Contrarians- particularly funny ones- can be the spice of life because they keep you on your toes and, most importantly, get you thinking. We've just lost the greatest contrarian of all: Gore Vidal who died at the age of 86.
I've been reading and re-reading Vidal for most of my life. His historical novels were not only very popular but they breathed life into the past as well as putting the story back into history. He was a master of mixing real people in with fictional characters and spinning a helluva yarn. His status as our national contrarian was perfected with the publication of Burr, which was an argument on behalf of one of the great scamps of our history, Aaron Burr.
His rather surrealistic novels such as Myra Breckinridge, Myron, Duluth and Kalki are underrated gems. Myron is one of the funniest books ever written in the English language; especially Vidal's use of Supreme Court Justice's names for bodily naughty bits. To paraphrase Tricky Dick's henchman John Mitchell, if you have them by the Whizzer Whites, their hearts will surely follow. Or was that Chuck Colson?
Much of Vidal's literary reputation lies in his essays; many of which started as book reviews for various publications but took on a life of their own. This is the body of the master's work that I have avidly re-read and poured over the most. Vidal's sharp wit and barbed prose is a major influence on my own humble work as an internet smart ass. Anyway, check out United States, which is the uber compilation of some of Vidal's finest essays.
In many ways, Gore Vidal was the H.L. Mencken of our time although the only thing the two of them would have agreed on was the power of the written word and the utter awesomeness of a good wise crack. Mencken was something of a conservative curmudgeon whereas Vidal was a man of the left always eager for a scrap with any and all comers. They were both, however, elegant writers with barbed tongues and sharp literary knives.
I haven't even scratched the surface of Vidal's importance as an openly gay writer (even though he preferred the term same-sexer) and the firestorm his 1948 novel, The City And The Pillar caused. I will leave that to others. All I can say is this: he will be missed.
Update: Speaking of essays, here's a link to some of Gore's pieces at the Nation.
One of the first blog-based books, the anthology Special Plans examines Feith's role in misleading America into war. Buy from 
Live From Golgotha is pretty good, too...sorry to see he passed on...
Posted by: MichaelF | August 01, 2012 at 10:17
Riddle me this, Batfans: If Isreal is suck a cunltural success story, why the fuck is the Obama having the U.S. send it a $70 million welfare check for defense?
I mean, maybe Israel can cut taxes on rich people to raise the money they need for defense. Certainly trashing that socialist health care system wiould trickle down into the military bank account.
Suggesting shit like the above can get you labeled an anti-Semite. However, it seems to me to be pretty inconsistent for a presidential candidate to brag on Israel's "culture" of economic success, while it's collecting military welfare dollars from the U.S.
Posted by: mass | August 01, 2012 at 11:01
let israel sink or swim.
this AM BBC news this AM replayed an interview with him. and he was quite scathing about georgee. and his saying he was not a wartime president since he STARTED wars. YES! georgee was a WAR president, or a warLIKE president.
Posted by: pansypoo | August 01, 2012 at 12:55
Included among those Nation articles is this essay on Mencken http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=093f49cc-1938-4510-9ad5-129ddc944829%40sessionmgr12&vid=2&hid=9
Posted by: jeffrey | August 01, 2012 at 13:25
I once met the man. He was gracious even to a working class stiff like me. He laughed at my jokes and told some great JFK antidotes. We spent about an hour together as we set up for an interview we shot with him. He didn't need to be there but loved people and wanted to hang with the crew. The most interesting tidbit was he did script work on Ben Hur and he kept making the Charlton Heston character more and more gay... Charlton never noticed.
Posted by: chuckchuck | August 01, 2012 at 14:46
Unfortunately, he was also a rape apologist.
So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?
I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
Article from 2009 here.
Posted by: gidget commando | August 02, 2012 at 14:21