Gore Vidal
| Gore Vidal | |
|---|---|
Vidal at a Union Square bookstore in 2009
|
|
| Born |
Eugene Louis Vidal 3 October 1925 West Point, New York, United States |
| Died | 31 July 2012 (aged 86) Hollywood Hills, California, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Eugene Luther Vidal, Jr. |
| Education | Phillips Exeter Academy |
| Occupation | Writer, novelist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, actor |
| Known for |
The City and the Pillar (1948) Julian (1964) Myra Breckinridge (1968) Burr (1973) Lincoln (1984) |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Movement | Postmodernism |
| Partner(s) |
Howard Austen (1950–2003; Austen's death) |
| Parent(s) |
Eugene Luther Vidal Nina S. Gore |
Gore Vidal (/ˌɡɔːr vᵻˈdɑːl/; born Eugene Louis Vidal; October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer (of novels, essays, screenplays, and stage plays) and a public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing.
He was born to a political family; his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, served as United States senator from Oklahoma (1907–21 and 1931–37). He was a Democratic Party politician who twice sought elected office; first to the United States House of Representatives (New York State, 1960), then to the U.S. Senate (California, 1982).
As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy of the National Security State reduced the country to decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other public intellectuals and writers occasionally became continual quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. As such, and because he thought that men and women potentially are bisexual, Vidal rejected the adjectives "homosexual" and "heterosexual" when used as nouns, as inherently false terms used to classify and control people in society.
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