RIP: Gore Vidal

It was with great sadness today that I heard that the inimitable and brilliant (not to mention unbelievably prolific) author, essayist, historian and social philospoher Gore Vidal has passed away.


They simply didn't get much more brilliant than Gore Vidal. His was a wit so razor sharp, so merciless and so exacting that I'm almost glad I was never famous (or political) enough to have strayed into his universe of critique!

This Renaissance man had a life so rich and so monumentally successful that to write any 'mini biography' in this mere blog would be, to be very frank, arrogant and affected. Instead, I think the best way to pay homage to such a towering intellect is to quote some of his more memorable barbs and sayings over the years, which included:

- "There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently ... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties..."

- "Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal."

- "Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so."

- "Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent."

- "Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."

- "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."

- "We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic."

- "We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US...[America] is ‘rotting away...and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it." [in an article about Vidal in the The Times of London, September 2009]

- "a triumph of the embalmer's art."  [of Ronald Reagan]

- "the stupidest man in the United States." [of George W. Bush]


And three of my favourites of his:

- "A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

- "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."

and...

- "The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so."

How much more brutally honest can you get than that?

They do not make them like Gore Vidal any more. They simply do not. And the world is all the more impoverished for that.