Spats with Truman Capote, punch-ups with Norman Mailer, a TV showdown that electrified the US and has now been made into a feature-length documentary … Jay Parini on the bravery and bite of Gore Vidal
I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid 1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbour, and our friendship lasted until his death in 2012. Needless to say he was a complicated and often combative man. It took an effort, strenuous at times, to remain a close friend; but it seemed to me worth putting in the time, allowing him to relax into his deeper self, which was actually quite shy, even solitary. The public mask didn’t fit the private man very well, and I was always much relieved when he took it off.
Vidal would dwell at length on his feuds and fixed on the idea, which he took from Goethe, that talent is formed in stillness but character “in the stream of the world”. He entered that stream and swam vigorously, often against the current. And his wide knowledge of the world informed his work – the brilliant historical novels, especially Burr (about Aaron Burr, a founding father) and Julian, about the fourth-century Roman emperor. His seven novels about American history form an elegant and entertaining interlocking series that runs from the Jeffersonian years through the mid-20th century, and which puts his vast erudition on display in palatable ways. His essays, as gathered in United States: Essays 1952-1992, make up more than 1,000 pages of vivid writing about books and ideas – perhaps his main contribution to the republic of letters. His perspective is always that of the lofty intellectual. As John Lahr once said, Vidal “pisses from an enormous height”.
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