If the rumours about Gore Vidal are true, what does this mean for his work?

Guardian ^ | November 15, 2013 | Mark Lawson

[2ndDivisionVet]

Aside from being an essayist, novelist and screenwriter, Gore Vidal was a grade-one gossip, his published writings and private conversation stuffed with rumour and conspiratorial hints. But now, less than 18 months after Vidal passed into history, he is himself subject to the most reputation-destructive scuttlebutt there is: the suggestion that he may have been a paedophile.

In connection with a new book about Vidal, his half-sister and a nephew have hinted that he may have had a secret passion for underage boys. And Vidal more or less admitted it himself, writing in his memoir Palimpsest that he was "attracted to adolescent males".

Given this context, an incident in 1977 will also now bring literary cops running. Martin Amis, interviewing Vidal for the Observer, was required to give him copy approval, and was asked to change Amis's description of "homosexual" to "pansexual". Vidal was prissily fastidious about the meaning of words and his suggested substitution can be taken as a confession that nothing and no one was erotically off-limits.

A sexual dirt file allegedly kept by one of Vidal's many enemies, the late conservative thinker William Buckley, is said to have been thrown away after Buckley's death, and so definitive proof will be tricky. It also seems odd that no one claiming to be a victim has come forward, especially as Vidal left an estate of $37m (£23m) – a possible source of ire from his relatives, as he bequeathed the lot to Harvard University, where he had never studied, rather than them....

[Marcella]

He didn’t hide the fact he was homosexual so this revelation about younger men/adolescent boys isn’t surprising. If some of the boys were young enough that it was a crime, it never came to light. I really don’t see this as being worth knowing.

[RichInOC]

Gore liking prepubescent boys would shock me. Gore liking animals would shock me. Gore liking girls would be a real jaw-dropper? Gore liking adolescent boys? Not good, but also not the least bit surprising.

[ought-six]

He was related to Jackie Kennedy.

[BfloGuy]

Miss the caliber of debates with WFB and Vidal.

Your comment inspired me to "Youtube" them. You're right. Their calibre puts today's examples at the calibre of "The View".

[YHAOS]

Who didn’t know Vidal was a pedophile?

[The_Media_never_lie]

His memory should get the Joe Paterno treatment.

Joe Paterno was not a pedophile.

[stop_fascism]

Burr was good, the rest, meh.

[Cyman]

My favorite tv moment , William F Buckley challenging Vidal to a fistfight on air. In all fairness Buckley did have his ever present pen in hand.

[tapatio]

When Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” Buckley responded, “Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

Here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8

[tapatio]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8

[Hot Tabasco]

I really do not care what Gore Vidal’s inclinations were so long as he kept them to himself......

I pray if this is true that Gore Vidal did not victimize any young men.

Isn't that a contradiction in statements?

[donmeaker]

So, we put him in the same category of Oscar Wilde- Creative man beset by demons, perhaps more creative because of those demons.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of G-d.

[donmeaker]

How many ex-wives did he have?

[Theodore R.]

How is he related to the popular Al Gore, formerly of TN?

[x]

Sixth or seventh cousins, according to Gore Vidal.

According to genealogists, they may not actually be related at all.

More to the point: GV was the grandson and AG was the son of a US Senator, so they do have that in common.

Maybe we could coin the term "Washington cousins" for people from the families that went to Washington and never left.

They used to call them "cliff dwellers," the idea being that like prehistoric peoples they seemed to be around the place forever.

[jespasinthru]

Somebody should write a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno. The original was salacious, gruesome and a very entertaining read. The damned were all prominent people who really deserved to get got by demons for eternity, and their punishments were both ironic and funny. You should read what Dante had in store for “the prophet” Mohammed. They must have really hated Muslims back then. And those Gustave Dore woodcuts are awesome.
But that book was written in 16th century Europe. I can think of a lot of prominent people in recent history, both dead and alive, who deserve to suffer in hell. But just burning in The Pit ain’t good enough. The punishments have to be ironic to make it clever. Sort of like Heironymous Bosch”s painting, “Musical Hell”.

[rfp1234]

Correct. But the media still crucified him on the assumption that he knew about Sandusky.

[Daffynition]

I was just a mushy-head college kid the the late 60s...and I would have a clipboard and pencil handy when we tuned in to *Firing Line*...b/c, inevitably, WFB would use words I had *NO* idea what they meant, and needed to look up later. Even in context the vocabulary was only understood by the likes of a Bill Safire.

During my *love affair* with Buckley...both my brother and I got involved with sailing. I think it was his wonderful book: Airborne: A Sentimental Journey that influenced us so greatly.

He outed Vidal during the '68 DNC convention, with this in/famous exchange: Buckley appeared in a series of televised debates with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In their penultimate debate on August 28 of that year, the two disagreed over the actions of the city police and the protesters at the ongoing convention. In reference to the response of the police involved in supposedly taking down a Viet Cong flag, moderator Howard K. Smith asked whether raising a Nazi flag during the Second World War would have elicited a similar response. Vidal responded that people were free to state their political views as they saw fit, whereupon Buckley interrupted and noted that people were free to speak their views but others were also free to ostracize them for holding those views, noting that in the U.S. during the Second World War "some people were pro-Nazi and they were well treated by those who ostracized them—and I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you [Vidal] don't care because you have no sense of identification with ...". Vidal then interjected that "the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself", whereupon Smith interjected, "Now let's not call names." Buckley, visibly angered, rose several inches from his seat and replied, "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered."[67] Buckley was to later apologize in print for having called Vidal a "queer" in a burst of anger rather than in a clinical context, but also reiterated his distaste for Vidal as an "evangelist for bisexuality": "The man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction, and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher."

I believe WFB's son destroyed the file his father kept on Vidal, after Buckley's death. ['Vidal Legal']

[Daffynition]

WOOHAH!

[JouleZ]

I always confused Gore Vidal with Truman Capote. But now I’m seeing the problem. Birds of a feather....