I love Vidal. He is so wonderfully insane.
I like that Drudge has a headline, "Gore Vidal: Will take ‘100 years to recover from Bush’… "
Would anyone from 1908 have had any idea what would be going on today? I’m guessing not.
Also, this was fun:
“We live in a dictatorship. We have a fascist government …which controls the media,” he said.
Which I read on a VERY popular website, Drudge.
Sorry if this is getting into GD territory. But if he can claim that the media is controlled by a “fascist” government on one of the most popular websites in America then anything is possible.
Did I miss something about Gore Vidal? A lot of people seem to appreciate him and yet all I ever hear from him are left wing conspiracy theories.
He writes great (non-kooky) historical novels. His public comments seem to be getting a little more out there in his old age, but he’s really only half-serious most of the time. He’s hyperbolic and snarky and it amuses him to wind up conservatives.
Read “Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self.”
::: Moderator scratches head :::
I’m not sure where this belongs. A slong as it’s about Gore Vidal, it’s clearly Cafe Society material. If it actually degenerates to John McCain’s veracity, it’s Pit. So, please, keep this thread on the topic of Gore Vidal.
We clear?
Not true. He has a huge boner for the Kennedys. He trashes JFK at every chance.
According to this, he holds some rather idiosyncratic political views.
I like him in Bob Roberts, though “Brickley Paiste” was not a very demanding role.
Dex? Treat it like a Bobby Fischer thread.
You mean it should go into the Game Room?
He’s just getting nuttier now that he doesn’t have William F. Buckley to smack him around.
Doesn’t he also doubt the World Trade Center was destroyed by Jihadis?
I tried to read his Lincoln book and it read like a cheap paperback.
I can’t work up an ounce of care for anything this idiot says.
Myra Breckinridge is one of the funniest books I’ve read. The sequel, Myron, was also pretty good but got bogged down by his cutesie-poo substitution of the names of Supreme Court justices for profanity because of some profanity case that had been decided during the writing. Kalki is almost unreadable and The City and the Pillar is historically important but has not held up.
That was one of the funniest interviews I have read in a long time!
I pity the poor sap that had to interview him.
Considering most of the answers in that interview were jokes, I’m sure he’s joking about McCain. However, I also think he’s pointing out the absurdity of people saying that Obama’s a muslim because we only have Obama’s statements that he’s not.
Amy Goodman on" Democracy Now", interviewed him last week. he is bright but has some strange ideas. He is fun to listen to.
I think he can be quite brilliant at times. A truly extraordinary wit. That said, he long ago vanished up his own arsehole.
Burr is a great piece of historical fiction. I also thought Lincoln and Live From Golgotha were quite good as well.
As far as his politics go…he’s way left, but he sure does a good job of taking the piss out of the righties. Honestly, I think we need people like him on both ends of the spectrum to give people perspective.
Creation is really excellent HF. (I think he might have been some taking some artistic license in assuming that Zoroaster was even a near-contemporary of Buddha and Confucius, but the date of Zoroaster’s life is an open question even today.)
I can recommend a photographic essay of sorts, Vidal in Venice [1987], which is largely a photography book with Vidal’s musings on the city and his relationship to it, as a long-term expat who, for many years, wintered in Venice. For Vidal, Venice was the most beautiful city in the world – but only during the winter. He couldn’t stand it there during the summer, when residents flee and the city chokes on tourists and noxious odors.
ViV was later adapted into a film of the same name.