Good morning, Netizens...

 

Gore Vidal, the resolute and irreverent author, playwright, politician and commentator, has died last night at age 86 years of age, leaving a vast literary chasm in his wake. One of my absolute favorite moments in Vidal's life of badgering some of his fellow quasi-intellectuals was actually caught on the Dick Cavett show when Vidal and one of his literary arch-enemies, Norman Mailer, went toe-to-toe on national television here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw.

 

According to an Associated Press article written by Hillel Italie and Andrew Dalton, Vidal once likened Mailer’s views on women to those of Charles Manson. (From this the head-butting incident ensued, backstage at “The Dick Cavett Show.”) He derided Buckley, on television, as a “crypto Nazi.”

 

Having written several home-erotic essays and novels, among the first to write about openly-gay characters. He won critical acclaim for his fictional work “Myra Breckenridge”, among others.

 

Vidal was purportedly fond of drink and stated he had tried nearly every major drug once. He never married and for decades shared a villa in Ravello, Italy, with companion Howard Austen, who died of cancer in 2003.

 

We probably will never see another writer/author like Gore Vidal in our lifetimes. I am reasonably certain that is the precise way he would like it to be.

 

Dave

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