Gore Vidal on Lincoln's Sexuality

Vanity Fair has a piece by Gore Vidal about Abe Lincoln's sexuality, which was big news a few weeks ago. The best quote of the piece has little to do with the Railsplitter, though, and more to do with Mae West, who starred in mega-bomb movie version of Vidal's novel Myra Breckinridge:

Even the great Mae West, our first commanding sexologist, was convinced that fairies were simply women, obliged, through no fault of their own, to inhabit crude male bodies: Plangently Doctor Mae mourned her lost sisters.

Whole thing here. Vidal's novel Patriotic Gore for my tastes.

Has William Safire, another Lincoln novelist, weighed in on this?

Comments

[NoStar]

Are you telling me the old railsplitter was really the old cheek splitter?

[Jason Ligon]

I just can't do it. The mountains of sanctimonious crap spewed by Vidal over the years taints everything else his pen happens to scribble.

[Stevo Darkly]

You can fool some of the people some of the time ... you old thing.