Other than his rambling, melodramatic, seriously dated, oddly anti-queer, dirty book "The City And The Pillar" that did for him what he hoped it would, make him famous as a daring writer, his script for the disastrous dirty movie "Myra Breckenridge" and his pseudo-historical novel, "Lincoln" I'll bet even most allegedly literate fans of his writing couldn't name anything off the top of their heads.
It was the controversy around "Lincoln" that pretty well shattered the Vidal illusion for me. When I read real historians critique of his book as a hodge-podge of discredited semi-sensational debunkings of Lincoln and, worse, the TV mini-series they made of it (I watched the beginning and couldn't watch anymore of it) I saw that what Vidal was was a Hollywood-NYC style dilettante bull shit artist whose alleged historical erudition was a mix of him telling show biz interviewers things while posing as a scholar of the highest discernment. His entire act depended on people not knowing better and never fact checking him. When I looked at what some of his critics said it was clear his entire career - in so far as it impinged on real life instead of his pure invention - was pretty much dependent on other peoples' ignorance and his ability to bull shit his way through informed refutation.
That doesn't mean that I didn't take the same side he did when he warred with William F. Buckley or other fascists - mostly rather obvious and easy targets - or that we didn't come close to being on the same side, generally, in politics. But that's not the same thing as respecting him. Lots of people on the leftish side of things were utter and complete liars and assholes and in total, what influence they had on the left turned out to carry, at best, a real price to be paid, sometimes a huge price. I think that Gore Vidal would be disappointed because I think he was of such ephemeral effect that the price to be paid for him wasn't even very high. I looked at one of his Nation pieces online the other day, one in which he goes after the Podhoretz-Decter crowd and found two glaring historical misstatements in that one piece alone. He was not careful with the truth. I doubt anyone at The Nation ever fact checked anything he wrote, certainly nothing he said about those safely dead and incapable of litigation. I suspect they, also not knowing any better, bought his Roman-Republican aristocratic intellectual as American aristocratic rebel act as much as any other non-sales resistant schmuck.
Reading about his last years when he either fell into or drank himself into dementia was sad. I've seen and heard others say that when someone become demented that often their basic personality persists longer than their ability to recognize their family and intimates did and from what I've read he was a total asshole in his dementia. He revised his will to leave his 37 million dollar legacy to the already entirely obscenely, grotesquely endowed Harvard University, out of snobbery, their flattery, and a real regard for the elite he pretended to disdain. He left his long-time Filipino housekeeper-cook with only a meager pension, though people attested to his devoted care for Vidal over what must have been a terrible ordeal for someone in that position. No. He was not the kind of leftist I'd have ever expected any better of. Neither are those who hold a tiny little cigarette lighter sized flame for him. To be turned off as they ever more dimly remember him, from time to time.
Of course you don't like Vidal. He was genuinely witty and you have no sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine what you'd say if you actually had read Gore Vidal. I remember during the many years I was a subscriber, when he wrote in the 120th anniversary edition of The Nation, in response to Midge Decter accusing him of not liking "his country" the United States:
Delete"Poor Midge. Of course I like my country. After all, I'm its current biographer. But now that we're really leveling with each other, I've got to tell you I don't much like your country, which is Israel."
Only, unlike me, I would imagine Gore Vidal wouldn't have wished to have several million more Jews as citizens of the United States, what you keep calling "the Jew stuff" when you accuse me of antisemitism every several days.
I think I might have that one somewhere in my stuff. I wasn't nuts about keeping all of the back issues of The Nation but as I recall I liked a few of the essays in it. Margaret Atwood's was funny, talking about Canadians looking like Porkey Pig from having their noses pressed against the glass watching their insane neighbor to the South. Like I said, I've got a good memory. You have a good stupidity.
Not only have I read him, you lying asshole, but I actually saw the original Broadway production of VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET with Cyril Ritchard.
ReplyDeleteOh, I found it. From The Nation March 22, 1986. How about this passage, Simps?
Delete"Oh, Midge, resist. Resist! Don’t you get the point? We stole other people’s land. We murdered many of the inhabitants. We imposed our religion–and rule–on the survivors. General Grant was ashamed of what we did to Mexico, and so am I. Mark Twain was ashamed of what we did in the Philippines, and so am I. Midge is not because in the Middle East another predatory people is busy stealing other people’s land in the name of an alien theocracy. She is a propagandist for these predators (paid for?), and that is what all this nonsense is about."
I know you've never read Gore Vidal because you never read anything, at best you skim.
So your point is that no, Vidal was not a genuine wit and yes, you have a sense of humor?
ReplyDeleteMy point? My point is exactly what I said it was, you've never read Gore Vidal, you might have seen something he wrote a screen play for or some play he'd written (though I doubt that), you aren't aware that he was quite the Jew baiter and, as he said, he disliked Israel describing it in blatantly antisemtic terms that if someone other than Gore Vidal used you'd say they were guilty of "the jew stuff" as you always say.
DeleteYou are a boob and a hypocrite as well as a functional illiterate. But think of it this way, Stups, there's not much else functional about you. You are a typical product of the TV addled American of our generation who never did read much and, as a result, thought less.
And look how well he, 32 years ago, would have fit right in with Trump's foreign policy:
ReplyDelete"Recently, Norman Mailer and I chatted together at the Royale Theatre in New York, under the auspices of PEN American Center. Part of what I said was reprinted in these pages on January 11, under the title, not mine, “Requiem for the American Empire.” I gave a bit of a history lesson about our empire’s genesis, and I brooded on its terminus last fall, when Tokyo took over from New York as the world’s economic center.
My conclusion: for America to survive economically in the coming Sino-Japanese world, an alliance with the Soviet Union is a necessity. After all, the white race is a minority race with many well deserved enemies, and if the two great powers of the Northern Hemisphere don’t band together, we are going to end up as farmers–or, worse, mere entertainment–for the more than one billion grimly efficient Asiatics. In principle, Mailer agreed."
Is it any wonder that in the coming decades he'd go all soft on the Ruby Ridge crowd, Timothy McVeigh (which I was interested to find out is a variant on "Macbeth") and become a 9-11 truther? From what I've read about his late life dementia, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't end up like Orson Bean or Jon Voight if he'd been able to drool out words.
He was not a deeply logical thinker or especially interested in democracy or the truth. No wonder you think he's a genius, notwithstanding his obvious antisemitism which you're obviously too stupid to see. That doesn't surprise me at all.
Here's a clue, schmucko: As a general rule I don't give a flying fuck about the politics or personal life of artist's whose stuff I like. As I've said, "Be My Baby" is a work of genius, and Phil Spector actually murdered someone.
ReplyDeleteYou ought to get another cliche. No one who resorts to the same cliche as much as you've pulled out that tiny little chestnut of ersatz erudition as often as you do has any idea what quality in literature is.
DeleteAs I pointed out to you once before when you got into a predictable lather over me dissing the dear old Jew-baiter, even his official biographer and friend admitted that Gore Vidal is a minor author whose time is past, apart from a few of his temporarily topical essays. Phil Spector's "genius" is a product of PR, not musical quality.
Sparky: "Phil Spector's "genius" is a product of PR, not musical quality."
ReplyDeleteBruce Springsteen: "Phil Spector's records are the sound of universes colliding."
Fuck you, you philistine braying jackass know-nothing.
He's welcome to his opinion.
DeleteNow, why don't you address Gore Vidal's "jew stuff" as you would put it? Oh, I know why, because you don't really care about it except in so far as you can use it to lie about someone you targeted because he wouldn't kow tow to your Simelshood.