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New York, 2:51 AM
Fri Nov 27
15 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/29/09
10/29/09
Being brilliant doesn't prevent you from being dumb #gorevidal
10/29/09
10/28/09
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10/29/09
I've never actually read anything by him.
@Benny:
It hurts less if he doesn't really mean it. #gorevidal
10/28/09
Yes, his comments about the Polanski case sound dreadful if you completley erase his first sentence in that paragraph: "I really don't give a fuck." Yes, it sounds cruel that he wickedly alluded to the victim as a whore. It's ghastly, actually. And very wrong.
I'm not excusing Vidal for that sentence he uttered. This is the person who described the depravities of Tiberius in Suetonius's "Twelve Caesars" with an icy remove- about what we would consider beyond the pale, involving children. Yes, it shocks. Yes, I myself blanch and am appalled. Disgusted. My point is that someone who could describe this horror so icily in the 1960's in an essay on Suetonius is clearly someone who has no problem calling Polanski's victim a teen prostitute.
Which is awful. Wrong, harsh. But that's Gore Vidal. It's his opinion, his words- wrong as the are, they are merely words. He really doesn't "give a fuck", and never has.
But seeing all these wishes for him to just die already, he surely shall soon. But I can't sit by and let his very real contribution to keen analysis of the American scene in the last half of the 2oth century just be trashed. He was unbelievably prescient about the worst excesses of the W Bush administration, he absolutely predicted it years before- how power, and the seizure of power works. How war is our perpetual state in the US. How creating war is how Presidents seize power and get noted by History as "great". And a thousand other things. His essays of the last 40 years have been incredibly clear snapshots of how power works in America, and a stray recent unfortunate comment about Polanski's victim cannot take that away from him.
No, he won't go on Oprah and apologize, and weep, like our confessional culture demands. He has an aristo's contempt for pieties and having to play to the crowd. He says what he says, and though it's increasingly wicked invective that I very often disagree with, I'm damned glad for Gore Vidal. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
Fuck him. #gorevidal
10/29/09
10/28/09
The following is from author Edmund White's interview with Salon discussing Vidal:
"He's been nice to me over the years, but he's always like this seething volcano and you're always wondering when he's going to go off.
I don't know what he's famous for anywhere, really, because I think those historical novels are complete works of taxidermy. Nobody can read those. 'Myra Breckinridge' was funny but light. The essays are what everybody defends -- but a friend of mine who did a volume of the best essays of the 20th century said they're all so topical that they've all aged terribly. I don't know where his work is. You have to have one or two books that are actually good if you're going to have a lasting career, and I don't think he does." #gorevidal
10/28/09
And kudos for bringing Edmund White to the table! I just finished his autobiography, My Lives, and I'm currently very much in love with him. He's such a wonderful writer.. #gorevidal
10/28/09
Back to Vidal, I was hoping he'd grow old with dignity and a reflect an elder statesman's sense of gravitas. Or he could've gone like the fabulously eccentric old gay like Quentin Crisp. It's just disappointing to see Truman Capote's once arch-nemesis end as equally miserable. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
Yet one has to admit that the cranky coot has never* been a bad writer. Plus he's had this a-hole agitator sideline gig for over half a century. Why do we expect him to drop character now, just before the final curtain?
*Except for Caligula, as previously noted. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
I don't want him to die while I live in DC. He has a space reserved in the Rock Creek Park cemetery. #gorevidal
10/28/09
Seriously, I’ve been doing this for some time now (2,758 comments since June 8, 2007, or 3.4 electronic excretions on average daily for almost two and a half years, but who’s counting?), waiting for someone to call me the poor man’s Gore Vidal. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
@snugbug: That’s what I get for commenting in a purple smoking jacket.
@MissNormaDesmond: More than it suits a man to say?
@Lazy Susan: Alex, I’ll take hashtags for 400 dollars. ... What is “Saw VI reviews”? #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag 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, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
He sounds like a total fuck, or whatever phrase we now use. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
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10/28/09
10/28/09
Imagine that. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
This isn't the proper time or place to say this, but I actually like Gore Vidal. Even people you like say stupid stuff often. #gorevidal
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
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10/28/09
Nah, I just went paperless from then on. #gorevidal
10/28/09
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