WRITER PROFILE

Theo Dorgan meets novelist, essayist, critic and commentator, Gore Vidal, in London. Described as a "seer and a scourge" of the American empire, Vidal talks to Theo about a literary career that spans seven decades.

Vidal explains that he developed a love of reading at the age of 6, when he would regularly read to his blind grandfather. Vidal quips that his grandfather used to enjoy telling them that Milton's daughters all lost their sight-reading to the great man.

Vidal was first published at the end of the Second World War, and immediately shot to fame for his provocative and non-conformist attitudes and themes.

His second novel, 'The City and the Pillar', written when the author was only 21, was the first novel to tackle the sensitive issue of homosexuality. Banned in Ireland, but never out of print in fifty years, the novel led the way to ever-increasing levels of approbation, criticism and controversy.

Vidal relishes his lifetime under the transgressive banner of outrage, confessing that his time in the armed forces taught him that life (and therefore art) is always more complex, challenging and disturbing than conformist society would admit. He left the services, sure of what he didn't want but uncertain of what he did.

Theo questions Vidal about his lifelong love-hate obsession with America, and the relationship this has with his historical cannon. On the subject of 'Julian', a novel on the life of the apostate emperor who resisted the rise of Christianity, Vidal responds in typically splenetic form: "I have always disliked Christianity and monotheism in all its formsŠ[they are] the greatest disaster ever to befall the West". In assessment of his life, Vidal wryly reminisces on some of the more absurd moments.

He confesses that he would rather not have written the screenplay for 'Ben Hur', but that he has lived and written exactly how and what he wanted. "I was very lucky", he tells us, looking back on an unprecedented literary career.


Biographical Details

Prolific American novelist, playwright, and essayist, one of the great stylists of contemporary American prose, who has been active in politics. Vidal made his debut as novelist with 'Williwaw' at the age of 19, while still in US Army uniform.

Gore Vidal grew accustomed at an early age to a life among political and social notables. He was born at the military academy in West Point, New York, where his father was an instructor.

He was raised near Washington, DC, in the house of his grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, a populist Democrat senator from Oklahoma. Vidal learned about political life from him and when he was a teenager he adopted the first name of Gore. Vidal also spent time on the Virginia estate of his stepfather, Hugh. D. Auchincloss.

After graduating from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he served on an army supply ship in the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska. 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. From 1947 to 1949 Vidal lived in Antigua, Guatemala.

His first novel, 'Williwaw', was based on his wartime experiences as first mate on Freight Ship 35 in the Alaskan Harbour Craft Detachment. The conventional seafaring story was written in the spirit Ernest Hemingway. The novel was praised by the critics like the following books, although 'The City and the Pillar' (1948) shocked the public with its homosexual main character.

However, he became known as a serious writer at the age of 21, and the novel also 'broke the mold' of gay American fiction. The book was reissued in 1965 with a different ending. '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. Among his best-known works from the 1950s is 'Visit To A Small Planet' (prod. first for television in 1955).

In the 1960s Vidal returned to the literary scene by producing historical or contemporary novels, including 'Julian' (1964), written in the form of a journal by the eponymous Roman emperor, 'Washington D.C.' (1967), a political thriller spanning the years 1937-52, 'Burr' (1974), in which its title character rises above the other Founding Fathers, 1876 (1976), 'Duluth' (1983), and 'Lincoln'(1984), a carefully reconstructed account of the life of the US president. Vidal sees Lincoln as a tyrannical character who is "almost diabolically unknowable in his use of power".

'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. In 'Live From Golgotha' (1992) Vidal portrayed events in the Bible as though they were reported on television.

Among Vidal's finest works are two novels which deal with power and sex. 'Myra Breckenrigde' (1968) was a transsexual 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.

The hero of Washington, D.C, Peter Sandford, apperared again in 'The Golden Age' (2000), in which the reader meets a number of real, historical people, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph Alsop, Tennessee Williams, and the author himself.

As the grandson of the politician, T.P. Gore Vidal has been active in liberal politics. In 1960 he ran unsuccessfully for the US Congress as a Democratic-Liberal candidate in New York. Between 1970 and 1972 he was co-chairman of the left-leaning People's Party.

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.

As an essayist Vidal has dealt with a wide range of subjects from literary to issues of national interest, and people he has known. Vidal's family have provided him with a wealth of material, starting from his maternal grandfather, former senator Thomas Pryor Gore and his relation to Jackie Kennedy through one of his mother's marriages. Vidal has also met and worked with prominent people, using freely these connections in his essays. Readers learn the habits of such persons as John F. Kennedy - 'not much interested in giving pleasure to his partner - Henry James, Tennessee Williams, Anaïs Nin, and many others. He once described Ronald Reagan as "a triumph of the embalmer's art."

Often Vidal has been pointedly controversial, as when he supported legalisation of illegal drugs - it would remove the Mafia from the drug market. "It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect‹good or bad‹the drug will have on the taker." (The New York Times, 1970; from The Last Empire, 2001).

In Prague Vidal attacked in the spring of 2001 his home country's bureaucracy, health care, and educational system and so fiercely that Václav Klaus, Chairman of the Czech Parliament, considered it improper.

In The Nation Vidal suggested that the white race of Europe, Russia, Canada, and the United States should form a defensive alliance against "more than one billion grimly efficient Asiatics" (see The Last Empire, 2001).


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Running Time: 30mins
Year Made: 2000
Price: €20 - PAL (European), €30 - NTSC (US) plus P&P