Monday, October 17, 2011

Gore Vidal

The more I read Gore Vidal, the more I'm convinced he'd hate me*.

Well, maybe hate is too strong a word. He'd disapprove.

He disapproves of so many who are smarter, wiser and more industrious than me, that I can't imagine any circumstance in which he'd accept me or anyone else not at his exalted I.Q. level which I'm sure he feels is predestined at birth.

So, my admiration for Gore Vidal is tempered by Dr. Reality.

He's very much the elitist who wants everyone in their place, that is, below himself.

I continue reading his essays in order to learn about people, places, and ideas. But I have a cold feeling toward Gore Vidal. I can readily understand Hillary Clinton's ambivalence towards him. He's a bit of a lizard, really, licking his lips thinking about the next fly. A writer I really like and would have wished to meet is Mary Renault, because her prose seems magical and also reveals a thumping good human heart, something I'd like to see in the hyper-analytical spellchecker and proofreader, Gore Vidal, who delights in pointing out the petty errors of others, though he has bestsellers to his overexposed name.

I am almost half through his collected essays, 1952-1992, a thousand-plus page book which I dearly love, although I know the love ain't reciprocal. It's the collected thoughts of an unattainable beauty who was too good-looking for all the boys and just couldn't be touched by anyone.

I pity his unauthorized biographer who received the cane for his labors! He should have known better than to offer obeisance to an ungrateful god. Yet I have done similar things in the past. Unrequited love is a mental disease and it is contagious through songs, stories and movies.
by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

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