Gore Vidal Books

I was very satisfied with the service I received and the excellent condition of the book.

This book is so vast and so full of wisdom, prescience (read Vidal's 1970s attack on religion and compare its conciseness and brilliance with the just released polemics of Hitchins and Dawkins, and his 1950s biting comments on the culture of celebrity are so far ahead of their time that they're breathtaking), wit and humour that you can pick it up at any time and find what seems to be a new gem within. After 5 years of owning this book, I'm still finding pieces I either haven't read or now read with a different outlook, owing to Vidal's amazing ability to be so pertinent to all ages.
Highly recommended.

These particular selections of essays by the prolific and most caustic critics of the American Republic, has sat on my bookshelf since the early months of 1999. Included in this overwhelming collection are 114 essays, in some cases, randomly categorized into three chapters - State of Art, State of the Union and State of Being. Vidal is an intensely knowledgeable fellow, and therefore has an opinion on just about everything having to do with art, history, politics, the state of literature and his beloved Republic To attempt to read this entire tome (1271 pages) from start to finish over a few weeks (my original intention) proved to be impossible. Although informative and extremely entertaining, there was just too much to digest, too important to scan through, thus I would mark the essays read with a tick on the contents page, place the book back on the shelf, only to return when the time felt right to take them up again.

Vidal is not only a great historian, he is also one of America's great literary radicals. He was experimenting with the literary form, attempting to apply critical theory to the Novel very early in the piece with such works as Duluth, Mira Breckinridge and the post modern religious satire, Live from Golgotha. These were indeed "radical" departures from the standard fare of American novels coming out at the time. In mainstream circles, however, these novels were not well received, but were critically acclaimed, calling them subversive, iconoclastic, original and extremely funny.

As an essayist, Vidal really has no match in American letters. These essays reveal a master at the top of their form. What is interesting as well as admirable, Vidal was criticising literary theory which had infiltrated academia in the late 60's and early 70's, al la, post structuralism and deconstructionism, but unlike the so-called "experts" in the university's across the western world, (he calls them "Hacks of Academia") Vidal attempted to put these theories to the test in the form of a popular novel, (Duluth) and succeeded. In his essay, "French Letters -Theories of the Modern Novel", Vidal attacks these modern theorists, who state that language and literature as an art form is dead, in elegant prose and biting gusto, revealing their empty (headed) arguments,

"In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayer they chant, we shall go on for quite as long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps with silence or with new words." (1967, p.110)

In "The State of the Union" essays, Vidal expounds upon American politics and his views on the National Security Council, the CIA and America's on-going imperialistic intentions, which interestingly, have not dated in the least. Most of these essays are as relevant as ever despite the passing of over thirty years.

There is no doubt in my mind that reading Vidal is an education, showing us a way through the miasma of received wisdom, relentlessly thrown in our direction. In many respects Vidal is a beacon of light during dark times, a writer that has never pulled any punches when it came to the things he believed in, namely writing, politics and his beloved Republic. This book should be standard issue for anyone interested in literature, politics, art, and American history.

First, for those readers solely interested in the quality of this essay collection, my advice is simple. If you enjoy the essay form, buy this collection! There is no better essayist alive. In the USA, Vidal stands beside Emerson, White and Trilling in exemplifying the power of the essay; and like them, his greatest quality is the intense, lasting relevancy of his argument, even when he deals with people or events long past. His vilification of Truman, for example, concentrates on the latter's founding the American security state, certainly a germane issue.

As for all this talk of Vidal's political affiliation, anyone who claims he is a conservative or a liberal in any normal sense of these words is simply wrong, and is unfortunately missing the purpose of Vidal's writing. Vidal firmly believes in the people and the ideals by which our nation was founded; but he is alone, as far as I know, in keeping himself free of worship. Jefferson, Adams, etc. were not perfect; and neither is democracy or republicanism. In our intensely polarized time, in which unthinking loyalty is a virtue, Vidal is exactly that type which he has often cheered throughout history, the brave heretic. Gore Vidal is our Orwell; his opinions may only occasionally be right, but anyone who ignores him is jeopardizing our relationship with the truth.

In addition to this collection, I also highly recommend *the last empire*, Vidal's collection of essays from 1992 to 2000. It is much shorted, and is actually a better introduction to the author.

United States, the 1993 Winner of the National Book Award, it covers the years from 1952 until 1992. This book shows that Vidal is an authority/reliable source in many areas. He served in WWII and wrote his first novel while doing so. He comes form a political background; his grandfather, blind Senator T.P. Gore, brought him up. He is related to Eleanor Roosevelt and was friendly with JFK. He ran for Congress in New York in 1960 and came in second in the California democratic primary in 1982. Furthermore, his father served as director of the Bureau of Air Commerce under FDR, which gave him insight into the forming of airlines and access to Charles Lindberg. He wrote his first novel at the age of 20 and has subsequently written 23 other novels, most of them historical novels in which he did significant research to get the details just right. He has numerous interesting insights into the lives of other writers as well as being capable of writing compelling book chat. He has also written for TV and the movies, as a result knows a lot of famous Hollywood movers and shakers. His heroes (John Quincy Adams, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Bowles, Edmund Wilson, Charles Lindberg) and villains (Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, the CIA) are vividly drawn and expertly judged throughout.

I am hesitant to recommend this tome that weighs in at 1295 pages and is the size of a reference book, but does seem all but indispensable, because it has many excellent and interesting essays. It is divided into three sections: state of the art (literature), state of the union (politics), and state of being (personal responses to people and events, not to mention movies and children's books). Not a light book to take on the train, this tome took me the better part of a year to finish, but was well worth it.

Williams's ear for dialogue, his eye for character, his exploration of love, longing and loneliness are as powerful in these short stories as they are in his plays. On occasion, the glimmer of a future work rises out of the text, such as the line, "But the sweet bird of youth had flown from Pablo Gonzales..."

Rarely do we assimilate Williams with short fiction, but Williams rivals Hemingway as being the greatest American short story writer. Never have I enjoyed every story in a collection before. His descriptions are concentrated and explode visions in the mind. The characters are richly unique and completely human and explore all the details of life so many never see. Good for a big time read, a partner on the beach, and as a study guide for society. A must own!!

For a small price you get the best of Tennessee Williams with forty-nine stories packed into 570 pages of crisp oblique dialogue that will keep you awake at night as you laugh in bed with the turn of each page. His characters are so unusual that you can only describe them as cast of freeks that we all recognize at one time or another in our travels. Mr. Williams short stories are a wonderful contribution to his craft and the American reader. The only negative is that I could not buy this in hardcover so I could share it with my yet-to-be-born children and grandchildren!

During his career as one of America's most distinguished playwrights (The Glass Menagerie, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, A Strretcar Named Desire), Tennessee Williams also produced four volumes of short stories. The contents of these volumes are combined with Williams's unpublished stories.

As Gore Vidal, the author of the introduction, notes these stories are "the real autobiography of Williams's art and inner life."

The stories are arranged chronologically, beginning with a vignette about his father and the Williams family. Whether written early or late in his life, the prose is pure Williams, related in his distinctive voice.

Together these pieces form a mosaic of his life and work, splendid dramas and vignettes that puzzle, surprise and enrich us.

- Gail Cooke

Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories (1985) is a highly readable if frequently unpleasant volume by an author who, like the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, is one of the uncelebrated masters of the short story form. Beginning with Williams' first published work and including stories written just before his death in 1983, most of the pieces, which originally appeared in literary journals, are very much of their time, and thus powerfully reflect the degree to which Williams internalized the shame and self hatred he experienced as a homosexual male in a predominantly heterosexual and anti-homosexual society.

Never less than forthright to the point of bluntness, several of the stories wantonly revel in the repulsive and the grotesque, and thus seem intended not merely to illuminate but to shock and repel. In essence, many of the pieces seem like both acts of revenge and blows against the empire, but Williams was awkwardly wielding a double-edged sword, one which did not by any means only reveal the hypocrisies of those he intended to mock and revile.

In 'Hard Candy,' for example, an obnoxious elderly man who has been a lifelong 'secret' homosexual dies by choking while on his knees during a sexual act with a young drifter he solicits. Thus the story's title refers not to the sweets the man carries in his pocket as a means of establishing an opening dialogue with attractive strangers, but to a portion of the drifter's anatomy. Williams clearly intends the irony of the title to be so blatant as to be unironic, and this doubling, reflexive quality unequivocally establishes 'Hard Candy' as a piece of dark, unabashed camp humor. But such humor will always find only a limited receptive audience, especially since most camp humor today seems like little more than a long and happily outmoded culture artifact.

Throughout Collected Stories, most of Williams' homosexual characters are depicted in caricatural fashion, whether as overly poised, somewhat brittle aesthetes or as shrill, irresponsible merrymakers whose singular goal is continual sexual interaction with as many partners as possible. Those that fit neither of these categories are poorly socialized and isolated, but never developed in other ways so that they become shadow-casting, three dimensional characters for whom homosexual responsiveness is but one factor in their existence.

Not surprisingly, it is the objects of these characters' desire whom Williams depicts sympathetically, but these men, who are usually young, handsome, muscular, and somewhat unintelligent if not brutishly stupid, are typically one dimensional caricatures as well. In his short stories, Williams was at his best when describing those "betwixt and between" men who are ostensibly heterosexual but nonetheless nonchalantly open to passive sexual intercourse with other men, especially if money is involved. Thus, 'One Arm,' the story of a boxer who loses a limb in an automobile accident and then drifts into hustling before finding himself on death row for murder, is one of the most fully realized works in the volume.

Collected Stories also includes a number of powerful stories which revolve around heterosexual characters, such as the Caldwellesque 'Kingdom of Earth' and 'Miss Conte of Green,' but in these, as in the others, brutality, coarseness, and lasciviousness are the order of the day, and qualities such as integrity, respect for others, and fundamental human decency are presented as little more than sham social hypocrisies that have little genuine presence in actuality. Also included is 'The Knightly Quest,' a brilliant, extended piece of sociological science fiction which hilariously examines governmental attempts at cultural control and world domination as Williams perceived it in the Cold War era.

I enjoyed this book tremendously; I appreciate being reminded of America's founding fathers and the beliefs that we started out with. It's also unique in having two indexes - a first lines index and a subject index. The publisher was certainly interested in making this information accessible.

My favorite March 2003 protest sign against Bush's war on Iraq was one that I saw at a huge demonstration in Wisconsin: 'America, your brain is washed but your hands are still bloody.' That sign would fit well in this brilliant, essential collection by John Nichols, one of America's most important political writers. At the dawn of the 21st century America has been tricked down a disastrous path of empire in the name of security, freedom and democracy. Advocates of war hid their real intentions and exploited the terror attacks of 9/11, as Sheldon Rampton and I explained in our 2003 book Weapons of Mass Deception. John Nichols has here assembled the wisdom of America's true heroes and patriots for peace and justice, opening our eyes and showing us the way back home.

This book is loaded with first-hand accounts from Americans throughout history who stood up on behalf of liberty during our darkest days. The author adds very little of his own, choosing rather to let history speak for itself. Most of the incidents covered in this book are conveniently skimmed over in history textbooks, such as the removal of the Cherokee Nation, forced annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, etc. Enlightening, disturbing, and inspiring at the same time, a great read for anyone who cares about justice and righteousness in our day and age.

I would recommend this book to any thoughtful person trying to get a sense for how George Bush's America fits within America's historical trajectory. There are some heros in this book, but many more villains.

Most disturbing to me was the account of the treatement of the Native Americans -- as Nichols points out, we can't excuse past atrocities by saying, "That's just how it was back then"; there are always those who recognize atrocities even as they are being committed -- this book pays past heros a long-due debt of recognition.

I usually don't like these kinds of books. By that, I mean 'books that compile articles/letters written in the past.' But "Against the Beast" is an exception.

In light of the events of today (today being July 27, 2005), it's refreshing (and a little sad) that 21st century Americans are not the first Americans to have to deal with an imperial President and hawkish supporters. This is the exact right book to read for a look-back on past anti-imperial thoughts and writings.

John Nichols: thanks for putting this together!

In 11 interviews from 1960 to 2003, Vidal talks about sex, religion, the movies, politics, literature--in short, everything that makes life interesting. Lots of gems scattered throughout. Vidal is America's greatest living man of letters. Not since Edmund Wilson have we had such a great critic, and the two of them along with H.L. Mencken comprise the three great public intellectuals of 20th-century America. Hear America's greatest public intellectual talk in this new volume. The only disappointment you'll feel is when the conversation runs out at the end.

Being more familiar with Vidal the personality than Gore the author, I was fascinated by this series of interviews that took place over decades. He is incredibly bright, witty and insightful. He is also very consistent in his stories from interview to interview. It was a pleasure to read.

As always, Gore Vidal is direct,honest and penetrating in his perceptions of the American and human cultural experience. Who do we have to fill this gap when he is gone?

Gore Vidal is one of America's wittiest and intelligent commentators (besides a first class novelist and essayist). This collection of interviews given between the years 1960 and 2003 are presented chronologically which allows the reader to watch how Vidal's views and opinions develop and shift. Being a collection of interviews many of the anecdotes get to be a bit repetitious. Other than that, the collection covers a wide range of subjects -- American history, the craft of writing, the state of literature, television, movies, and politics of all kinds. And all subjects, Gore Vidal gives a lot of food for thought.

This edition is a steal for what it offers, and at such a modest price! (I am not sure why Amazon describes this is "Hardcover". The edition I ordered here from a third party vendor was soft cover and inexpensive.)

Gore's better 1960s revision of "The City and the Pillar" is an trip into the gay underworld of 1940s America, and Gore's seven early stories are an added treat--each are quality and interesting in their own way. This is not the best Gore ever wrote, but it is a quick read and not very demanding--just perfect if you like short stories and novellas, as I do. I can only wish Gore had continued writing in this form in addition to his many novels.

Having read this book immediately after Ethan Mordden's "How Long Has This Been Going On?" this book provided a more intense view of the gay underground in the late-40's and early 50's. Not only intriguing for gay readers, but for anyone whose illusions have been shattered in an endless pursuit of an ideal.

The story takes you into the world that Keroak prefered to omit in 'On the Road'. Vidal is daring and honest. Had I read this when I was 18, my life would have been very different.

In his memoirs, Gore Vidal calls this novel the beginning of his literary voice. It is a joy to read, and appears to have been a joy to write, for this youthful, vibrant, charismatic novel flows effortlessly through cities, affairs, and misadventures. Colorful characters abound -- early on there's an uproariously matter-of-fact description of our hero's casual fling with the wife of an American power broker. The mythological superstructure of the book -- glorious youth flirting with power, wisdom, and love -- is light enough for Vidal's characters to prance and amuse. It's a nice departure from his oh-so-serious historical novels and a welcome, balletic hop into Vidal's fantasies. He wrote this novel around 1950 -- when peace and prosperity were just re-emerging after wartime. Read this book, if only to see Gore Vidal exercise a masterful light touch years before he turned bitter.

This is the first true Vidal novel. The value of those that went before this work are valuable more for their content than style ("Williwaw" and "City and the Pillar" - both strongly recommended nonetheless). With the Judgment of Paris, Vidal became the heir to a beautiful tradition that may be traced back to Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" and Somerset Maugham's "Christmas Holiday."

Gore Vidal's wit and humour sparkle in this tale of a young american boy traveling Europe in search of a purpose to his life. Like Paris, he knows the lures of power, knowlwdge and love, represented by three fascinating women. The characterization and the detailing of the major and minor charachters make of this book a masterpiece, full of wry notations and often exilarating situations. A must read!

Great book! A reflection on decline and fall of empires and civilizations, written immediately after the II WW, with a persistent thought on the decline of the European society. Gore Vidal's translation in English is absolutely wonderful!

Very interesting author - just read i

Romulus is one of the biggest hits of this sardonic Swiss playwright and novelist. Known in the USA only for The Viisit and the Physicists, Durrenmatt is one of this century's most brilliant theatrical lights. His works are informed by sardonic humor, beautiful language, intriguing plot twists, high suspense (he pot-boiled murder mysteries)and political insight. His essays are also interesting. Anything by him is going to be a good read.

Williwaw takes place in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska during World War II. The main action takes place during a freak, intense wind storm the eskimos call a "williwaw," it whips down off the coastal mountains and causes havoc, freak seas, etc. Gore Vidal, in this, his first novel (1946), creates a wonderful Joseph Conradian feel as tensions mount aboard a army transport ship making a weekly run. I don't want to spoil the ending. There is (I thought) a very CLIMACTIC moment when the tensions among the crew rise to their heights just as the williwaw hits, and - something happens. The serious tone and cool style of this book I found admirable. As a war novel I liked it as much as the ver different Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," and the lyrical, Tennessee Williams-like John Horne Burns' novel "The Gallery," while I liked it more so than Mailer's "Naked and the Dead" - which I liked for its themes and observations, I just wish Mailer could have (in my opinion) skipped the repetition and saved about 400 pages.

The copyright page of Gore Vidal's "Williwaw" notes that the novel was first published in 1946. In a preface Vidal describes the background of this novel. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and, at age 19, became first mate of an army freight-supply ship based in the Aleutian Islands. He worked on this book while on night watch in port. "Williwaw" is similarly set in the Aleutian Islands during that war, and focuses on the passengers and crew of an army freight-passenger ship that is skippered by a warrant officer. The story follows the ship's perilous passage between islands. Vidal sheds light on the book's title in his preface: he defines williwaws as "sudden devastating winds that come without warning down from the island mountains."

Vidal has crafted a gripping wartime adventure. He masterfully charts the crew's struggle against the harsh, and potentially deadly, Aleutian environment. Equally compelling is the tension and conflict that build among the crew members. As the story develops, Vidal creates vivid portraits of the Aleutian Islands and the sea around them. The story is rich in details of the crew's daily life and routine on board the ship, as well as of their recreation in a seedy port town.

Overall, Vidal's prose style in the book is very clean and matter-of-fact; I found it a very effective mode for this particular story. His portrait of the wartime Army is full of satiric touches that are sometimes subtle, sometimes funny. Ultimately "Williwaw" struck me as having a dark, almost nihilistic vision of the human condition. But it's a darkness that I found thought-provoking, and not repellent. Through his plot and characters Vidal takes such basic concepts as love, religion, heroism, and justice and seems to strip them bare. "Williwaw" is, in my judgment, not only a solid adventure tale, but also a unique and compelling contribution to the canon of American war fiction.

Gore Vidal gives us superbly vitriolic portraits of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, as well as of the Christian Right's Armageddon: 'Why conserve anything, if Judgment Day is at hand.'

But he sees through the rhetoric and the hypocrisy the real America of humming electric chairs and well-packed prisons. A US controlled by an oligarchical system where men of property can do well and the others are on their own; where the New Rich made their money with defence contracts, the circulus vitiosus 'transfer money from the Treasury to the various defence contractors which in turn pay for the election of Congress and President'; where the Pentagon is a black hole for wasted money while the public educational system is deteriorating because of a lack of investment.

On the moral side, he remarks perspicuously that 'In order for a ruling class to rule, there must be arbitrary prohibitions. Of all prohibitions, sexual taboo is the most useful because sex involves everyone.'

But this book contains also some remarkable essays on world literature: Henry James ('monsters have triumphed yet again'); William Dean Howells ('a darkness sufficiently sable for even the most lost-and-found of literary generations'); Logan Pearsall Smith ('idiom before grammar'); Paul Bowles ('the strangeness and terror of waking dreams'); Tennesse Williams ('he certainly believed in sin'); Italo Calvino ('the many in the one'); Anthony Burgess ('3 obsessions: religion-art-sex').

A book of a remarkable observer and analyzer.
We need his voice.

Constantine P. Cavafy is one of the most intelligent and elloquent poets of this century, but remains barely known in American. Why is this? Probably because Cavafy is a man and his poems of lust and longing are addressed at other young men. I would never have discovered this amazing man if it were not for an essay about him published in Gore Vidal's "The Last Empire." Cavafy spent his life as a Greek citizen living in Alexandria egypt, and writing about the young men he found there. But beautiful males are far from his only subject. Some of his best poems are written with a technique where he becomes someone else, often a someone historical that has been dead hundreds of years. He writes as if he really were that person, describing what they are feeling, as well as what they see and hear. He can summon with words all the glory and magic of empires long extict, often to a degree of erie detail. These poems made me yearn to experience what he was describing, to be able to see what he can see in his mind. He wrote in Greek, and this book has been translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis. As I don't read Greek, I have no way of knowing how close he came to the original, but I know that what he did translate blew me away. I was transported from my life to the baths and cafes of Alexandria, the palaces of the Ceasars, from Greece in 1900 to the Greece of legend. Cavafy was able to take me places I'd never knew existed. Maybe the best compliment I can give this work is that it didn't just make me think, it made me imagine and dream. Anyone who loves the Greek world should own this book. Five stars just aren't enough.