Author And Playwright Gore Vidal Dead At 86
via Huffington Post:
Gore Vidal, an author, playwright, political activist, essayist and commentator, died at his home in Los Angeles yesterday from complications related to pneumonia. He was 86.
Here's more, from the Associated Press:
Along with such contemporaries as Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, he was among the last generation of literary writers who were also genuine celebrities – regulars on talk shows and in gossip columns, personalities of such size and appeal that even those who hadn't read their books knew their names.
His works included hundreds of essays, the best-selling novels "Lincoln" and "Myra Breckenridge" and the Tony-nominated play "The Best Man," a melodrama about a presidential convention revived on Broadway in 2012. Vidal appeared cold and cynical on the surface, dispassionately predicting the fall of democracy, the American empire's decline or the destruction of the environment. But he bore a melancholy regard for lost worlds, for reason and the primacy of the written word, for "the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action."
The article at the link is incredibly comprehensive, and worth a read.
Do you have some good memories about Gore and his work? Share them in the comments.
News by Rob W. Hart
Rob W. Hart is the class director at LitReactor, as well as the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. He lives in New York City, and you can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
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Vidal was a total dude. His slap-fights with Mailer are worth exploring in detail.
First Hitchens, and now less than a year later, Vidal. I tremble at our dwindling intellectual free thinkers.
Favorite Vidal quote (or approximation thereof):
"We don't have a civilization. We only have a way of life."
--Ed