Gore Vidal, the eminent man of letters, died last week at 86. In the splendid obituary that appeared in The New York Times, Charles McGrath wrote “ Mr. Vidal was, at the end of his life, an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent. He published some 25 novels, two memoirs and several volumes of stylish, magisterial essays. He also wrote plays, television dramas and screenplays. For a while he was even a contract writer at MGM. And he could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, put-down or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy. Perhaps more than any other American writer except Norman Mailer or Truman Capote, Mr. Vidal took great pleasure in being a public figure. He twice ran for office — in 1960, when he was the Democratic Congressional candidate for the 29th District in upstate New York, and in 1982, when he campaigned in California for a seat in the Senate — and though he lost both times, he often conducted himself as a sort of unelected shadow president. He once said, “There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
The thing that was valuable about Vidal is that he always saw through the natural inclination of
people to make nice. He never succumbed to the reflexive patriotism, the willingness to go along, the desire to back a winner, and he was always ready to recognize the smallness, the fear, and the selfishness that seldom lurks very far from the surface in most people. Maybe he was too ready to recognize those traits. “He was not a sentimentalist or a romantic,” wrote McGrath, who then quoted Vidal as saying “Love is not my bag.” On another occasion, Vidal said “I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.”
If so, then how terribly sad for him. Still, it was always helpful to turn to him for a reality check. He was a great puncturer of illusions; he knew that inside most Gucci loafers, there were feet of clay. He knew that American Exceptionalism has always sat cheek by jowl with Pathetically Disappointing American Ordinariness.
I had the great luck on day in April 2006 to be hanging out in the late, lamented Borders bookstore in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, when Vidal suddenly appeared. He was in town to receive the Borders PEN Award, and I guess as part of the honor, he had to make a store appearance. It was a shock to see him being wheeled in, and a tremedous treat–a kind of a bonus for hanging out in bookstores–to see him in person. Here are some of his remarks:
“I’m getting an award tonight. It’s one of those ‘Still Breathing’ awards. They look around and say ‘Oh look—he’s still breathing.’’”
“This appearance has been advertised as a reading, but it’s not. I find writing books hard enough. I’ll leave the reading to others.”
“I spoke to [Democratic presidential candidate and member of the House] Dennis Kucinich. I liked him. He’d been talking of impeaching the president. I said ‘Don’t do that. Impeach the vice president. We’ve never had one like him before—a rogue vice president.”
“In the old days, when you had a group like this running things, we would have an election and get rid of them. Now we have an election, and Diebold withholds the results. But we need to get this group out. O-U-T, as I say to my dog.”
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist—I’m a conspiracy analyst. But even if I was inclined to suspect that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks, I’d discount the idea. They’re just not capable. They couldn’t pull it off.”
“From George Washington to George W. Bush—it leads me to believe that Darwin had it wrong.”
“The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated by the Patriot Act. Habeus corpus is the only good thing the British left us, and we gave it up, without a voice raised in protest.”
In a great public service, The Daily Beast collected Vidal’s best lines:
On Sex:
“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.”
“Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.”
“There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.”
On Envy:
“Envy is the central fact of American life.”
“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
On Politics:
“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.”
“Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice like, Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.”
“Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.”
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”
“Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won’t be.”
“As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.”
General:
“The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country— and we haven’t seen them since.”
“Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60″
“A good deed never goes unpunished.”
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
“The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.”
“The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.”
“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”