'My job, so I did it'

 

“Ididn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have beentaught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. Icould think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzingGeorge Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so Idid it.” – Gore Vidal

 

Vidal was born at the West Point Military Academy on this date in 1925 (his father was an officer and instructor there at the time).   He said he never wanted to be awriter, but he became one of the most well-known and sometimes controversialwriters in American history.  And he tookon a larger-than-life public role as an intellectual and debater, particularlyagainst conservative writer and spokesman William F. Buckley. 

 

Called “a literary juggernaut” by TheLos Angeles Times, his novels and essays are considered "amongthe most elegant in the English language.” He wrote 28 nonfiction books, 32 novels, 8 plays, and 16 screenplays andteleplays.  Many were best sellers,especially his gripping historical novels Burr,Lincoln, 1876 and Empire.   And,he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology UnitedStates: Essays 1952–92.  

 

 In his later years (he died in2012) he lamented what he termed the lack of good American writers.   “For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned withthe precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundredAmerican writers, many well-regarded, who appear to believe that one word isjust as good as another and that everything which occurs to them is worthputting down.”

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