![]() ![]() ![]() In 1993, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the collection United States: Essays 1952–1992. Gore Vidal, centre, on the set of Gattaca.īut Vidal is most admired – and will likely be remembered into the future – for his essays. He went on to write more than 20 novels, notably the Narratives of Empire series – a heptology of historical novels, Lincoln: A Novel being the most distinguished – that chronicles the dawn of the “American Empire” to, in Vidal’s eyes, its decay. Vidal’s oeuvre showcases, if barely contains, his dessicated humour and freewheeling intellect – few topics were beneath him – as well as his prodigious knowledge of politics and history and his will to live as he pleased.īorn in 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York, Vidal wrote his first novel, Williwaw, when he was 19 years old and serving in the Army. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.” He also called himself “the gentleman bitch” of American letters. But Vidal could also hold a mirror – fleetingly at least – to his own shortcomings: “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.” ![]()
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