Gore Vidal

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Gore Vidal (2009)

Gore Vidal [ ɡɔr vɨdɑːl ] (* 3. October 1925 as Eugene Luther Vidal Jr. In West Point , New York ; † 31 July 2012 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American writer , screenwriter , actor and politician . He also wrote under the pen names Edgar Box , Cameron Kay, and Katherine Everard .

Life

Gore Vidal. Photographed by Carl van Vechten (1948)

Gore Vidal came from a political family with ties to the Kennedy family . His grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, was a Democratic US Senator for Oklahoma . Gore Vidal's parents were athletes and aviation pioneers Eugene Vidal and Nina Gore Vidal, b. Gore. Vidal himself liked to refer to himself as the "black sheep" in the Vidal dynasty, which not only meant his radical criticism of the political situation in the USA, but also his bluntly lived homosexuality, which is described in books .

When Vidal accompanied his grandfather to the Senate at the age of seven, he witnessed the Bonus Army besieging the Capitol and their car being hit by a stone. In his autobiography Point to Point Navigation , he cites this as a defining event for his political convictions.

After completing school in Washington, DC and New Mexico , Gore Vidal studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy from 1940 to 1943 . He was a supporter of the America First Committee , an isolationist movement that sought to prevent the United States from participating in World War II in 1940/41 . He then joined the US Army , where he mainly carried out administrative activities. From 1945 he served as first mate on a transport ship. His debut novel Williwaw (1946), which was so successful that Vidal was able to travel to Guatemala and Europe in 1947/48, is based on these experiences . In 1950 Gore Vidal moved to New York City , writing screenplays, including co-writing for the film Ben Hur , and writing Broadway plays . Visit to a Small Planet was featured nearly 400 times.

In 1960 Gore Vidal ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives for New York State with the slogan “You'll get more with Gore” (“Gore offers you more”) as a Democratic candidate ; he was defeated by the Republican J. Ernest Wharton .

His televised debate with William F. Buckley, Jr. at the 1968 Democratic National Convention caused a stir . When Vidal called Buckley a crypto-fascist during this dispute , the latter then cursed him as queer . The 2015 documentation Best of Enemies addressed this event.

In 1970 he was co-founder and one of the chairmen of the left-wing liberal People's Party , which was supposed to create an alternative to the two established parties. In the presidential election in the United States in 1972 , her candidate Benjamin Spock had no chance against Richard Nixon and George McGovern , whereupon the People's Party quickly disbanded. In 1982 he ran - again for the Democrats - in California in the primary elections for the US Senate and came in second behind Jerry Brown . His political commitment demonstrated Vidal as a prolific critic of the US political system, which he described as a police state conceived in which Republicans and Democrats as a single party advocate for the interests of large corporations and the media instruments of propaganda are. Vidal also appeared at rallies against the Iraq war in 2003/04 .

Gore Vidal (2008)

After several years of correspondence with Timothy McVeigh , the Oklahoma assassin, Vidal was among the five eyewitnesses who witnessed McVeigh's execution on June 11, 2001. McVeigh understood the Oklahoma massacre of 1995 as revenge for Waco , where in an action of the US Federal Police FBI about 80 sect members were killed 1,993th Gore Vidal also criticized the Waco incident and wrote about the execution of McVeigh for Vanity Fair magazine .

In 1996 Vidal was one of the signatories of an open letter to the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl , according to which members of the Scientology sect were discriminated against like the Jews in the Third Reich. However, he was also one of the notable critics of Scientology. Vidal said of cult founder L. Ron Hubbard :

"He radiated evil, deceit and stupidity [...]"

Vidal was considered one of the most intelligent American writers. His humorous thoughts and sarcastic sharp tongues were notorious . Among other things, his comment on the question asked in 1989 about what would have happened if Nikita Sergejewitsch Khrushchev and not John F. Kennedy had been murdered in 1963 became known - Vidal replied laconically that the widow of the former would certainly not have become a Mrs. Onassis.

Vidal bought a house in the hills just above Hollywood early on. Since the 1970s he lived with his partner Howard Austen mainly in Rome and Ravello (Italy). After his death he moved back to the USA in 2004. Gore Vidal then lived in Los Angeles, where he died of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at his home in the Hollywood Hills .

As an autodidact, Gore Vidal was always skeptical of the intellectual demands in the academic environment ("Teaching has killed more good writers than alcohol.") And only occasionally accepted invitations to give speeches at universities. Nevertheless, he left his entire fortune of around $ 37 million in his will to Harvard University .

Works

Since the 1960s, Gore Vidal has been one of the most versatile authors in the USA, whose history he endeavored to comprehensively deal with in 20 historical and satirical novels, twelve volumes of essays, scripts and speeches. His polemics against the McCarthy era and the moralizing hypocrisy of many contemporaries led to scandals, such as the homosexual novel The City and the Pillar (1948, closed circle ). It was not until 1964 that Gore Vidal and Julian , a novel biography of the last pagan Roman emperor Julian , made the bestseller lists. In 1968, in Myra Breckinridge , he took up the problem of gender reassignment. Some saw Gore Vidal way ahead of his time. Kalki, for example, addressed genetic engineering and the terrorist use of biological weapons , while the essay Eternal War for Eternal Peace warned against permanent war by the USA.

Many novels deal with historical figures from the United States and world history: Aaron Burr in Burr (1973), President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 (1976), Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (1984), Theodore Roosevelt and John Hay in Empire (1987), Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding in Hollywood (1990) and Jesus in Live from Golgotha (1992).

Film work

Gore Vidal has appeared in supporting roles several times, including in the films Fellini's Roma by Federico Fellini , The Player by Robert Altman , Bob Roberts by Tim Robbins and Gattaca by Andrew Niccol .

In the episode The Literary Duet ( OT : Moe'N'a Lisa ; 6th episode of the 18th season ) of the animated series The Simpsons , he is present as a guest at the literary festival "Wortreich-Festival" in Vermont until he is asked to leave after bragging about copying his book titles off food packaging and receipts. He also had a brief appearance in the episode Stepson Peter (OT: Mother Tucker ; 2nd episode of the 5th season) of Family Guy .

Awards

Bibliography (selection)

American Chronicle series

  1. Burr (German Burr , plays 1836, published 1973)
  2. Lincoln (Eng. Lincoln , plays 1861–1865, published 1984)
  3. 1876 (German 1876 , plays 1875–1877, published 1976)
  4. Empire (Eng. Empire , plays 1898–1907, published 1987)
  5. Hollywood (German Hollywood , plays 1917–1923, published 1990)
  6. Washington DC ( Washington DC , plays 1937–1952, published 1967)
  7. The Golden Age (German. The golden age , plays 1939-1954, published 2000)

Fiction

  • Williwaw (1946)
  • In a Yellow Wood (1947)
  • The City and the Pillar (1948, revised 1965, closed circle 1986)
  • The Season of Comfort (1949)
  • Dark green, bright red (1950)
  • Death before Bedtime (1953, dt. Death before bed )
  • Messiah (1954)
  • Julian (1962)
  • Myra Breckinridge (1968)
  • Myron (1974, The Siren of Babylon: Myron Breckinridge )
  • Kalki (1978)
  • Creation (1980, German I Cyrus, grandson of Zarathustra )
  • Duluth (1983)
  • The Smithsonian Institution (1998)

Plays (selection)

  • Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
  • Romulus (1962)
  • An Evening with Richard Nixon and ... (1972)
  • Gore Vidal's Lincoln (1988)

Movie scripts

Non-fiction

  • American Plastics: On Literature and Politics (German 1986)
  • At home. Essais (1988)
  • Hollywood (1990)
  • Screening History (1992)
  • Eternal war for everlasting peace. How America reaps the hatred it sown (2002)
  • Goatsong. Answers to questions before and after September 11th (2003)
  • Dreaming War. Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2003)

In 1995 he published his autobiography Palimpsest , which he followed up with a second part in 2006, Point to Point Navigation .

Secondary literature

  • Dennis Altman : Gore Vidal's America . Polity Press, Oxford and Malden MA 2005, ISBN 0-7456-3362-5 .
  • Susan Baker and Curtis S. Gibson: Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion . Greenwood Press, Westport CT 1997, ISBN 0-313-29579-4 .
  • Stephen Harris: The Fiction of Gore Vidal and EL Doctorow: Writing the Historical Self . Peter Lang, Frankfurt, Oxford and New York 2002, ISBN 3-906768-43-0 .
  • Stephen Harris: Gore Vidal's Historical Novels and the Shaping of American Political Consciousness . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston NY 2005, ISBN 0-7734-6031-4 .
  • Fred Kaplan: Gore Vidal: A Biography . Doubleday, New York 1999, ISBN 0-385-47703-1 .
  • Jay Parini (Ed.): Gore Vidal: Writer against the Grain . Columbia University Press, New York 1992, ISBN 0-231-07208-2 .
  • Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole (Eds.): Conversations with Gore Vidal . University of Mississippi Press, Jackson MS 2005, ISBN 1-57806-672-7 .
  • Jay Parini : Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal . Little Brown, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4087-0463-9

Web links

Commons : Gore Vidal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f Edgar Box ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Pseudonym of Gore Vidal at krimi-couch.de. Retrieved November 24, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.krimi-couch.de
  2. a b Martin Lüdke: Gore Vidal: This is not America at cicero.de, May 10, 2010. Retrieved on November 24, 2013.
  3. Jay Parini: Every Time A Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies - The Life of Gore Vidal. Little, Brown, London, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4055-2536-7 .
  4. ^ Paul Dickson, Thomas B. Allen: The Bonus Army: An American Epic . Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2010, ISBN 0-8027-1936-8 , pp. 127 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ^ Gore Vidal: Point to Point Navigation . Random House, New York City 2007, ISBN 0-307-38770-4 , pp. 19-20 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  6. US writer Gore Vidal is dead In: Der Tagesspiegel, August 1, 2012. Accessed November 24, 2013.
  7. ^ Roger Chapman, James Ciment: Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices (2nd edition). Routledge, New York City 2015, ISBN 978-0-7656-8302-1 , p. 685
  8. ^ Dennis Altman : Gore Vidal's America . Polity Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-7456-3362-5 , pp. 75, 76
  9. Uwe Sörensen: Gore Vidal ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at famous-people.de. Retrieved November 24, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.famous-people.de
  10. ^ The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh , Vidal's article on the Vanity Fair magazine homepage from September 2001 (accessed August 1, 2012).
  11. To Open Letter to Helmut Kohl ( memento of April 22, 2001 in the Internet Archive ), publication of the open letter to Helmut Kohl on the Scientology homepage from December 1996.
  12. Celebrity Critics of Scientology ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network , in the English original: “He exuded evil, malice, and stupidity […]”, quoted from: George magazine, “Clash of the Titans: Scientology vs. Germany ”, Russ Baker, April 1997 (accessed August 1, 2012). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.factnet.org
  13. Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Ned Sherrin, Oxford University Press, September 25, 2008, p. 156.
  14. a b Jay Parini: Gore Vidal vs. Academe . In: The Chronicle Review , September 21, 2015.
  15. Members: Gore Vidal. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed May 1, 2019 .