I never had the idea that Vidal was defending McVeigh, rather explaining him. But even I, a true fan (of his essays), can clearly see that he should stop doing interviews. He's starting to rattle and some of his theories do border on the "cockamamie." I'd pay to hear his reaction to that characterization!

Last month, he told a Times of London interviewer, "You could beat McCain! I’ve never met anyone in America who has the slightest respect for him. He went to a private school and came bottom of his class. He smashed up his aeroplane and became a prisoner of war, which he is trying to parlay into ‘war hero’. He's a goddamned fool. He was on television talking about mortgages, and it was quite clear he does not know what a mortgage is. His head rattles as he walks."

Is a bona fide American hero.

I think this is the most successfully balanced assessment of Gore Vidal's work that I've ever read. Great job!

i enjoyed most of his novels and the history is defensible, maybe even right. but for me his claim to fame is to puncture the emperor's new clothes, american version, in ways i generally agree with and language i always admire.

i suppose he's wasted on americans, but much of the rest of the world regards him as a clear window into his native land.

Vidal is a critic of middle brow tastes and thinking, much the way Updike was a critic of middle class mores. But as such he's a proud intellectual elitist and his satire often has a blind spot and is utterly un self aware. Compared to Jacques Barzun he feels one dimensional.

...I SO resent the intrusive ads that stuck out and covered the text as I read this article--and then wouldn't go away. Microsoft Office certainly made an impression on me--and it wasn't a good one! Do you really think your readers are going to put up with this?

For shame, Joan, for allowing this kind of aggressive advertising. I expected more from you.

Truly one of the great men of his generation. He is a giant among men. A great essayist, a great intellect and great foresite. A far greater man then Mr.F. Buckly, a corrupt, vile, elitist conservative crap bag who once threatened to punch Gore Vidal in the mouth and called him a fag. I hope Buckly burns in hell that is were he belongs.

"I suspect that the energy expended in reading 'Gravity's Rainbow' is, for anyone, rather greater than that expended by Pynchon in the actual writing. This is entropy with a vengeance. The writer's text is ablaze with the heat/energy that his readers have lost to him."

Whatever. I love Gravity's Rainbow, and I love the fact that it takes energy to read it. I don't lose the energy though--it's continuously transferred back and forth. There's nothing wrong with requiring some effort on the part of the reader.

Didn't Bayard publish this screed about a year or so ago, when Vidal's second memoir came out? Why are critics so sloppy?

To have read Myra Breckinridge and say Vidal has never written a great novel? He's also written many simply good ones: Messiah, Kalki, The Judgement of Paris, Myron, Julien, Washington, D.C. And there are simply entertaining books like The Search for the King.

The City and the Pillar is supposedly "barely readable" now. This is a perfect example of manipulative "critical" thinking. Since its first publication in 1948, it has never been out of print. To whom is it "barely readable"? Bayard could have explained why he considers it barely readable, either in terms of characterization, plot structure, language, what have you. Of course, that would put him in a pickle because likely very few people really give a damn what Bayard thinks. So the refusal to distinguish who exactly finds the novel "barely readable" gives weight to the insult, as it suggests a widespread response, and vaguely paints the picture of an outdated book, its pages yellowing, covered in dust on the library bookshelf. You local bookstore is likely to have it in stock in a recent edition at this moment.

That it is quite frequently found readable is really not in disbute. Whether it is worth reading still is a question that will have to be left up to the individual reader. Though if a good critic comes along, perhaps he or she can illuminate what they find in the book and perhaps expand our appreciation or condemnation of it. But, again, we'll actually need a good critic for that.

I've enjoyed many of his essays, particularly the literary ones, as well as his first autobiography - Palimpsest (sp).

On the other hand I can see how he might be considered a crank. He's spent a big chunk of his live giving self regarding interviews, acting like he invented atheism, etc.

As far as his fiction, I read Myra Breckenridge and it was mildly amusing but not particularly memorable.

Your mileage may vary.

In reference to that question....the Salon fellow named "Barra" (I can't recall the first name)wrote the review of "Point to Point Navigation".

thanks for a very interesting article.

Sincerely,

david terry

Gore Vidal's novels are just that, novels. To say that Lincoln is Vidal, or Burr, for that matter, is to set up a straw man and then whiff trying to strike him down. If this complaint is the justification for Bayard's faint praise of the novels, then we pay attention at our peril to Bayard's opinion of them.

Burr, Lincoln and 1876 are all great books, if not surpassingly literary. The descriptions of political processes, and how the human condition relates to them are but one of the great themes of his work. His views of American political culture continue to be prescient. It is, of course, easy to point out the historical "inaccuracies" in these novels, but to do so simply ignores that they are indeed novels, not history. They are analogs.

Of course the protagonist of his whole life is Vidal, a man self-defined by his ego and his prejudices, and very nearly a literary creation built of flesh. 100 years from now, critics and essayists will be fighting over who the "real" Gore Vidal was.

I propose that the truth of Vidal is in the novels, much more than it is in his public life or his essays. Only in the novels can he detach from himself long enough to write the slippery truth as he sees it. In the essays, the central fact of himself being the writer is in the way of his descriptions of others.

Apparently, I alone prefer the novels to the essays. The essays are brilliantly written, and the descriptions of living people are devastatingly detailed, but the trilogy of novels at the center of his career really contain the most value for future literary and political historians. The common understanding of American political power and its motivations would not be nearly as well defined were it not for Vidal's novels about it.

A great artist, and a trenchant critic to the end.