Gore vidal gay
Gore Vidal&#;s Forgotten Rival
BY DOUG IRELAND | If one asks male queers today who wrote the first serious modern American novel that was explicitly gay, nine out of 10 would answer Gore Vidal, for his book &#;The City and the Pillar.&#; But they&#;d be wrong.
That distinction belongs to John Horne Burns, whose &#;The Gallery,&#; based on his wartime service in North Africa and Italy, garnered almost universal rave reviews, becoming a bestseller that immediately went through 12 printings. The novel nearly won the Pulitzer Prize for its hitherto unknown year-old author, who became a literary celebrity overnight.
Burns&#; portrait was featured on the cover of the influential Saturday Review of Literature as &#;the optimal war novelist of ,&#; and he was the first author to be praised simultaneously by Harper&#;s magazine and Harper&#;s Bazaar, the latter running a &#;romantic photograph of Burns taken on a gritty New York street&#; when it listed him as one of &#;s &#;Men of the Moment&#; &#; along with David Lean, Robert Ryan, Michael Redgrave, and Stephen Spender.
John Horne B
The Politics of Sexual Identity: In Bed With Gore Vidal by Tim Teeman
Author Tim Teeman (Photo: Juan Bastos)
To create categories is the enslavement of the categorized because the aim of every state is total control over the people who live in it. What better way is there than to categorize according to sex, about which people contain so many hang-ups?
&#; Gore Vidal
This week I spoke to Tim Teeman about his book In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master (Magnus Books, ). Gore Vidal was born in , made his name as a novelist in his early twenties, expanded his repertoire to encompass stage and screen, ran for Congress in the Hudson Valley () and California (), and made countless friends and enemies in a long life that ended at the age of 86 in He&#;s most widely admired as an essayist (start with Selected Essays) and remembered fondly by those with a taste for the showbiz death-match as one of the heavyweights of talk-show controversy.
When Vidal died he left behind him a whole deck of rumours and conflicting testimonies. Mu
Writingaboutidentity can be like maneuvering through a minefield even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves. But the enterprise becomes even more difficult when it's the identities of historical figures that we're attempting to understand, and without a doubt, the discussion of sexual identity or sexual orientation is the area of greatest contention.
The late, great Gore Vidal believed that there is no need for such fuss. To him, the answer was simple: There is no such thing as a homosexual, Vidal haughtily insisted, only homosexual acts -- in which he freely, and unapologetically, admitted his participation. He wasn't ashamed of such acts. But just don't try to call him "gay."
Growing up, I held Vidal in a caring of awe. I believed that he was so brilliant, so erudite, so cultured -- far more than I could ever hope to be -- that he must contain been right on this subject, and that my own gut-level adherence to a more rigid sexual essentialism must have been wrong or, at the very least, simple or naïve, the expected worldview of a worki
LGBT History Month Heroes &#; Day 13
To celebrate LGBT History Month, , Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.
Gore Vidal &#; Writer & Essayist
by Christopher Bryant
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The first book of Gore Vidal’s that I browse was Myra Breckinridge. A tutor on my Master’s degree course recommended it after I gave a raucous presentation on sexual identity as drag, and read from Helen Zahavi’s Dirty Weekend with such intensity that another tutor complimented it as “very Nick Cave”. At least, I think he said Cave …
I had not heard of Vidal, and so I went down to Waterstone’s and bought the double-feature Myra Breckinridge & Myron. From the first sentence I was transfixed, a convert, an acolyte, and I continue so to this morning. “I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess,” the novel begins. Myra’s voice was nothing like I had read before. &#;Frankly I can think of no greater
The Politics of Sexual Identity: In Bed With Gore Vidal by Tim Teeman
Author Tim Teeman (Photo: Juan Bastos)
To create categories is the enslavement of the categorized because the aim of every state is total control over the people who live in it. What better way is there than to categorize according to sex, about which people contain so many hang-ups?
&#; Gore Vidal
This week I spoke to Tim Teeman about his book In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master (Magnus Books, ). Gore Vidal was born in , made his name as a novelist in his early twenties, expanded his repertoire to encompass stage and screen, ran for Congress in the Hudson Valley () and California (), and made countless friends and enemies in a long life that ended at the age of 86 in He&#;s most widely admired as an essayist (start with Selected Essays) and remembered fondly by those with a taste for the showbiz death-match as one of the heavyweights of talk-show controversy.
When Vidal died he left behind him a whole deck of rumours and conflicting testimonies. Mu
Writingaboutidentity can be like maneuvering through a minefield even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves. But the enterprise becomes even more difficult when it's the identities of historical figures that we're attempting to understand, and without a doubt, the discussion of sexual identity or sexual orientation is the area of greatest contention.
The late, great Gore Vidal believed that there is no need for such fuss. To him, the answer was simple: There is no such thing as a homosexual, Vidal haughtily insisted, only homosexual acts -- in which he freely, and unapologetically, admitted his participation. He wasn't ashamed of such acts. But just don't try to call him "gay."
Growing up, I held Vidal in a caring of awe. I believed that he was so brilliant, so erudite, so cultured -- far more than I could ever hope to be -- that he must contain been right on this subject, and that my own gut-level adherence to a more rigid sexual essentialism must have been wrong or, at the very least, simple or naïve, the expected worldview of a worki
LGBT History Month Heroes &#; Day 13
To celebrate LGBT History Month, , Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.
Gore Vidal &#; Writer & Essayist
by Christopher Bryant
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;.
The first book of Gore Vidal’s that I browse was Myra Breckinridge. A tutor on my Master’s degree course recommended it after I gave a raucous presentation on sexual identity as drag, and read from Helen Zahavi’s Dirty Weekend with such intensity that another tutor complimented it as “very Nick Cave”. At least, I think he said Cave …
I had not heard of Vidal, and so I went down to Waterstone’s and bought the double-feature Myra Breckinridge & Myron. From the first sentence I was transfixed, a convert, an acolyte, and I continue so to this morning. “I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess,” the novel begins. Myra’s voice was nothing like I had read before. &#;Frankly I can think of no greater