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Gore Vidal Escapes From Home, Appears on BBC
The BBC has a deep fondness for Gore Vidal, the Castro-loving octogenarian crackpot who, I am told, once wrote a few decent novels. I once appeared on a BBC World Service program with Vidal, who muttered some scripted provocations about pederasty; stuff that would have likely shocked a radio audience in the 1950s, though a routine that hadn't aged particularly well. Listeners were supposed to be shocked and impressed by this bit of theater; a rude, semi-coherent old coot says dirty things, making the Bill Grundy-like host uncomfortable.
And yet again, it appears that one of his attendants left the gate unlocked, and Vidal wondered into a BBC satellite studio to offer his analysis of the presidential election. Mercifully, the host cuts him off and, one imagines, calls the LAPD:
|11.5.08 @ 6:32PM|#
It's so sad to see a great mind drift off into senility. There definitely was not coherence enough to Vidal's musings to be worthy of such an important author.
|11.5.08 @ 6:38PM|#
End the cuban embargo and quit bashing Gore Vidal as if you were
sean Hannities raging neo-con cousin with call options on General
Dynamics.
Yes we know Fidel was a tyrant...it is still no excuse for
isolationist trade policies and it is no excuse for falsely
claiming principled, real free traders like ron paul are
isolationist.
|11.5.08 @ 6:38PM|#
Naga: Naomi Klein is neither a great mind nor an important
author.
Art-POG: That was the correct response to Alan Greenspan's musings
the other week.
Naga Sadow|11.5.08 @ 6:41PM|#
Art-P.O.G.,
My point was that he was overrated to begin with. Sorry but I've
read his earlier work and was puzzled that others thought it was so
. . . divine.
|11.5.08 @ 6:45PM|#
Oh, OK, Naga. Now I'm going to admit something. I've never, ever read Gore Vidal. I saw that his books were really long, which led me to... Assumption 1: He was once capable of putting several coherent thoughts together. Assumption 2: He must be an important author 'cause dammit a lot of critics and journalists have said so.
Naga Sadow|11.5.08 @ 6:47PM|#
Art-P.O.G.,
LOL. As I just posted on another thread, I like to be subtle with
my snarks. You were smarter than me about Vidal. He writes like
Joyce. UN-FUCKING-READABLE.
twv|11.5.08 @ 6:50PM|#
Yeah, that was an especially silly moment of television. Vidal's
style carried on from his past days of glory, as if by inertia, but
his grasp of this time, this place proved to lag behind, leaving
his quick wit with nothing but the ephemeral to snipe at.
The attempt by one of the interviewer's guests to shore up good
feeling and reputation of his interlocutor was more idiotic that
Vidal's rude barb, though.
And, by the way, Vidal did write a few wonderful novels. These
books struck me as magnificent:
• The City and the Pillar
• The Judgment of Paris
• Burr
• 1876
and I consider these three books his tragic trilogy of
religion:
• Creation
• Julian
• Messiah
with the goofy science fiction novel "Live from Golgotha" as
capstone satyr play.
*|11.5.08 @ 7:00PM|#
"once wrote a few decent novels."
And Moynihan's lasting legacy will be...?
Those who can't, mock.
|11.5.08 @ 7:08PM|#
Not to threadjack, but there are only a handful of novelists who ever melted my face. I really like Vonnegut, Chesterton and Dostoevsky. Achebe and Pearl S. Buck also linger with me. I need to get cracking on some PKD. I read Gravity's Rainbow but I'm still not sure whether it was worth it. William S. Burroughs is a great mind, but I'm certain that Naked Lunch is almost entirely unreadable.
Naga Sadow|11.5.08 @ 7:11PM|#
Art-P.O.G.,
It's not threadjacking if no one is posting anything relevant to
begin with. Stick with Verner Vinge and nothing else. NOTHING
else!!!
|11.5.08 @ 7:13PM|#
And Moynihan's lasting legacy will be...?
What, have you been sleeping this whole time? Moynihan's legacy is
war cheerleading.
matt|11.5.08 @ 7:17PM|#
Dostoveyesky, Chesterton, and Vidal are all amazing
storytellers. I'd throw Steinbeck in the same category.
All four of these men wrote amazing stories that will be reprinted
for our grandchildren's consumption on the recycled paper salvaged
from long-forgotten Dave Eggers and Naomi Klein books.
The cream tends to rise to the top.
Franklin Harris|11.5.08 @ 7:20PM|#
And yet, even in his declining years, Gore Vidal was smart enough to oppose the Iraq war.
Elemenope|11.5.08 @ 7:41PM|#
Chesterton has to be the all-time most ignored great writer.
Outside of this blog and an occasional class, I've had to explain
who Chesterton is each and every time I've mentioned him.
Even most Christians forget who he is (the first serious apologist
of the modern age), preferring instead the more pedestrian (but
still intriguing) musings of C. S. Lewis.
daveednyc|11.5.08 @ 7:48PM|#
"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One
trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere-like the time I
caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my
shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called
Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was
the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in
those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me
five bees for a quarter,' you'd say.
"Now where were we? Oh yeah-the important thing was that I had an
onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have
white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was
those big yellow ones..."
|11.5.08 @ 7:49PM|#
Vidal always seemed to be one of those celebrities who was
commonly known to be a "brillian genius" of some sort, but nobody
ever seems to what for, exactly.
An embarrasing appearance.
|11.5.08 @ 7:58PM|#
daveed, that sort of thing was what I considered the strength/weakness of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Very, very cerebral book, and funny as well, but didn't go anywhere.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:07PM|#
gabe | November 5, 2008, 6:38pm | #
End the cuban embargo and quit bashing Gore Vidal as if you were
sean Hannities raging neo-con cousin with call options on General
Dynamics.
Yes we know Fidel was a tyrant...it is still no excuse for
isolationist trade policies and it is no excuse for falsely
claiming principled, real free traders like ron paul are
isolationist.
oh come the fuck on already.
making fun of the senile drivel of an old writer doesnt have
anything to do with fucking ron paul. Not everything is perfectly
political for gods sake.
"ah, i hinted at that i hinted at that and did not think you would
take it as a statement of Reality!?"
I mean really
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:09PM|#
Art-P.O.G. | November 5, 2008, 7:58pm | #
daveed, that sort of thing was what I considered the
strength/weakness of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Very, very
cerebral book, and funny as well, but didn't go
anywhere.
"Crying of Lot 49" and "V" are better. also shorter. Never read
Mason Dixon.
|11.5.08 @ 8:12PM|#
Julian and Creation are both excellent
novels.
Vidal may have lost it, but he's always been a loon.
Syd|11.5.08 @ 8:13PM|#
Vidal was also a very fine essayist. Since he's apparently lost it, I assume he isn't anymore. I'm fond of his comic novel Duluth and Creation is one of my favorite novels. Some of the others I've tried were unreadable.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:15PM|#
Art-P.O.G. | November 5, 2008, 7:08pm | #
Not to threadjack, but there are only a handful of novelists who
ever melted my face. I really like Vonnegut, Chesterton and
Dostoevsky. Achebe and Pearl S. Buck also linger with me. I need to
get cracking on some PKD. I read Gravity's Rainbow but I'm still
not sure whether it was worth it. William S. Burroughs is a great
mind, but I'm certain that Naked Lunch is almost entirely
unreadable.
Sorry, book talk!
you may have already read it, but O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces
is probably up your alley., or Master & Margarita by Bulgakov.
Also in that vein, Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders.
All funny and smart.
Burroughs is readable but its certainly nothing like regular
reading. Naked Lunch is stock footage compared to his cut-ups and
his all-out weirdness scifi gay pirate alien-fucking heroin addict
stuff like Cities of the Red Night. He's more like Celine or
Rambaud or Genet
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:19PM|#
Below is example of stuff in Burrough's "cities"
probably not appropriate at all, but hey, what the hell.
=====================================
In the thinly populated desert area north of Tamaghis a portentous
event occurred. Some say it was a meteor that fell to earth leaving
a crater twenty miles across. Others say that the crater was caused
by what modern physicists call a black hole.
After this occurrence the whole northern sky lit up red at night,
like the reflection from a vast furnace. Those in the immediate
vicinity of the crater were the first to be affected and various
mutations were observed, the commonest being altered hair and skin
color. Red and yellow hair, and white, yellow, and red skin
appeared for the first time. Slowly the whole area was similarly
affected until the mutants outnumbered the original inhabitants,
who were as all human beings were at the time: black.
The women, led by an albino mutant known as the White Tigress,
seized Yass-Waddah, reducing the male inhabitants to salves,
consorts, and courtiers all under sentence of death that could be
carried out at any time at the caprice of the White Tigress. The
Council in Waghdas countered by developing a method of growing
babies in excised wombs, the wombs being supplied by vagrant Womb
Snatchers, This practice aggravated the differences between the
male and female factions and war with Yass-Waddah seemed
unavoidable.
In Naufana, a method was found to transfer the spirit directly into
an adolescent Receptacle, thus averting the awkward and vulnerable
period of infancy. This practice required a rigorous period of
preparation and training to achieve a harmonious blending of the
two spirits in one body. These Transmigrants, combining the
freshness and vitality of youth with the wisdom of many lifetimes,
were expected to form an army of liberation to free Wass-Waddah.
And there were adepts who could die at will without nay need of
drugs or executioners and project their spirit into a chosen
Receptacle.
I have mentioned hanging, strangulation, and orgasm drugs as the
commonest means of effecting the transfer. However, many other
forms of death were employed. The Fire Boys were burned to death in
the presence of the Receptacles, only the genitals being insulated,
so that the practitioner could achieve orgasm in the moment of
death. There is an interesting account by a Fire Boy who recalled
his experience after transmigrating in this manner:
"As the flames closed around my body, I inhaled deeply, drawing
fire into my lungs, and screamed out flames as the most horrible
pain turned to the most exquisite pleasure and I was ejaculating in
an adolescent Receptacle who was being sodomized by another."
Others were stabbed, decapitated disemboweled shot with arrows, or
killed by a blow on the head. Some threw themselves from cliffs,
landing in front of the copulating Receptacles.
The scientists at Waghdas were developing a machine that could
directly transfer the electromagnetic field of one body to another.
In Ghadis there were adepts who were able to leave their bodies
before death and occupy a series of hosts. How far this research
may have gone will never be known. It was a time of great disorder
and chaos.
The effects of the Red Night on Receptacles and Transmigrants
proved to be incalculable and many strange mutants arose as a
series of plagues devastated the cities. It is this period of war
and pestilence that is covered by the books. The Council had set
out to produce a race of supermen for the exploration of space.
They produced instead races of ravening idiot vampires.
Finally, the cities were abandoned and the survivors fled in all
direction, carrying the plagues with them. Some of these migrants
crossed the Bering Strait into the New World, taking the books with
them. They settled in the area later occupied by the Mayans and the
books eventually fell into the hands of the Mayan priests.
The alert student of this noble experiment will perceive that death
was regarded as equivalent not to birth but to conception and go in
to infer that conception is the basic trauma. In the moment of
death, the dying man's whole life may flash in front of his eyes
back to conception. In the moment of conception, his future life
flashes forward to his future death. To reexperience conception
is fatal
|11.5.08 @ 8:22PM|#
Never read Mason Dixon.
Wait...is this an admission or a warning?*
*Mason Dixon looks like it would take me 2-3 whole months to read
anyway.
|11.5.08 @ 8:26PM|#
That Burroughs excerpt was brilliant and I concede that, somehow, Naked Lunch would be better read as poetry (or maybe Peter Weller movie) than prose.
Jerry|11.5.08 @ 8:26PM|#
I don't think they'll invite John Bolton over again either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiPuqvO6qT8
Jesse Walker|11.5.08 @ 8:31PM|#
Burr and Messiah are both great, and there's
at least a half-dozen more Vidal novels that are way above average.
(As PL says, Julian and Creation are among them.)
I also recommend his memoir Palimpsest, especially to
people who like to read embarrassing stories about the
Kennedys.
Vidal is also one of the most libertarian voices on the left. He's
antiwar, decentralist, excellent on civil liberties (including the
un-PC ones), and sometimes even decent on economics: He is very
anti-IRS (he has called for a 5% flat tax), has mocked mainstream
environmentalism as "the Great God Green," and has written
sympathetically about Middle American resentment of federal
regulations. His output in the current century hasn't been very
impressive -- his essays on Al Qaeda have veered close to Truther
territory, though they're also so vague that it's not completely
clear what he was getting at -- but he was a sharp voice
in his day.
Hogan|11.5.08 @ 8:31PM|#
I've had Against the Day sitting on my shelf since last Christmas and can't make myself start it. Anyone have an opinion on it? I liked Gravity's Rainbow when I read it as a teenager, but don't remember it very well.
Jesse Walker|11.5.08 @ 8:40PM|#
Re: Burroughs: If you've never read him before, the easiest way
to take a first taste is with one of the CDs of him reading his
work. His best album is probably Dead City Radio, so start
there.
As far as his books go, my favorite is The Place of Dead
Roads, sort of a gay science-fiction western. And yes,
Naked Lunch is great. It isn't a linear narrative, so if
it doesn't draw you in right away you should feel free to jump
around.
Politically speaking, Burroughs was basically an Old Right
quasi-libertarian. In the '40s, his favorite political writer was
Westbrook Pegler; in the '70s he gave an interview in which he said
the space program was "just about the only expense I don't begrudge
the government" (or words to that effect). In one of those
collections of Beat correspondence, there's a letter from Allen
Ginsburg complaining about Burroughs' lack of enthusiasm for
left-liberal politics. If I remember the details correctly,
Ginsburg tried to get Burroughs aboard some Democratic campaign,
and Burroughs replied with what Ginsburg described as a "WC Fields
routine."
|11.5.08 @ 8:45PM|#
Never read his novels (which I hear are good). But his political
stuff seems a fairly schizophrenic blend of far left and
libertarianism with a sprinkle of conspiracy theory.
I seem to remember in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace a
central theme being his belief that the Oklahoma City Bombing was
ultimately a reaction against the death of the small family farm in
America. Then Vidal tells of his admiration for FDR and his New
Deal farm policies. Yet, the main source for that portion of
Vidal's book was Jim Bovard's Lost Rights who had
ultimately made the case that FDR's farm policy is the
reason for the death of the family farm.
Strange, but it had its moments. He's better than Chomsky at
least.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:49PM|#
Art-P.O.G. | November 5, 2008, 8:22pm | #
"Never read Mason Dixon."
Wait...is this an admission or a warning?*
*Mason Dixon looks like it would take me 2-3 whole months to read
anyway.
No, i meant "read" like "i done never red that one". Past tense,
not imperative. but i see your point. I should be more careful.
|11.5.08 @ 8:55PM|#
I have become infatuated with Terry Pratchett of late.
I liked Good Omens and I've heard good things about the
Discworld books.
Past tense, not imperative. but i see your point. I should be more careful.
After thinking about it, I figured right. I was going to launch into a bizarre rant about irregular verbs/tense, but decided against it.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:56PM|#
p.s.
Jesse Walker | November 5, 2008, 8:40pm | #
Re: Burroughs: If you've never read him before, the easiest way to
take a first taste is with one of the CDs of him reading his
work
This is so true.
He has a lot of readings on record, my favorite being the Dead City
Radio album done by Donald Fagen. If you've digested his voice and
his style of laconic dark humor, its much easier to read his stuff
and "hear" the jokes in his denser, weird prose.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 8:57PM|#
whoops.
Should have read more than the first sentence of Jesse's post i
think. sorry for the ditto
Chrispy|11.5.08 @ 8:59PM|#
I've never read a Gore Vidal book, but I liked him in Gattaca. It's a shame he's become such an incoherent nutter.
kinnath|11.5.08 @ 9:00PM|#
I've heard good things about the Discworld books.
I bought the first 25 of the 35 or so in that collection. I am up
to number 11 or so. I cannot fathom where his ideas come from. The
best books are sublime, the worst are still quite amusing.
kinnath|11.5.08 @ 9:03PM|#
He really doesn't get rolling until the 3rd or 4th book in the collection.
|11.5.08 @ 9:04PM|#
"once wrote a few decent novels."
And Moynihan's lasting legacy will be...?
Those who can't, mock.
He got banned from North Korea.
or am i thinking of someone else?
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 9:08PM|#
Beezard | November 5, 2008, 8:45pm | #
Never read his novels (which I hear are good). But his political
stuff seems a fairly schizophrenic blend of far left and
libertarianism with a sprinkle of conspiracy theory.
his politics are part of Burroughs deep sense of humor. His
politics are pointedly extremist and self-empowering as a play on
his disgust for the prosaic politics of common consensus producing
erosions on personal liberties. He also was convinced so many
people were "shits" that the best form of Law was having a decent
firearm on your person at all times.
see, "Johnsons vs. Shits"
e.g. "Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks
who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of
their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has. "
|11.5.08 @ 9:09PM|#
I forgot to mention that A Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy melted my face. The humor in that book is
top-notch.
or am i thinking of someone else?
Trey Parker and Matt Stone?
Lefiti|11.5.08 @ 9:13PM|#
This smacks of libertarian lashing out at easy targets. Meanwhile the state grows and grows...
Hogan|11.5.08 @ 9:22PM|#
while i'm sure commenters here are all weird in some way or
other, lefiti strikes me as especially strange. why does he come
here? he came here to tell us of the rhythms of the
universe what kind of life is it when trolling libertarian
boards to accuse them of ineffectiveness clearly takes up a large
part of your day..?
has no one read against the day? i just want to know if it's worth
the month(s) it would take to read.
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 9:24PM|#
Lefiti | November 5, 2008, 9:13pm | #
This smacks of libertarian lashing out at easy targets.
How about you go ride a no-seat pogo stick?
Hows that for lashing out at easy targets?
Fucking mary on christmas tree, lefties are such humorless boobs.
You seriously throw your personal credit out the window with this
kind of patronizing bullshit. Not that you had any to start, but
still... when will you realize that *most shit here is not a bunch
of libertoids ranting party line stuff*, but rather a diverse group
of people with some overlapping interests. Just because Vidal
sounds like a goober doesnt make this a political event. Its people
laughing at someone being a goober. I think the more important
point is that *we dont care very much*. You and others who keep
citing the "fundamentalist libertarian nature of this board" etc,
are the ones who keep resorting to some narrative of political
orientation. You calling people here 'fundies' only hoists you as
one yourself. Give it a rest
|11.5.08 @ 9:35PM|#
GILMORE, I wouldn't lump any lefties in with Lefiti. Much like LoneWacko, he is, to quote Hunter S. Thompson, "One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
GILMORE|11.5.08 @ 9:47PM|#
ART
from what i've seen of him, he only seems to pop up to accuse the
threads of being full of politically naive fundies. Sure there are
some, but they are few. its a boring schtick overall.
i consider him on a different tier obviously than the
LoneJerkoff
more like the ron paulites who scream 'heresy!' all the time over
silly shit for not being MORE fundie like them
Tyler Durden|11.5.08 @ 10:09PM|#
Is this what Chuck Palahniuk will be like when he is Gore Vidal's age now? No, Palahniuk is a more intellectual author.
Ironic|11.5.08 @ 10:25PM|#
Has Gore Vidal ever shown up on South Park? If not I would love to see an episode with BOTH Gore Vidal and Chuck Palahniuk.
Vidal on the conspiracy theori|11.5.08 @ 10:48PM|#
Q: What do you think of the conspiracy theories about September
11?
Vidal: I'm willing to believe practically any mischief on the part
of the Bush people. No, I don't think they did it, as some
conspiracy people think. Why? Because it was too intelligently
done. This is beyond the competence of Bush and Cheney and
Rumsfeld. They couldn't pull off a caper like 9/11. They are too
clumsy.
|11.5.08 @ 11:03PM|#
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels will melt your face. He is
among the best satirists of all time, ever, and each book he writes
is better than the last. This is not an opinion. This is fact. Neil
Gaiman's novels are also wonderful but not quite so face melting -
extremely original, but no "oh my God who put that man's brain
together and can I please have one just like it" original.
And I love Chesterton. It's interesting, when you're reading a dead
guy (or chick) whom you admire and whose work really speaks to you,
when you run across something by them and you think - well, sheeit,
you sure got that one wrong, didn't you? It's comforting, I guess,
because even the most brilliant, the most humane or incisive or
perceptive or original of thinkers have their own blind spots. And
so Chesterton could write a thoughtful, reasonable, completely
fucking stupid essay opposed to female suffrage based on the
proposition that we're just too darned good and pure to sully
ourselves in politics. It's like finding out that Lincoln wasn't
all that racially enlightened, even by the standards of his day.
Brilliant guys, but just human.
|11.5.08 @ 11:10PM|#
Pynchon: Crying of Lot 49 was engrossing. The others have their
moments, but in every one - or at least, in Rainbow and in V, the
only other ones I read - the first 10,000 pages or so are really
entertaining and trippy and impressively inventive, and then you
get to a point where you say, "ok, now you're just jacking off, and
I'm tired of watching" and you go off to read something with a plot
and some characters, and that's why so few people ever finish a
Pynchon book.
And while I remember lots of lines from Pratchett books, there's
one that stands out because when I read it, I instantly thought of
Hilary Clinton, and I've never forgotten it. Concerning a female
character he wrote, "She was content to let self-esteem do the work
of self-respect."
economist|11.5.08 @ 11:14PM|#
Well, stubby the real problem with women voting (Standard Disclaimer: This does not apply to all women, it simply describes a tendency in populations overall) is that women are more likely than men to be busybodies who think that the government should be in everyone's business. That whole purity argument was just something to distract chicks.
Hogan|11.5.08 @ 11:18PM|#
like in the life and times of judge roy bean, it was them whores paul newman had married off to his deputies that started the trouble when the railroad came through about how they shouldn't be hanging people in public and they're the ones that got gass voted mayor and that Killed The Wild West
|11.5.08 @ 11:20PM|#
Eh. I know you're being facetious, but there's some truth to that. Women do seem to be disproportionally inclined to nanny statism, don't they? I can't tell you how often some woman will assume I support or oppose a particular policy because I'm a mother. I hear "but you're a mother!!!" almost as often as I hear "think of the children!!"
economist|11.5.08 @ 11:37PM|#
Actually, stubby, my statement (disclaimer included, of course) was mostly serious, except at the very end.
alan|11.5.08 @ 11:38PM|#
In the thinly populated desert area north of Tamaghis a
portentous event occurred. Some say it was a meteor that fell to
earth leaving a crater twenty miles across. Others say that the
crater was caused by what modern physicists call a black
hole.
Good stuff. In style, this reminds me of Van Vogt's work from the
50's. Very jaunty, with ideas and plot line revealed in little gems
of
dead pan delivery.
The Wine Commonsewer|11.6.08 @ 1:19AM|#
The worst part about this is that some day I'll escape from
home. The diff is that you won't find me on BBC. Ill be pissing in
some alley while begging for a hit of Night Train from some
homeless guy.
That ain't right.
|11.6.08 @ 1:27AM|#
Well, stubby the real problem with women voting (Standard
Disclaimer: This does not apply to all women, it simply describes a
tendency in populations overall) is that women are more likely than
men to be busybodies who think that the government should be in
everyone's business.
It's not our fault. We get bored of baking cookies, wiping grampa's
ass, and spanking the children. We have to entertain ourselves
somehow, and political drama is almost as good as gossiping and
ostracizing our neighbors.
Now if you let us fight in combat, we might have something else to
expend all that hostility on.
|11.6.08 @ 3:15AM|#
Don't you mean "wandered into a BBC satellite studio" not
"wondered"?
I wonder where you learned English?
-Gore
alan|11.6.08 @ 4:25AM|#
Now if you let us fight in combat, we might have something
else to expend all that hostility on.
Every species where the female lead the fighting has gone extinct.
Not because the female is a worse fighter, oh no, the female is so
much more vicious, vindictive and vengeful than the male of the
species that every fight quickly escalates to apocalyptic
proportions.
GILMORE|11.6.08 @ 7:12AM|#
Hazel Meade | November 6, 2008, 1:27am | #
Now if you let us fight in combat, we might have something else to
expend all that hostility
Congrats
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/lioness/
|11.6.08 @ 9:50AM|#
Lincoln, Burr, Creation and Myra Breckinridge are all excellent. Dismissing Vidal's novels as hackwork because his political opinions suck is totalitarian thinking.
|11.6.08 @ 9:51AM|#
You were smarter than me about Vidal. He writes like Joyce.
UN-FUCKING-READABLE.
Excellent point. Also, Slayer sounds just like Gram Parsons.
dhex|11.6.08 @ 10:18AM|#
"Excellent point. Also, Slayer sounds just like Gram
Parsons."
HA!
seriously, joyce is fucking amazing. finnegan's wake is
conventionally unreadable in the sense that you can't tom clancy
it, but it's still deeply poetic for a blind guy who was dying
inside and out.
"As far as his books go, my favorite is The Place of Dead Roads,
sort of a gay science-fiction western."
indeed, the cities of the red night trilogy is incredibly sad and
moving, and a fitting coda to a career that had a lot of weird
bumps and a life that was a string of horrendous tragedies, broken
hearts and near misses.
naked lunch, btw, is totally readable - it's episodic. so long as
you don't expect to follow from point a to point b to point c,
you'll be fine, because it's more like a fever dream (that was
somewhat randomized) than a conventional narrative.
it's also incredibly funny in parts:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Vg-ns2orYBMC&pg=RA1-PA149&lpg=RA1-PA149&dq=calls+the+counterman+at+nedick%27s+by+his+first+name&source=web&ots=BIVU2JZTLh&sig=CTKTsTr8hpqguCqvn-WSosG3_-8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
dhex|11.6.08 @ 10:26AM|#
burroughs, btw, was misogynistic in much of his writing in a way
that chesterton could only dream of. cartoonish does not begin to
encompass it.
on the other hand salt chunk mary is one of the few reliable
characters in his entire universe. on the other, other hand, she's
adapted from earlier true crime potboilers that he read as a
child.
Bailey Alexander|11.7.08 @ 2:44PM|#
Gore Vidal wrote a few books?
One might consider him America's biographer.
I have all his fiction, which isn't poetic, he wasn't a gifted like
that, but no can equal his essays on America.
One of the first essayists to adroitly highlight the lack of
difference between both prominant parties in the states.
His political essays are the most straight forward, readable,
eloquently written....consecutively, by someone that has met most
of the power players, on several continents.
Say what you will, he's been there.
But yes, that night on the beeb was sad, for me, loss of
faculties...fine mind, going...finally...
Personne....
bay/paris
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