There's one key difference between this book and its predecessors, however. Vidal was alive and kicking in 1939, and thanks to his role as Senator Thomas Pryor Gore's grandson (and occasional seeing-eye dog), he met or at least observed many of The Golden Age's dramatis personae. This fact turns out to have a double edge. On one hand, it gives his portraits of the high and mighty an extra ounce of verisimilitude. Here (the invented) Caroline Sanford observes her old friend FDR at an informal White House mixer:
She felt for an instant that she should curtsey in the awesome presence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a figure who towered even when seated in his wheelchair. It was the head and neck that did the trick, she decided, with a professional actor's eye. The neck was especially thick while the famous head seemed half again larger than average, its thinning gray hair combed severely back from a high rounded forehead.Like all of Vidal's politicians, FDR is a more or less gifted illusionist, and The Golden Age is one more chapter in the convergence of theater and politics, of Hollywood and Washington, D.C. But the very vividness of these historical actors (in every sense of the phrase) makes the author's invented cast seem a little pale and lifeless. No matter. Even in its occasional longueurs, Vidal's concluding volume is packed with ironic insight and world-class gossip, much of it undoubtedly true. And in the surprisingly metafictional finale, he signs off with a fine display of Heraclitean fireworks, not to mention an encore appearance from his rakish progenitor Aaron Burr--which makes you wonder exactly who created whom. --James Marcus]]>
Vidal’s short fiction offers us a portrait of the young artist in the 1940s and 1950s. His subtle and comic tales often center on adolescence and homosexual themes. In Three Stratagems, a middle-aged gay man encounters a male prostitute while vacationing in Key West. In The Zenner Trophy, the star athlete at an elite boys school is expelled for sexual relations with a classmate. These stories were gathered along with five others into a 1956 volume, A Thirsty Evil, and for decades were thought to comprise Vidal’s complete short fiction. However, an eighth story was recently discovered among Vidal’s private papers at Harvard University. Entitled Clouds and Eclipses, the story is based on a true account from the childhood of Tennessee Williams. Taking its name from that lost story, this collection brings Vidal’s body of short fiction to completion for the first time.
]]>There are also three interviews: two from the mid-'70s, although written for semi-underground gay magazines, touch upon a variety of political and literary issues; a 1992 conversation finds Larry Kramer practically badgering Vidal to admit that he's a homosexual. As he has throughout his career, Vidal refuses to be categorized on the basis of sexual acts: "I've never applied [these labels] to myself nor have I applied them to anybody else, even when they have invited me to." Sexually Speaking is as entertaining as it is provocative, an interesting supplement to the more comprehensive The Essential Gore Vidal. --Ron Hogan
]]>Conversations with Gore Vidal features provocative and intriguing interviews with one of America's most prolific authors. Vidal was an enfant terrible in the 1940s and a marginalized homosexual in the 1950s. As Edgar Box he wrote mysteries and as a screenwriter he penned the script for Ben-Hur. In 1960 he ran for Congress. In the 1990s, he appeared in films such as "Gattaca", "Bob Roberts", and "Shadow Conspiracy". His essay collection "United States: Essays 1952-1992", which features 114 pieces on everything from Howard Hughes to French literature, won the National Book Award.
Vidal proves himself here to be a witty, acerbic, cantankerous conversationalist, one who is willing to --- and often eager to --- defy conventional wisdom and lacerate the tired clichés inherent in both politics and literature. A defiant political insider who is related to both the Gores and the Kennedys, he is a proud Leftist who nevertheless does not hesitate to slash at party orthodoxy when he deems it necessary.
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