A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Prolific US novelist, playwright, essayist and polemicist, one of the great stylists of contemporary American prose, who has been active in politics. Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. was born the 3rd. October, 1925, in the Cadet Hospital at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where his father, Gene Vidal, was an aeronautics instructor. His father was a fearless aviator and a sporting hero. His mother Nina, had a number of affairs and was fond of drink. Gore Vidal spent much of his childhood in Washington with his blind grandfather Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma. Vidal learned about political life from him and when he was a teenager he adopted the first name of Gore. Gene and Nina Vidal divorced in 1935. Nina Vidal married Hugh Auchincloss, and hence Gore Vidal acquired a stepfather in common with Jacqueline Kennedy. Gore Vidal was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy but was a mediocre student. He fell in love with a fellow pupil, Jimmie Trimble, who was later killed in action in 1945. After graduating from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Vidal joined the United States Army Reserve Corps and served on army transports in the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska, in World War II. Much of his time in the Enlisted Reserve Corps he devoted to writing. Upon his discharge he worked for six months for the publishing firm of E.P. Dutton. Army life gave him material for his first novel, Williwaw, (1946), which was was based on his wartime experiences as first mate on Freight Ship 35 in the Alaskan Harbour Craft Detachment, and published with some acclaim when he was just 19. The novel included an openly gay character. The success of the novel was helped by the support of Eleanor Roosevelt in her influential newspaper column. His second novel In a Yellow Wood, (1947), and subsequent novels were not so well received. His The City and the Pillar, (1948), was the first widely-read US novel with gay male characters, although it was ahead of its time and under pressure from his publishers he gave it a tragic ending. From 1947 to 1949 Vidal lived in Antigua, Guatemala. Gore Vidal has written detective stories under the name of Edgar Box. He wrote another story under the name Cameron Kay. He also wrote the novel A Star's Progress under the name Katherine Everard. The Judgement of Paris (1953) was about a young man travelling with jet-set and wondering how to satisfy his own part-cynical, part-romantic outlook. Several of his following novels did not gain critical approval and Vidal started to write plays for television, motion pictures and stage, and he went on to become a television commentator. Among his best-known works from the 1950s is Visit to a small planet (prod. first for television in 1955). He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1960--close friends Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward frequently at his side. He returned to novel writing in 1964 with Julian, written in the form of a journal by the eponymous Roman emperor. He continued with a trilogy of novels about the affairs of state with Washington, DC, (1967), a political thriller spanning the years 1937-52, Burr, (1973), and 1876, (1976). From the 1970s historical fiction was his dominant theme. Creation (1981) was the memoir of an imaginary grandson of Zoroaster who travels the world in the service of Persian kings and plays with the ideas of Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Anaxagoras and other thinkers and Lincoln (1984) is a carefully reconstructed account of the life of the US president. His most famous novel is Myra Breckinridge, (1968), a transexual comedy parodying the cult of the Hollywood film star, dedicated to Christopher Isherwood. Its sequel, Myron, appeared in 1974. Myra is a feminist and her alternate self, Myron, is her mirror image and bitter antagonist. A film adaptation was made in 1970, directed by John Houston who also starred with Rex Reed, Raquel Welch, Mae West, Tom Selleck, and Roger Herren. For most of his life he was reticent about his personal life. Although he showed disdain for those who paraded their homosexuality, he also mocked those who sought to legislate for morality. He rejected the terms 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' as meaningless as categories of people. He disliked the usage of the word 'gay', and insisted that 'homosexual' is an adjective, not a noun. Men who have sex with men are 'homosexualists', but most of us are bisexual. He had affairs with both men and women, although his many quick tricks were men for whom he was happy to pay to avoid involvement. Howard Austen became his loyal companion in the 1940s, and they began living together in a non-sexual relationship in 1950. In 1972 he moved to live in a palazzo in Ravello, Italy. Vidal's house in Ravello, La Rondinaia, is perched 60 m above the Amalfi coast. Despite his personal connections to major players in American political history, he has written about America mostly from Italy. In 1982 Vidal launched campaign in California for the US senate. He came second out of a field of nine, polling half a million votes. During the Reagan years, Vidal published a collection of essays, Armageddon (1987), in which he explored his love-hate relationship with contemporary America. In 1994 Vidal co-starred with Tim Robbins in the film Bob Roberts. His collected essays, United States (1993), won a National Book Award. He has also published some Hollywood screenplays, including Suddenly, Last Summer. His own memoirs were published as Palimpsest, (1995), and was shaped around his boyhood love, Jimmie Trimble, who was killed at Iwo Jima. His novel, The Golden Age, set in D.C. and New York City during the 1940's and 50's, was published in late summer 2000. |
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