揭示真理的自由人 ──我看戈爾．維達爾
▲美國作家維達爾攝於2003年。（本報資料照片）
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美國作家戈爾．維達爾（Gore Vidal）甫於去年因肺炎辭世，享年87歲。維達爾童年所受的教養面向政治，長大以後曾參加過幾次重要的實際政治活動。他從一九六七到二○○○年寫了七部所謂「美國紀事」系列小說，直接間接揭露美國歷史的若干真相。
千人之諾諾，不如一士之諤諤。──史記．商君列傳
在美國，人們大都力求適應潮流，隨俗浮沉。屬於極少數敢挺身而出仗義執言者當中的戈爾．維達爾（Gore Vidal）於去年7月31日以肺炎辭世，享年近87歲。
維達爾原名Eugene Luther Gore Vidal；1925年10月3日生於離我住處不遠的西點軍校（校長是麥克阿瑟）。父親曾代表美國參加世運，獲得五項全能銀牌；當時任該校體育教官，後來愛上航空，成為著名女航空家艾爾哈特（Amelia Earhart）的密友。小羅斯福總統任內經她力薦，作了美國首任航空署長。是環球（TWA）等大航空公司的創始人之一。其妻為參議員戈爾（T. P. Gore）之女。她長相嫵媚，生性放浪，不愛做賢妻良母，而熱中於社交，常有外遇，動輒把襁褓中的兒子推給她的父母照顧。維達爾的外祖父從小失明，卻視書如命，藏有兩萬冊，日常必須有人替他朗讀。維達爾剛認字時外祖母便開始訓練他代勞，這樣，本來就早熟的孩子與書結了不解之緣，日後自己藏書也多達一萬數千冊；嘗說他平生沒有感到寂寞，因為有書為伴，「從來沒有停止閱讀」。好奇心重，求知欲強，十四歲時便「想知道全世界的全部歷史」。
舞台創作轟動一時
維達爾的父母無法相處，終於分手。母親改嫁闊少爺奧琴科洛斯（Hugh D.Auchincloss），讓維達爾搬去豪宅同住，但生一子一女後也宣告離異。奧琴科洛斯的續弦是後來嫁給約翰．甘乃迪的賈桂琳之母；兩個拖油瓶先後睡過同一臥房，也算有親戚關係了。（二人曾經很親近，終至鬧翻。維達爾被人嘲笑愛炫耀自己同名人間的交誼，他確是常常提到她和丈夫。）這位繼父的姪孫路易斯（Louis）是小說家，與維達爾惺惺相惜，很要好。既然出身世家，母親又勢利眼，維達爾自小就念私立貴族學校。就讀Phillips Exeter Academy期間積極參加辯論會，從原先口吃練得辯才無礙。1943年高中畢業立即加入陸軍，被派去阿留申群島（Aleutians；在阿拉斯加西南），擔任一條小運輸船的大副，直到二戰結束。根據這段經驗他寫了第一部小說Williwaw（暴風驟雪，1946；書名原是印第安人用詞），一舉成名；隨即連寫三部。為了省錢，去瓜地馬拉住過；不久賺足稿費，在紐約鄉間買了一座大房子。1948年出另一長篇The City and the Pillar（城市與鹽柱；書名來自《聖經．舊約》關於索多瑪城被毀的故事），成為國際暢銷書。不料在他祖國卻因公開敘寫同性戀而受到撻伐；《紐約時報》書評欄主編甚至揚言以後該報不會再理睬他，其他有影響力的報刊如《時代》和《新聞周刊》群起效尤，以致他的七部新著全如石沉大海。這形同封了他的筆。於是只好用筆名寫偵探小說（反而受到《紐約時報》好評），繼則改行編寫舞台劇、電視劇和電影角本，非常成功。Visit to a Small Planet（小星球之旅；星球指地球）是他最有名的電視劇。用總統大選做背景的舞台劇The Best Man（最佳人選，1960）在紐約百老匯連演520場，轟動一時；而且始終很受歡迎，隔不多久會重新排演。以亨利方達為男主角的同名電影也成了名片。被趕出文壇門外他倒出門見喜，不到十年便名利雙收，有了經濟安全──重要而卻難得的寫作條件。1963年同男友奧斯汀（Howard Austin）遷往羅馬賃房而棲，繼則搬到義大利南海岸懸崖新買的一所豪宅，每年只去好萊塢山的公寓度假幾個月。2003年奧斯汀死，維達爾自己也體弱多病，次年離開義大利，在好萊塢山度過他最後八年。
電視政論節目常客
維達爾童年所受的教養面向政治，長大以後曾參加過幾次重要的實際政治活動。1960年在紐約州競選眾議員（所提政綱包括增高富人稅率和承認中共）。儘管是共和黨控制的選區，竟差一點獲勝。1982年在加州競選參議員，得票也很可觀。後來他自承兩次失敗都不奇怪，因為太直率敢言──政客之大忌。而即使僥倖當選，進入國會這骯髒的大染缸裡除非同流合污，也不可能待得下去。他相信假如通過美國現有的任何途徑當上總統，「我會跟其他走這條路的人完全相同，至終還是不會發生半點作用。」1970年起擔任過人民黨（People’s Party）的聯合主席。該黨指望變成第三大黨，徒勞無功；維達爾強調美國這個社會不可能允許第三黨出現。
高大英俊，口齒伶俐；他常常上電視參加政治討論。1968年大選兩黨的全國代表大會期間與極右派分子勃克利（William Buckley，Jr.；前年去世）在美國電視公司（ABC）節目上破口對罵的場面至今仍然是YouTube的熱門片段。他也是脫口秀上的常客。在凱維特（Dick Cavitt）的節目同著名小說家梅勒（Norman Mailer；2007年去世）那次唇槍舌劍的交鋒是YouTube另一熱門片段（那晚先是愛動武的梅勒在後台忽然以頭猛撞維達爾胸部，維達爾倒退一步之後立刻把梅勒推回）。令人意外的是維達爾與最受歡迎而頗俗氣的脫口秀主持者卡爾森（Johnny Carson）由職業關係而成為知交。卡爾森休假時會找他代為主持節目。
小說揭露美國真相
1964年維達爾出了第一本歷史小說Julian（尤里安：第四世紀羅馬皇帝；摒絕基督教，主張信仰自由；被基督教諡為「叛教者」）。這次《紐約時報》那位已退休的書評家再度操觚，陰陽怪氣，依舊不捧場。其他報刊則大都讚揚，遂高居暢銷榜長達八個月。從1967到2000年寫了七部所謂「美國紀事」（American Chronicles）。關於這個平常介紹他時習用的名詞，維達爾在其第二本自傳中曾特別聲明，他原先稱作「帝國故事」（Narratives of Empire），但書商怕「帝國」這種字眼影響銷路，硬給改得不痛不癢了。這一系列小說直接間接揭露美國歷史的若干真相。從建國之初就專為資產階級所有、所治、所享。開國元勳們既怕君主專制也怕民主自治，因此處心積慮在憲法中確保二者都做不到（他一再強調美國應該有第二次革命，重立新憲法）。建國不久便急急忙忙走上帝國主義的不歸路。首先虐殺印第安人。墨西哥戰爭是赤裸裸的侵略行為；1836-1848年間通過征服、訛詐和賤買等途徑巧取豪奪了該國領土的一大半。1898年打敗西班牙，取得菲律賓。1945年二戰結束後美國成為擁有原子武器而未受戰爭災害的全球最強大國，卻故作緊張，硬把千瘡百孔的蘇聯由同盟國改成假想敵，利用種種欺詐伎倆片面打造「冷戰」，藉此繼續擴張軍備。（他認為史達林是被迫，不得不反應。）
即使在和平時期──這種情況不多──美國也把聯邦總收入的三分之二多專門用作軍費；到2001年為止已經消耗7.1兆美元巨款。每年軍事預算相當於它所謂七個「潛在敵國」的總和！1991年蘇聯自動解體。維達爾辛辣地說這形同在美國背後捅了一刀，因為美國就怕失去這假想敵。結果美國視若無睹，我行我素，悍然保持冷戰狀態；繼續擴張軍備，從原子彈進而發展核武器。幾十年前美蘇兩國早已能夠使地球毀滅許多次（一次還不夠！），而1992年維達爾指出美國仍在祕密建造新一代的核武器，每年耗資40億美元。自朝鮮、越南等到伊拉克、阿富汗，征戰不斷，習慣成為自然，而且往往是首先出手侵犯。在一篇文章後面他以20頁附錄了二戰結束到2001年9月11日紐約世貿中心被撞毀之間美國在境內境外進行的250多次軍事行動。他說這單子還不全，只列舉了主要的攻擊行為。其結果當然是軍火商大發橫財，從而買通政客和媒體，使美國平均每人一槍，大規模屠殺案層出不窮，騰笑國際。至於很多世人──尤其美國人──以為美國每年撥數百萬美元用於外援，這純粹是誤會；在發達國家中美國外援最少，而且大都給了以色列。
辛辣評論媒體控制
在國內則同樣因為沒有蘇聯競爭而肆無忌憚，更積極地加強頒行種種不公平的措施。事實上美國由二、三十家大公司把持（所謂Corporate America）；它們的老闆形同政治局，為所欲為。維達爾常常提醒人們，美國的統治者是「財產黨」（Property Party），它能巧妙利用其財產一手遮天，使政治辯論避免涉及真正的社會問題。大公司老闆通過所擁有或轄制的媒體對思想和言論嚴加控制，絕對禁止客觀報導，其技巧精妙絕倫，已經成為西方一大奇蹟。各大電視公司網絡是老百姓唯一的消息來源，而其報導蓄意混淆視聽，矇混觀眾。新聞報告號稱半小時，實際只有十九分鐘，其餘時間用來做廣告和宣傳自己的節目。甚至能施展其哄騙天才誘導老百姓投票支持損害本身權益的措施，而且讓他們以為自己也在參與統治程序，使老百姓根本不知道有一個壟斷資本統治階級存在。維達爾對這個現象嘆為觀止。
孔子可以說是維達爾平生最景仰傾慕的歷史人物，不僅在小說裡，在論文和談話錄中也屢屢表示拜服得五體投地，稱之為「最偉大的政治思想家」。他始終讚揚儒家獨特的優點在於它根本不是宗教，而是一套關於倫理、教育和行政的思想體系。
所有選舉都靠錢。美國每四年「拍賣」一次，讓最富的個人或家族買去。維達爾說這話是1969年，四十多年後的今天選舉已經「私有化」。這些年來所有總統都待價而沽。任何人到了可以競選總統的時候就表示「已經出賣了十來次了」。他對某些總統的評語可圈可點：艾森豪（殘酷無情的投機分子），肯尼迪（無所事事；一動就出亂子），雷根（笨蛋；壞蛋），尼克森（壞蛋），老布希（無恥），小布希（美國第一笨蛋）。
從雷根粉墨登場開始積極減富人的稅。及至小布希沐猴而冠，非法上台（維達爾稱之為Cheney-Bush Junta，因為他們得票較少，是最高法院以五比四「任命」的），到猖獗地更加緊為富豪減稅（小布希稱之為「tax relief」──富豪需要「救濟」！）。許多小百姓想工作而找不到工作，有工作者一天到晚勞碌，交很多稅而享受不到任何福利（只有百分之十四工人有幸參加工會）；大公司反倒會獲得減稅（紐約一連鎖豪華旅館逃稅成性的女老闆對婢女說：只有小人物才繳稅！）。美國遂成為發達國家中貧富相差最懸殊者。早在1980年維達爾已經指出，美國大部分財產在百分之四點四的人手裡；他們擁有全國百分之二十七不動產，擁有各大公司股票的百分之六十，等等。到了2012年，百分之一人口的收入佔全民總收入的百分之二十五，千分之一人口佔百分之十，萬分之一人口佔百分之五；全民所得百分之九十三進了百分之一人口的腰包裡。「金錢是美國貧富之間的一條萬里長城」，並且像萬里長城一樣永恆而不可搖撼。窮人要脫離貧困，唯一的途徑是教育。美國卻跟其他國家不同，最好的學校是私立的，學費高入雲霄，窮人攀不上去；富家子弟無論怎麼笨都可以花錢買進（小布希大學念耶魯，研究院念哈佛）。美國的社會流動性在發達國家內幾乎坐紅椅子。然而在美國誰敢提到貧富不均，立即會有豪富及其爪牙跳出來大喊「社會主義」！全世界恐怕只有美國視這個字眼如洪水猛獸。維達爾卻提醒我們，其實美國憲法本身就重視階級意識。美國秘而不宣的一個重要事實即為其根深蒂固的階級制度。他瞧不起小說家厄普代克（John Updike；前年過世）的一大原因是此人缺少正義感，乖乖地支持大美帝國，縱容大公司維持其寡頭政治。
砲火猛烈 喟嘆社會福利不公
維達爾喟嘆美國的公益服務在西方工業化國家中恭陪末座，當政者寧願把公有錢財用於大企業而不給小百姓；以致成為一個獨特的社會：「對窮人實行自由企業」（置之不理），「對富人實行社會主義」（照顧備至）──直白說來不啻劫貧濟富。（文章寫於1997年，過了不久小布希當政期間華爾街各金融機構的老闆營私舞弊貪贓自肥，鬧出瀕臨破產的大亂子。中央政府出錢──納稅人的錢──全力搶救（對民間小商店倒閉則熟視無睹）；而國會質詢時大老闆們恬不知恥，居然大剌剌地照樣坐公司私有的飛機前往華府；連支持權力體制的媒體如《紐約時報》都替這群豺狼難以為情。
美國的健康保險更是全球一大笑話。有錢因而有勢的製藥廠和保險公司通過它們豢養的政客和擁有的媒體不遺餘力阻撓全民健保，儘管這是每一文明國家視為當然的。連中產階級都往往買不起健保，有病避免就醫。（小布希有句名言：生了病去掛急診就是了！）幾乎所有公共設施（如交通）都越來越壞。美國的生活品質多年來每況愈下，當前在全球各國居第二十名；平均國民收入已降到第十一名左右。窮人走投無路，難免鋌而走險，而陷身囹圄。1987年維達爾指出另外一個令人觸目驚心的事實：除了南非和蘇聯，美國是世界囚犯最多的國家；他並尖刻地說所有統治者夢寐以求的是監牢客滿，而他個人夢寐以求的則是把統治者關進監牢──先從當時總統雷根開始，然後是副總統（老布希）和國會大多數議員。他甚至說對一般百姓而言美國就像一個大樊籠，大監獄，把他們禁閉在裡面。
著作等身 欣賞春秋人物
維達爾著作等身，出過25部長篇小說；三部偵探小說；一集短篇小說；六個劇本（以及很多電視劇和電影腳本）；三卷回憶錄。最為人稱道的是200多篇論文（談文學、政治、宗教等，結集出書多種，包括長1300頁的United States：Essays 1952-1992；書名看似雙關，實則主標題非指美國，而指關於作者論述自己、政治和文學的文字合在一起。儘管如此，他自豪的則是小說──主要為歷史演義，如「帝國故事」系列。以古代為背景的小說除Julian以外，寫過Creation（初版1981，增補版2002），一般認為是他最成功的長篇，也是我欽佩他的另一個重要原因。寫的是公元前第六世紀──中國春秋時代──「創造」人類文化的古聖先賢。虛構的主人公居魯士．斯比泰瑪（Cyrus Spitama）乃瑣羅亞斯德（Zoroaster，又稱Zarathustra，公元前628？-551？，祆教──拜火教──創始人）。他小時候目睹祖父被殺。長大後作為波斯的巡迴大使周遊列國；在印度遇到釋迦牟尼（身材瘦小而精神矍鑠），並邂逅從中土東南一小國（指魯）前往從事絲綢貿易的樊遲，二人一見如故。返回波斯因這層關係而又被派專程出使中土。
小說第六章題目就叫Cathay（維達爾特別聲明這裡不能用「China」）。在秦國他首先遇到老子：灰白鬍子，眼睛比中土一般人大，說起話來聲音悅耳。李老先生立即開始談自己的哲學（「道可道，非常道」）和政治理念（「無為而治」）。居魯士發現他很了不起，卻是出世的，而孔子是入世的，「是我們得『道』的嚮導」。這章主要寫孔子。第四章居魯士從樊遲口裡已經很能認識夫子的思想。（樊是孔門重要弟子，《論語》提到五次；常為老師駕車，曾請教過耕田種菜的事；他出國經商則當然是虛構。）該章結尾預告讀者在所有他認識的人當中孔子是最有智慧者。現在終於在魯國會面，只見他身材高挑，面色白皙，額頭突出，鬍鬚稀疏；兩顆門牙特別長，嘴巴閉不攏。此時聖人已經喪妻，由寡女服侍（《論語》提到他把女兒嫁給公冶長，但未提他女婿早死）。
仰慕孔子 一生服膺無神論
顯而易見，維達爾不但讀過《四書》（尤其《論語》），也看過不少英、法等語文關於孔子的資料。這章引了很多語錄：「吾嘗終日不食，終夜不寢，以思；無益，不如學也」，「逝者如斯乎，不捨晝夜」，「智者不惑，仁者不憂，勇者不懼」，「用之則行，不用則藏」，「有教無類」，「不知生，焉知死？」，「己所不欲，勿施於人」等等。在在都使居魯士心悅誠服。他特別欽佩這古稀老人仍然希望能出仕行道。至終居魯士看出他「好到極點；至少我所有旅行途中曾未遇到過比得上他的人」。臨別時波斯大使戀戀不捨中土大師，熱淚盈眶。
孔子可以說是維達爾平生最景仰傾慕的歷史人物。不僅在小說裡，在論文和談話錄中也屢屢表示拜服得五體投地；稱之為「最偉大的政治思想家」。1990年在一次談話中被問起他心目中最理想的哲人是否是釋迦牟尼，回說不是，他比較喜歡孔子。他始終讚揚儒家獨特的優點在於它根本不是宗教（居魯士堅信孔子是無神論者），而是一套關於倫理、教育和行政的思想體系。他同居魯士一樣感到這位聖哲既可敬又可親，回憶寫Cathay這章時發覺「孔子是我寫的偉人當中唯一刻畫得圓融完整、栩栩如生者」。
維達爾自己一生服膺無神論，認為宗教純粹是迷信；嘗說「我們的文化中有一巨大而沒有人敢提的禍害，就是一神教。」作為其源頭的《舊約》是青銅時代傳下的一種野蠻的文本，「卻導致三個反人類的（anti-human）宗教」；結果為了迫使所有人都皈依「天神」（sky-god）而不惜殺人放火。他特別憎惡基督教，斥為「幾個古怪的宗教之一，根本滑稽可笑」；是「西方最大的災禍」。他痛斥基督教是「最令人喪氣、最否定生命
終其一生，維達爾都是這樣，對人對事知無不言，言無不盡。因此當然樹敵很多，不斷受到攻擊、誹謗；而他橫眉冷對，堅持諤諤直言。有人向他父親表示
佩服這種道德勇氣，老先生答得好：「他根本不在乎別人對他的看法，得罪他們有什麼勇氣可言？」維達爾聽到後頗有「知子莫若父」的欣慰之感。對於身後名他曾表示沒有把握，認為要靠運氣，並舉古埃及幾千年的文獻全都失傳為例。蓋棺論定，可以說他同還健在的語言學家杭士基（Noam
Chomsky）一樣，坐而思，起而行，洞察並揭示了真理，是個國士，是個自由人。
我只見過維達爾一次。2009年美國國家圖書獎頒給他終身成就獎，他來紐約。10月21日在市內聯合廣場連鎖書店Barnes & Noble與一學者公開對談。那天下午我從鄉間專程進城。到書店才五點鐘，距開場還有兩個半小時。心想當下美國新保守派猖獗，不會有多少人來聽，便先去斜對面一家麵店消磨時間。六點四十五分返回書店，發現會場前面二十多排竟已座無虛席，覺得驚喜而懊惱。我看出只有通過靠牆的走道才能上講台，於是選了最左邊 近牆的位子。六點四十五分維達爾坐輪椅由一年輕人推進（阿留申服役期間膝蓋因故受傷）。見他滿頭華髮，已經老態龍鍾；兩眼則仍然很有精神，微笑著看著前面。到了台上我便只能看見頭部和肩膀。其時我還沒有戴助聽器，大體聽懂他尖刻詼諧一如往昔，周圍的人時時報以掌聲和笑聲。照了兩張相，也模糊不清。起身到 牆邊走道，想往前蹭，卻立刻有人制止。不能再回原來位子，而且要搭地鐵趕火車回家，只好提前離開。
維達爾死後影劇界於8月23日假紐約Schoenfeld Theater（當時正在重演The Best Man）開了追思會，由凱維特擔任司儀；主要是回憶故友或朗誦他著作的片段。我趕到時前面又已經坐滿，整個氣氛卻再度令我振奮。次日報載小說家魯西迪等文 也去了，坐在台下，並預告秋末文學界也將集會悼挽，但沒有下文。
*****
一周前 剪貼的美國"著名人物"Gore Vidal 今天讀經濟人的悼文 感覺完全不一樣呢
Gore Vidal
Eugene Louis “Gore” Vidal, novelist, essayist and public intellectual, died on July 31st, aged 86
Aug 11th 2012 | from the print edition
He was an ancient both in thought and predilection, inspired by classicism even more acutely than the founding fathers he revered. Plato was his companion, and “the Agora” his word for the braying marketplace of public taste. Suetonius’s “Twelve Caesars”, he said, persuaded him to be an essayist. His closest avatar was probably the emperor Julian in his novel of 1964, the noble lonely pagan against the Galileans, for whom he fashioned “one last wreath of Apollonian laurel to place upon the brow of philosophy”, before the barbarians smashed the gates. Indeed there was, in his gilded youth, the air of an “archaic Apollo” about him, as one admirer sighed to another in his memoir “Palimpsest”. Therein, as on ancient parchment, he scratched and then erased the names of all the people he had met but never wanted to know—save Jack and Jackie Kennedy, step-relations, whose names he dropped whenever he could.
He wrote 25 novels, some forgettable, others of sweeping scale and scope, in which factual “memoirs” of great men were intercut with asides by onlookers. A stout cluster, covering the history of the Republic from Aaron Burr to Lincoln to the Golden Age, made his name, but never established him as a literary insider. Because he chose not to worship at the altar of middle-class marriage, because he wrote freely about homosexual experience (notably in “The City and the Pillar” in 1948), the New York Times would not review his books for years, and others followed. This irked him not at all, except financially. He became a temporary adventurer in television and in Hollywood, producing the screenplays for “Ben Hur” and “Suddenly Last Summer” and five Broadway plays.
His explorations of “faggotry” in the literary world were wide-ranging. They led him to an unsatisfactory night with Jack Kerouac in the Chelsea Hotel, to delicate examinations of pornography with André Gide, to courtship with Christopher Isherwood. Yet he loathed the word “gay”, felt that human beings were essentially bisexual (a theme pursued in his wildly Bacchic send-up of pornography, “Myra Breckinridge”) and found that this world, too, was one in which he loitered on the edge.
Strawberries with Sitwell
Politics could have been his game: with Senator Thomas Gore as his grandfather, it was in the blood. He had strong opinions, left-wing for a WASP, opposing all foreign wars, decrying the gap between rich and poor, and lamenting the growth of a “national security state” where once had stood a free republic. In 1960 he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New York’s 29th district. After that, he sniped from the sidelines. Ronald Reagan was “a triumph of the embalmer’s art”. Of George W. Bush, he said: “Monkeys make trouble.” With William F. Buckley, his right-wing nemesis, he disputed so ferociously that, in a better age, it would have gone to pistols.
But writing was his métier from the first. At 14 he had read all of Shakespeare and changed his name to Gore, rather than Gene, because it sounded literary and fine. He already knew, at St Alban’s in Washington, that he sprang from a famous line. Once his mother had remarried to Hugh Auchincloss, wealth was added to fame. He was always at ease in high society, supping on strawberries and lobster with Edith Sitwell and helping Princess Margaret rescue bees from the “grubby” Windsor swimming pool. He was equally cool in the spotlight, joshing with Paul Newman and charming Greta Garbo in Hollywood, before becoming a regular with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show”.
Behind the glassy smile there was, he assured people, yet more ice. He was a tremendous hater, with the bile of his lively essays reserved especially for America’s decline into a country of amnesia and hypocrisy, liars and cheats. Love, he would say, was “not my bag”.
This was not strictly true. He lived for 53 years in a chaste, sexless relationship with Howard Austen, but there had been a different, deeper love some years before. This was for Jimmie Trimble, a schoolmate at St Albans: a baseball player to his bookish self, Sparta to his Athens, and in every way that “other half” of which Aristophanes spoke in Plato’s “Symposium”. Trimble was killed at Iwo Jima. Mr Vidal dedicated “Palimpsest” to him, and arranged to be buried close. For all his stern rationality, sometimes he could not help calling out Jimmie’s name; and each time the wind seemed to rise and caress the cheek of the “last famous novelist” in America, and the last true Augustan in the world.
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- building, -building, vain repetitions, pagan, Gen...
- bray, agora, porkpie , pork pie, predilection
- thicket of personalities, propaganda, formidable i...
- breathe, denuded, Orion's Belt, nebula, passé, eve...
- sup,josh, forte, métier, quickness, stately, asom...
Gore Vidal, iconoclastic author, dies at 86
Gore Vidal was a literary juggernaut who wrote novels including 'Lincoln' and the satirical 'Myra Breckinridge,' and essays critics consider among the most elegant in the English language.
In 1993, Vidal won the
National Book Award for his massive “United States Essays, 1952-1992,” a
collection of erudite and infuriating critiques on politics, sexuality,
religion and literature written originally for such publications as The
Nation, Esquire and the New York Review of Books. Above, Vidal in 2003.
(Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times / March 11, 2003)
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Related photos »
Gore Vidal was impossible to categorize, which was exactly the way he liked it.
The reading public knew him as a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels —from the historical "Lincoln" to the satirical "Myra Breckinridge" — and volumes of essays critics consider among the most elegant in the English language. He also brought shrewd intelligence to writing Broadway hits, Hollywood screenplays, television dramas and a trio of mysteries still in print after 50 years.
When he wasn't writing, he was popping up in movies, playing himself in "Fellini's Roma," a sinister plotter in sci-fi thriller "Gattaca" and a U.S. senator in "Bob Roberts." The grandson of a U.S. senator, he also made two entertaining but unsuccessful forays into politics, running for the Senate from California and the House of Representatives from New York.
PHOTOS: Gore Vidal | 1925 - 2012
In other spare moments, he demolished intellectual rivals like Norman Mailer andWilliam F. BuckleyJr. with acidic one-liners, establishing himself as a peerless master of talk-show punditry.
"Style," Vidal once said, "is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn." By that definition, he was an emperor of style, sophisticated and cantankerous in his prophesies of America's fate and refusal to let others define him.
Iconoclastic author, savvy analyst and glorious gadfly on the national conscience, Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills from complications of pneumonia, his nephew Burr Steers said. He was 86.
PHOTOS: 2012 notable deaths
In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for his massive "United States Essays, 1952-1992," a collection of erudite and infuriating critiques on politics, sexuality, religion and literature written originally for such publications as The Nation, Esquire and the New York Review of Books.
"No one else in what he calls 'the land of the tin ear' can combine better sentences into more elegantly sustained demolition derbies than Vidal does in some of his best essays," Thomas Mallon once wrote in the National Review.
Threaded throughout his pieces are anecdotes about his famous friends and foes, who included Anais Nin, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eleanor Roosevelt and a variety of Kennedys. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Al Gore among his relatives.
Vidal began his public life at age 22 when his first novel, the World War II-themed "Williwaw," won the wide admiration of critics. Two years later, however, the literary golden boy became an outcast with "The City and the Pillar" (1948), one of the first mainstream novels to deal frankly with homosexuality.
Ignored by book critics for the next several years, he turned to television writing, churning out dramas for prestigious showcases such as "Suspense," "Goodyear Playhouse" and "Studio One." He adapted one of these works, "Visit to a Small Planet" (1957), for the stage. A Cold War parable featuring a space alien who provokes war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it ran on Broadway for 388 performances and was made into a movie starring Jerry Lewis.
Vidal's other major critical and commercial success as a playwright was "The Best Man,"a 1960 political drama that starred Melvyn Douglas as a high-minded presidential candidate modeled on Adlai Stevenson. After a 520-show Broadway run, it was made into a 1964 movie starring Henry Fonda. This spring it was revived on Broadway with a star-studded cast led by James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury.
Although Vidal often declared the novel dead, he wrote more than two dozen of them. He called books such as "Burr" (1973), "Lincoln" (1984) and "Julian" (1964) "meditations on history and politics."
Exploring the complexities of power and those who seek it, they were written, Vidal said, "to correct bad history," but some critics said he was the guilty one.
"Inventions" was his term for his wilder fiction, which includes the comic novel "Duluth" (1983) and the wicked spoof featuring transsexual Myra Breckinridge in the novel by the same name. Some critics consider "Myra Breckinridge" (1968) his masterpiece.
Vidal was an insider by dint of his connections in Washington, Hollywood and literary salons around the world. But he acted more as the outsider.
He wrote a lengthy defense of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in a 2001 article for Vanity Fair that described their unusual bond. McVeigh had struck up a correspondence from prison after reading a piece by Vidal on the erosion of the U.S. Bill of Rights in the federal attack on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. The two men remained pen pals for three years, until McVeigh's execution.
A fierce critic of the U.S. as a "national security state," Vidal seemed to move further into the political wilderness after the 9/11attacks in New York and on the Pentagon, suggesting that the George W. Bush administration had colluded with the terrorists. His views turned many longtime admirers into detractors, including writer Christopher Hitchens, who denounced Vidal as a crackpot.
"Gore was an iconoclast. That was his strength," former Nation editor Victor Navasky told The Times several years ago. While some critics believed Vidal should be remembered for his essays, others, like Navasky, thought it would be for the bridges he burned.
Vidal crafted many of his diatribes at his villa in Ravello, Italy, where he lived for three decades. In 2005, he returned full time to his other longtime home, a mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
He had a lifelong fascination with Hollywood as a place of invention and reinvention, the chief motifs of his unusual life.
Vidal grew up expecting a career in national politics. "I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted," he once told critic Charles Ruas.
He was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal on Oct. 3, 1925, in West Point, N.Y. His father, Eugene, was an aviation expert who taught at theU.S. Military Academy and later served as director of air commerce under PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. His mother, the former Nina Gore, was a Washington socialite whom he portrayed as a heavy drinker with a nasty temper. The Gores divorced when Vidal was 10 and his mother was briefly married to Hugh Auchincloss, who later married Jacqueline Kennedy's mother.
A complete list of survivors was not available, but his nephew said they include a half-sister, Nina Straight, and a half-brother, Thomas Auchincloss.
Because of his poor relationship with his mother, Vidal spent much of his childhood living in Washington with his maternal grandfather, Sen. Thomas P. Gore, an influential Oklahoma Democrat. Vidal spent many hours reading to the blind senator, particularly from the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, two documents that would become touchstones in his political writing.
Vidal graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1943, skipped college and joined theU.S. Army. He trained at the Virginia Military Institute and served on a freight-supply ship in the Aleutian Islands, where he became familiar with the sudden blasts of wind called williwaws. During night watches in port he began to write "Williwaw," which earned flattering reviews and established its young author as a leading member of the post-World War II class of first-time novelists that included Mailer and Capote.
But neither "Williwaw" nor his next novel, "In a Yellow Wood" (1947), gained as much notice as his third effort, "The City and the Pillar" (1948), which centered on two athletic, boy-next-door-types who become lovers. Semi-autobiographical, it was inspired by Vidal's love for a schoolmate, Jimmie Trimble, who died while serving in the Marines at Iwo Jima. Vidal said he did not realize until decades later that Trimble had been "a completion of myself," the one genuine love of his life.
Though commercially successful, the book closed the door on Vidal's political ambitions and made him a literary persona non grata. But it has remained in print and still studied by scholars because Vidal "wrote what had never been published by a reputable American writer: an unreserved novel about the homosexual demimonde and the 'naturalness' of homosexual relations," critic Robert Kiernan wrote.
To survive financially after critics blacklisted him, Vidal produced several books under fictitious names, the most successful of which were the three mysteries he wrote as Edgar Box. Critics praised "Death in the Fifth Position" (1952), "Death Before Bedtime" (1953) and "Death Likes It Hot" (1954), which were reissued in 2011.
Vidal also turned his talents to screenplays, which included his successful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly, Last Summer." He was an uncredited writer on the 1959 blockbuster "Ben Hur," contributing what he described as a homoerotic subtext to the relationship between the two male leads, Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd. (His last major screenwriting credit was for the X-rated "Caligula," a disastrous 1979 film produced and co-directed by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.)
In 1960, the same year that "The Best Man" opened on Broadway, Vidal made his political debut, running for a House seat as a liberal Democrat in a conservative upstate New York district. Noting in the New York Times that his objective was to "subvert a society that bores and appalls me," he championed issues such as recognition of Red China and reducing the military budget. Not surprisingly, he lost.
Two decades later in California he trailed Jerry Brown by a large margin in a bid for the 1982 Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat.
Vidal was far more successful writing about political power than acquiring it.
His first historical novel was "Julian" (1964), a bestseller about the 4th-century Roman emperor who rejected Christianity. Praised as a vivid evocation of the era, it freed Vidal from literary Siberia. He went on to re-imagine American history in "Washington, D.C.," "Burr," "1876," "Lincoln," "Empire," "Hollywood" and "The Golden Age."
Among the most controversial was "Lincoln," which portrayed the 16th president as a devious, possibly syphilitic leader who cared more about preserving the Union than ridding it of slavery. Lincoln biographer Richard N. Current, writing in the Journal of Southern History in 1986, said the novel "grossly" distorted Lincoln's character and was "wrong on big as well as little matters."
Championing Vidal was a titan of literary criticism, Harold Bloom. Writing in the New York Review of Books, he called Vidal "a masterly American historical novelist, now wholly matured, who has found his truest subject, which is our national political history."
Vidal spoke in a radically different voice in "Myra Breckinridge" (1968), a graphic satire about a sociopathic transsexual who goes to California to become a Hollywood star. Called "repulsive" and "brutally witty" by the New York Times, it became a massive bestseller. The 1970 movie, which critics panned, starred Raquel Welch as Myra.
In a similarly savage vein were "Myron," a sequel to "Myra Breckinridge"; "Duluth" (1983), which spoofs America in the Reagan era; and "Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal" (1992), which was denounced by the Vatican for its scathing view of Jesus and his followers. "If God exists and Jesus is His son," novelist John Rechy wrote in a Los Angeles Times review, "then Gore Vidal is going to hell."
Vidal never wrote the Great American Novel. But he wrote scores of classic essays, beginning with "The Twelve Caesars," which was written in 1952 but not published until 1959 because of its provocative assertions about sex and power.
"I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise," he said in "Gore Vidal: A Biography" (1999) by Fred Kaplan.
Despite his crushing forthrightness on many topics, Vidal preferred ambiguity in the personal realm.
Vidal, who was never married and had no children, wrote in his memoirs about sexual contacts with men, including Kerouac, the Beat poet and writer. But, to the dismay of gay activists, Vidal rejected efforts to put him in any sexual category. He was famous for proclaiming that "there are not homosexual people, only homosexual acts."
His companion of 53 years was Howard Auster, whom he met in New York in the 1950s when Auster was a singer trying to get a job in advertising. Vidal described their relationship as platonic and said "no sex" was the reason for its longevity.
He wrote movingly of Auster's 2003 death from cancer in "Point to Point Navigation" (2006), the sequel to his first memoir, "Palimpsest" (1995). Auster was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, "as I shall be in due course," Vidal wrote, "when I take time off from my busy schedule."
elaine.woo@latimes.com
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