Has anyone here read anything by Gore Vidal or about him? He was an essayist and political commentator, but also a novelist. I've been watching a Netflix documentary about him and he seems pretty interesting. He made headlines when he wrote a novel about a gay youth coming of age in 1948--it was really controversial at the time of course and it was recognized as the first American novel to openly depict gay sex acts in it. He seemed to be bisexual, but he hated sexuality labels and was a supporter of Kinsey.
Aww man... I read it as 'Gore vids' and now I am dissapponted... No, I've never heard of hin up until now.
I read gore vids too :lol: I thought "someone's going to get banned!", but I still would've watched them first XD The only Vidal I know is HMS Vidal which claimed Rockall for the British in 1955 :lol:
Sure I've heard about him, but his books are not on my reading list, it's just not my scene... And a particular critic was very fond of him, which is a major turn off for me... This doesn't mean I'm warning you or anything... You could give them a try and tell us. Documentaries focused on someone tend to portrait them under a good light (unless they start to dig on their private/personal stuff and put this before his work).
I enjoy his work. He apparently has some rather heavy historical fiction but I have read the more fanciful stuff: The Smithsonian Institution, Myra Breckinridge, Live from Golgotha. I think he's brilliant and a little bizarre--but in a good way. The novel you reference in your post is The City and the Pillar and it's definitely worth reading.
Thanks for reviving my dead thread, Andrew And yeah, his historical fiction seems to be his best work, but I've never been too interested in that genre...I've been reading essays and I seem to like that better. Which critic was that? I wouldn’t say the documentary only portrayed him under a good light…it kind of portrayed him as a bitter old crank…which he was, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have some good ideas. All in all, I think Vidal is a little too liberal for me (he believed in 9/11 conspiracy theories), but his criticisms of conservative politicians were pretty spot-on. (The best part of the documentary was seeing him debate William F. Buckley and get called a queer on national television…ah, the 60s…)
I'm fond of his historical fiction and have read some of the novels mentioned above. If you like him, you should also read some Truman Capote. They were bitter rivals and carried on one of the most public cat fights in modern history.
