #8

(08-01-2012 05:19 AM)Hades Wrote:  His views on straight and gay kind of bothered me. He was also one of those low-energy types who feels very free to criticize anything and everything without actually doing something. I never really liked the guy. I can generally admire a cynic though.
R.I.P Gore Vidal.

LOW ENERGY ???? not doing anything ?? are you nuts ??

this guy was a prolific writes of essays, wrote novel, articles, plays, screenplays. etc. etc, etc.

Post: #9

(08-01-2012 05:19 AM)Hades Wrote:  His views on straight and gay kind of bothered me. He was also one of those low-energy types who feels very free to criticize anything and everything without actually doing something. I never really liked the guy. I can generally admire a cynic though.
R.I.P Gore Vidal.

You are really missing out here. Thirty or forty novels is doing nothing? Seems like he did quite an exceptionally large lot actually.

I personally have read only Julian (1964) but it was of the most memorable books I've seen. It is a first person account of what it was like to be a Roman Emperor. Vidal imagained and studied the circumstances, and created a detailed account from inside the mind of the (real, historical) character he was portraying.

It seemed an outstanding accomplishment in historical drama to me. I felt like I was there, in the middle of the struggles at the top in ancient Rome.

One of the things I still remember decades after reading it, was how Julian didn't really WANT to be emperor. However, if one were close to the throne, you would be continually at risk of being murdered even if you refused the position. So it was safer to accept it, rather than be in the less powerful position of possibly wanting to be emperor.


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
Williwaw (1946) ISBN 0-226-85585-6
In a Yellow Wood (1947)
The City and the Pillar (1948) 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 (prophecy of the Guatemala coup d'état of 1954, see "In the Lair of the Octopus" Dreaming War)
A Star's Progress (aka Cry Shame!) (1950) under the pseudonym Katherine Everard
The Judgment of Paris (1952) ISBN 0-345-33458-2
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
Messiah (1954) ISBN 0-14-118039-0
A Thirsty Evil (1956) (short stories)
Julian (1964) ISBN 0-375-72706-X
Washington, D.C. (1967) ISBN 0-316-90257-8
Myra Breckinridge (1968) ISBN 1-125-97948-8
Two Sisters (1970) ISBN 0-434-82958-7
Burr (1973) ISBN 0-375-70873-1
Myron (1974) ISBN 0-586-04300-4
1876 (1976) ISBN 0-375-70872-3
Kalki (1978) ISBN 0-14-118037-4
Creation (1981) ISBN 0-349-10475-1
Duluth (1983) ISBN 0-394-52738-0
Lincoln (1984) ISBN 0-375-70876-6
Empire (1987) ISBN 0-375-70874-X
Hollywood (1990) 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) (short stories, this is the same collection as A Thirsty Evil (1956), with one previously unpublished short story — Clouds and Eclipses — added)

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)


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 (1983)
Vidal In Venice (1985) ISBN 0-671-60691-3
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 — National Book Award[38]
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 (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) 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 0-8109-5049-9
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Post: #10

Haters going to hate. But in 100 years people will still be reading HIS novels, and no one will even remember 99.99% of the haters, or know they existed.

Post: #11

(05-03-2013 06:26 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  You are really missing out here. Thirty or forty novels is doing nothing? Seems like he did quite an exceptionally large lot actually.

I personally have read only Julian (1964) but it was of the most memorable books I've seen. It is a first person account of what it was like to be a Roman Emperor. Vidal imagained and studied the circumstances, and created a detailed account from inside the mind of the (real, historical) character he was portraying.

It seemed an outstanding accomplishment in historical drama to me. I felt like I was there, in the middle of the struggles at the top in ancient Rome.

Never read anything by him but always wanted to and I love Roman era novels, so I'm going to look this up, thanks for the suggestion.