You are here

Home

Hail and Farewell, Gore Vidal

Thu, 08/02/2012 - 16:28 — Dave Culver
Section(s): 
Home Page
Books & Liturature
  • Gore had to witness a great torrent of hogwash in the last dozen years, but even in his wheelchair, ever the soldier, he faced it, showing up here and there to speak, write and defy.
  • Catching Up with Gore Vidal

Peter Z. Scheer, Truthdig

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

Gore Vidal in 1974 / AP
(August 1, 2012) I remember Gore Vidal like a Bond villain. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in that same big house in the Hollywood Hills where he died Tuesday night. Holding on to a glass of whiskey with one hand, he used the other to stroke a giant white cat with an angry mouth and a cloudy gray eye. He called it “pussy.” Of course he did.

I was there to record the great man with the booming voice while he read his latest Truthdig essay. We had done this before, but I got the impression that my arrival had disturbed him and I was anxious as I fumbled with my equipment. He was a pro with Southern grace and diction that could dent a microphone, but he chose that day to fuck with me. Rather than read his own words as written, Gore kept going off script, eyeballing me and smiling every time I ruined the recording by laughing nervously at his improvisations. The audio was unusable, but the great man had his fun and that mattered much more to him than the godforsaken hits we might generate with a podcast. That was four years ago.

Full Story...

Related:

Catching Up with Gore Vidal, Truthdig
(August 1, 2012) Since 2006, Truthdig has been proud to publish the essays of Gore Vidal. Below are some of his highlights.
 

Fair Use Notice

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.