Aug 5, 2012
Who was Gore Vidal?
He died last week at age 86. I guess it was timely that I blogged about William F. Buckley, as the two were public adversaries as you can see in this clip. Other than that, I don't know much about Gore Vidal. Who was he? Perhaps someone with broader experience than myself can help me out.
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Gore Vidal was a skillful and wildly opinionated novelist who had difficulty separating fact from fiction. Literature will miss him. History will not.
ReplyDeleteI'm disappointed to hear that ... on Amazon the reviews of Vidal's historical fiction, particularly "Lincoln" and "Julian", are stellar. I was really looking forward to reading "Julian" especially, as Gibbon's account of the Roman emperor was fascinating, but now I'm not so sure. There's nothing worse than reading a book and then finding out later that it is inaccurate!
ReplyDelete"The Killer Angels" by Shaara was (I think?) the first book of historical fiction I read. It was outstanding and, as far as I can tell, historically accurate (but what do I know?)
Freyguy,
ReplyDeleteGore Vidal thought that Roosevelt purposely provoked Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, knew about the attack ahead of time and did nothing to prevent it because he wanted to go to war. Dido Bush and 9/11. But perhaps I am biased because he saw the world through a hard left lens ripe with conspiracies that I am too blind to see and too naive to understand. You be the judge.
I came across this clip of Vidal expressing his concerns about overpopulation, in which he proposes sterilization and selective breeding by force:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax5agwHo-Gw
His remarks are visibly self-satisfying, and equally foolish.