John Meroney: A Conversation With Gore Vidal
[John Meroney is completing a book, Rehearsals for a Lead Role: Ronald Reagan in The Hollywood Wars.]
At age 83, Gore Vidal remains a sharp provocateur, as irascible and irreverent as ever.
Snapshots in History’s Glare, a new memoir by Vidal released this month, renews interest in this American literary and cultural icon—offering readers a pictorial look at his singular life, from his youth in the political and social circles of Washington, to his service in World War II, his expat years in Guatemala and Europe, his emergence as a major novelist, his decades writing scripts in Hollywood, his forays into politics, his infamous feud with William F. Buckley Jr., and his friendships with Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, and Tennessee Williams, among others. The book concludes with photos of his future burial plot beside his longtime companion, Howard Auster, at D.C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery.
Eager for his thoughts on Obama’s presidency and a range of other topics, I caught up with Vidal twice this month at his home in Hollywood. (The first time, he sported a varsity-football-style jacket, bearing patches of the characters from The Simpsons, on which he once made a guest appearance.)
Our conversation ranged widely, covering everything from Ted Kennedy, to the Polanski scandal, to the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton, and the relative merits of Obama vs. Hillary. Throughout, Vidal’s devastating trademark wit was much in evidence, as was an impressive ability to perform dead-on imitations of JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt.
A condensed transcript of our conversation follows.
You said earlier this month that you now wish you had supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries instead of Barack Obama. You said that she would make a better president.
Well, I was in a thoughtful mood.
Do you really wish you had supported Mrs. Clinton?
She would have been a wonderful president. As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use. I was curious to see what would happen when their time came. I was delighted when Obama appeared on the scene. But now it seems as though our original objection to him – that experience mattered – was well-founded.
Barack Obama’s books seemed to persuade many people to support him. Have you read them?
No. Does one ever read a politician’s books?
Well, Obama actually wrote them himself.
I’m sure he did. He’s highly educated – and rather better than a country like this deserves. Put that in red letters...
... So where is President Kennedy’s place in the pantheon of liberalism?
Jack was not a liberal. Why does anyone want to pretend that he was? When it came to matters of race, he behaved pretty well. But he wasn’t terribly interested in it. When he famously rang up Mrs. Martin Luther King after Rev. King had been jailed – well, Harris Wofford thought that one up. It was all the work of others who were liberals...
Does Mrs. Clinton know how to use power the way Henry Clay did?
Yes. She has that gift. Bill Clinton does, too.
Have you met President Clinton?
Yes – and I like Bill. My family is Southern. I’m used to Bill Clintons. The country apparently wasn’t, though. At the time of his impeachment trial, I wrote a defense of him. When he claimed, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” he was totally accurate.
You believe him?
He was talking Southern. In the South, sex is when you put it in and pump away and there’s a danger of a baby. That’s “sexual relations.” Anything else is what we called in school “messing around.” And all Southern boys messed around...
... You first started traveling to California in the 1950s; then you moved here. What’s the most dramatic change you’ve seen in this state since those days?
More foreigners. But that’s a very healthy change. At one time, California was the most parochial place on earth. It was kind of gooney. In a sense, Hitler put the United States on the map by murdering as many Jews as he could get his hands on and driving the others away. They came here, to America, and many to California. My first years here, right after I got out of the Army, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Thomas Mann dominated this town. We didn’t even have to develop people as good as this! We inherited them...
Read entire article at The Atlantic
At age 83, Gore Vidal remains a sharp provocateur, as irascible and irreverent as ever.
Snapshots in History’s Glare, a new memoir by Vidal released this month, renews interest in this American literary and cultural icon—offering readers a pictorial look at his singular life, from his youth in the political and social circles of Washington, to his service in World War II, his expat years in Guatemala and Europe, his emergence as a major novelist, his decades writing scripts in Hollywood, his forays into politics, his infamous feud with William F. Buckley Jr., and his friendships with Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, and Tennessee Williams, among others. The book concludes with photos of his future burial plot beside his longtime companion, Howard Auster, at D.C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery.
Eager for his thoughts on Obama’s presidency and a range of other topics, I caught up with Vidal twice this month at his home in Hollywood. (The first time, he sported a varsity-football-style jacket, bearing patches of the characters from The Simpsons, on which he once made a guest appearance.)
Our conversation ranged widely, covering everything from Ted Kennedy, to the Polanski scandal, to the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton, and the relative merits of Obama vs. Hillary. Throughout, Vidal’s devastating trademark wit was much in evidence, as was an impressive ability to perform dead-on imitations of JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt.
A condensed transcript of our conversation follows.
You said earlier this month that you now wish you had supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries instead of Barack Obama. You said that she would make a better president.
Well, I was in a thoughtful mood.
Do you really wish you had supported Mrs. Clinton?
She would have been a wonderful president. As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use. I was curious to see what would happen when their time came. I was delighted when Obama appeared on the scene. But now it seems as though our original objection to him – that experience mattered – was well-founded.
Barack Obama’s books seemed to persuade many people to support him. Have you read them?
No. Does one ever read a politician’s books?
Well, Obama actually wrote them himself.
I’m sure he did. He’s highly educated – and rather better than a country like this deserves. Put that in red letters...
... So where is President Kennedy’s place in the pantheon of liberalism?
Jack was not a liberal. Why does anyone want to pretend that he was? When it came to matters of race, he behaved pretty well. But he wasn’t terribly interested in it. When he famously rang up Mrs. Martin Luther King after Rev. King had been jailed – well, Harris Wofford thought that one up. It was all the work of others who were liberals...
Does Mrs. Clinton know how to use power the way Henry Clay did?
Yes. She has that gift. Bill Clinton does, too.
Have you met President Clinton?
Yes – and I like Bill. My family is Southern. I’m used to Bill Clintons. The country apparently wasn’t, though. At the time of his impeachment trial, I wrote a defense of him. When he claimed, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” he was totally accurate.
You believe him?
He was talking Southern. In the South, sex is when you put it in and pump away and there’s a danger of a baby. That’s “sexual relations.” Anything else is what we called in school “messing around.” And all Southern boys messed around...
... You first started traveling to California in the 1950s; then you moved here. What’s the most dramatic change you’ve seen in this state since those days?
More foreigners. But that’s a very healthy change. At one time, California was the most parochial place on earth. It was kind of gooney. In a sense, Hitler put the United States on the map by murdering as many Jews as he could get his hands on and driving the others away. They came here, to America, and many to California. My first years here, right after I got out of the Army, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Thomas Mann dominated this town. We didn’t even have to develop people as good as this! We inherited them...