6 thoughts on “Gore Vidal, 1925-2012

  1. It’s remarkable that he lived so long after such an intimidating threat from Bill Buckley. Such a physical threat, delivered in that Connecticut lockjaw accent by a famous intellectual – “and you’ll stay plaahstird” had me laughing so hard I had trouble breathing.

  2. About 6 years ago, I had an opportunity to go and see a staged reading of a 1-act play of his in Chapel Hill, NC. The play itself had never been produced before.
    It took place in the the South, right before the Civil War, with a lot of great characters getting together at a family gathering right before outbreak of the war.

    It wasn’t great – but it was pretty good.

    Gore Vidal was there after the reading to answer questions, and I gathered my courage and asked him why he had made a play out of this rather than a book – which I thought was a pretty interesting question to ask of a man who had written both.

    He looked to be very, very frail – I thought he was older than his then 80 years. And he didn’t seem to understand my question and gave me some non sequitur of an answer.
    Oh well, I thought, at least the great Gore Vidal acknowledged my existence!

  3. This made my evening, to see Buckley lose his cool.

    Elsewhere, on a comment thread regarding Vidal’s death, someone quipped that conservatives haven’t had a good writer since “Hee Haw” was cancelled.

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