How one sexy gay novel derailed Gore Vidal’s literary career

[DonViejo]

A new movie paints a loving portrait of the ruling-class rebel -- but the great critic's real legacy is complicated

ANDREW O'HEHIR

Every intellectual who tries to crack wise on television is emulating Gore Vidal, whether or not he or she knows it. Nicholas Wrathall’s documentary “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia” is an unabashed love letter to its subject that captures how and why Vidal became one of the dominant public intellectuals of the 20th century, an heir to the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, and a fearless post-partisan scourge of American hypocrisy and corruption well into the Bush-Obama era. Perhaps without meaning to, the film also captures many of Vidal’s contradictions. Less than two years after his death, Vidal simultaneously looks like a creature from a bygone era, shaped by privilege, oppression and the refined self-hatred of pre-Stonewall gay identity, and like a bracing, cautionary example to all the certainty and sanctimony and stupidity of our time. Saying that we need a new Gore Vidal is both true and nonsensical; the precise combination of ingredients that made him who he was could only have come together when and where it did, and is not possible now.

At the height of his fame as a novelist, critic and bon vivant in the late 1960s, Vidal became the puckish left-wing sparring partner of William F. Buckley Jr., in a series of ABC News throwdowns that set the gold standard for all such future encounters. In one of the most famous moments in TV history – now a YouTube classic – the two nearly came to blows during a debate over the protests outside the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. After Vidal described Buckley as a “pro- or crypto-Nazi” (or possibly a “proto-crypto-Nazi”), the latter called Vidal a “queer” and threatened to “sock him in the goddamn face.” That was pretty hot language for network TV in those days – or any time, really – and there was the added comic attraction that both men were obvious Northeastern blue bloods with prep-school manners and patrician accents. It was as if the race for student body president at Phillips Exeter had boiled over into fisticuffs, and on the evening news. (Actually, only Vidal went to Exeter; Buckley attended the Millbrook School, a more modest and more progressive institution, believe it or not.)

Vidal won the exchange, in much the same way as his old friend Jack Kennedy had won the televised debate with Richard Nixon eight years earlier. Perhaps he had absorbed Marshall McLuhan’s nascent media theories and perhaps it was instinct, but Vidal retained a cool, amused demeanor while Buckley blew a gasket and descended to hate speech, for which he would later half-apologize. (He had been driven to the insult by his distaste for Vidal as “an evangelist for bisexuality,” Buckley wrote.) But there’s one more thing to notice about this legendary incident, which is that Vidal fought dirty even before Buckley did. God knows I don’t want to take William Buckley’s side against pretty much anyone ever, but Vidal surely understood that it was unfair to accuse his opponent of being a Nazi, even in jest. (An autocrat, an elitist or a monarchist, sure.) In fact, Vidal picked a vulnerable spot and stuck in the knife; he knew that Buckley had struggled to purge the reborn conservative movement of overt racism and anti-Semitism (as well as John Birchers and Ayn Rand libertarians) and would likely rise to the bait.

You can draw a variety of lessons from that episode and its ripple effect across many decades of pop culture. Most subsequent left-liberal or even radical critics (Vidal would have rejected any such label, by the way) strive to appear reasonable in pop-culture contexts, rather than just sticking the boot in for maximum effect. Vidal never cared about seeming reasonable, and relished entertaining positions or ideas that horrified mainstream commentators of all stripes. (He explored conspiracy theories about both the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks, for example, although he stopped short of endorsing them.) In that sense, his would-be heirs can be found all over the ideological map, from Steven Colbert to Bill Maher to Glenn Beck, who is like the numb-nuts right-wing lower-middle-class hetero version, with the 1940s liberal-education reading list replaced with 1990s political-religious gobbledygook. (I’m not entirely kidding about that; both Vidal and Beck were autodidacts and self-invented characters who never went to college.)

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http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/how_one_sexy_gay_novel_derailed_gore_vidals_literary_career/

[Jefferson23]

1. Flaws and all, a fascinating man..thanks for posting.

I have to try and find that you tube of the Buckley argument.

[DonViejo]

2. Here ya go....

[Jefferson23]

3. lol, Buckley really did lose it. Vidal really knew how to push those buttons and was

thoroughly enjoying Buckley's reaction.

I was not ever aware of this encounter nor their history..I googled out of curiosity and the
story went a bit further in case you are interested and like me did not know:

snip*By early 1969, Vidal said he had put the incident behind him. But Buckley had not, and so he proposed to the editors of Esquire that he write a piece about his exchanges with Vidal. Naturally, seeking fair play, the magazine asked Vidal if he would like to write about Buckley, and it was agreed that the pieces would run in consecutive issues - Buckley's in August 1969, Vidal's in September. The requisite lawsuits ensued at the time, and Vidal, who made it clear to Buckley that he would not back down, won something of a pyrrhic victory: Buckley, told by a judge that he probably would not win if his suit went to court, agreed to let Esquire pay his legal fees and issue an apology, after which he dropped his lawsuit. Vidal's legal fees went unreimbursed.

But in a strange twist, the conflict resurfaced more than 30 years later when Esquire, in violation of a 1972 settlement, mistakenly republished Vidal's article in a 2003 book, Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing. The magazine had to apologize for its error, make Buckley's original essay available online for a few months, and, once again, pay a settlement to Buckley. The incident caught the attention of The Village Voice, which published a short piece about the revival of the brouhaha, and a doctoral student at Columbia University has put Vidal's essay online.

http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/debates.html


Thanks for posting the video..was great to watch it.

[Paladin]

4. I believe Vidal remains a national treasure.

Check out his collection of remembrances, "Palimpsest." This was an intelligent, articulate guy who knew pretty much everybody of note in the last half of the 20th century---and he had something catty and hilarious to say about very one of them.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Thanks for that title..

Just ordered it from my book swap site, paperbackswap.com.

[Paladin]

7. I'm confident you'll enjoy it. (nt)

[BlancheSplanchnik]

6. Blanche, don't forget to check this out.

Reminding myself.