Gore Vidal... RIP

[gonzoliberal]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...dal-dead-at-86

excerpt;

...

In Vidal's own words:
• “Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
• “As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
• “I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.”

....

[georjec2]

Gore Vidal had some good things to say but he could also be 'peculiar'.

BTW... I like you avatar.

[kandace]

Vidal was one of a dying breed: a man of letters and a public intellectual. A decadent society fails to appreciate the importance of such persons. May he RIP.

[bullmikey]

Vidal had a fair share of genius, but he could also be pretty snotty at times, what we would have called "stuck-up" back in the day. Wrote some very good books though. Also wrote a couple of really bad ones (the less said about Myra Breckinridge the better, I think). Anyway...

RIP.

[ms maggie]

Vidal had a fair share of genius, but he could also be pretty snotty at times, what we would have called "stuck-up" back in the day. Wrote some very good books though. Also wrote a couple of really bad ones (the less said about Myra Breckinridge the better, I think). Anyway...

RIP.

Oh he made a career out of being "pretty snotty", but he was highly entertaining and brilliant writer--have you read his "Lincoln" or "Burr"? Excellent reads.

[zenwalk]

Oh he made a career out of being "pretty snotty", but he was highly entertaining and brilliant writer--have you read his "Lincoln" or "Burr"? Excellent reads.

Vidal used his "snottiness" like a scalpel. Homage to Daniel Shays hit me like a comet as a young man. The American Chronicles series was as good as it gets. Period. He was a key interpreter of our post-war understanding of who we were/are as a people. He'll be missed.

Here's the cryptonazi clip with Buckley from 68.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8

[bullmikey]

Oh he made a career out of being "pretty snotty", but he was highly entertaining and brilliant writer--have you read his "Lincoln" or "Burr"? Excellent reads.

I've read Lincoln, Creation, and Julian. All good books. But I've also read a few of his other works that were, shall we say, less than great. Myra Breckinridge is the only title that comes to mind, but there were a few others that I've since forgotten. However, I'll give him the kind of complement he would have loved by saying that I liked his books (even the bad ones) better than anything Norman Mailer ever wrote. Gore would have liked hearing that, I think.

[DaggerJohn]

I thought Burr was one of the best books I've ever read. Vidal's ability to breathe life into history was stunning, and he made it seem easy. I knew it was sheer brilliance.