Really enjoyed this! My favourite Vidal piece is his essay on the American postmodernists (“American Plastic” I think it was called?) wherein he accuses them of being always jocose but never funny. It’s very cutting, tho of course part of the pleasure of reading it today is that he was — at least with Pynchon and R. Barthes, and whether he knew it or not — boxing above his literary weight class. That’s my ideal paradigm for criticism: the Achievement-Gap Relationship.
His criticism of Pynchon's prose, then my favorite author has stuck with me for years. I'd have to find the passage but something to the extent that he had no flow, and when I read him, I think that yeah, this is correct more often than not (of course there are passages of utter subliminity). At least in Gravity's Rainbow and Crying -- though the "beat" style is something I've come around and more lucid than he gives it credit for
Just read this, pretty good. I love Pynchon as well, GR used to be my favorite but I've come around to the idea that there is a certain academic remove there that dates it, all these references to Reich and cybernetics and all these concerns that seem wedded to their time. I think he could have continued in this vein and become more like the other postmodernists Vidal criticizes but I find that his late work feels a lot freer, like Mason & Dixon is just a great novel full stop. I've always felt as if he has endured not only bc he is a great writer but bc he feels to me like a chill stoner guy who just happens to be a genius rather than a cold academician attempting to dissect the form. And I've never got the sense that he had any truck w/ the french theory stuff, though I'm sure he's familiar w/ it.
I loved this piece, it is spot on about Vidal. His cultural and political views are a bizarre cocktail of respectable Cold War era left-liberalism and strains of a deeply unpleasant Henry Adams / H. L. Mencken style conservatism that was so antique that even in the 70s nobody knew what to make of it.
Kissinger popping up in Brown's diaries is also very funny. I thought the best send-off to him was Thomas Meaney in NLR, entitled "Persona Grata." The point to make about Kissinger, at least from from the NLR perspective, isn't that he was uniquely bad but that he was a typical US foreign policy mavin, with his truly stand-out talent being for self-promotion. Part of Meaney's evidence is that everybody wanted him at their parties.
Also, a piece of gossip that not enough people know, which I share at every opportunity. Did you realize that the young Kissinger had an affair with the great Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who now occupies a place in German-language culture roughly equivalent to Sylvia Plath's in the English speaking world? (He was neither famous nor right-wing at the time, but my jaw still drops at the idea of the two of them together.)
They were both in their late 20s and the politics were almost the reverse of what you'd think, he was the good kind of German who had had to flee and then came back with the US army, she was a Nazi's daughter (a fact she evidently concealed from him).
Her admirers are sort of embarrassed about the whole business but the only embarrassing thing are his love letters, which grow increasingly plaintive as she looses interest. At one point he calls he "my bizarre poetess." ("When I was in Cambridge the other day, I received the book of poems which you wrote. I think they are extraordinarily sensitive and surprisingly masculine. I don’t know whether you consider that a compliment.")
Excellent piece, also enjoyed both books (and seconding endorsement of Vidal’s “narratives of empire” novels—they’re slyly queer, witty & fun).
As for Vidal’s Clinton takes, and speculative support for Bernie, have also wondered how he might have played 2016. To me, hearing him talk about Hillary, there’s a genuine fondness and solidarity with her privately dark sense of humor in his tone—I *think* he’d have, in his own way, Been With Her.
Yeah like, you're the ultimate gimlet-eyed Washington cynic until it comes to the Clintons of all people? I find it hard to square with his anti-imperialist commitments but who knows.
He was generally on the side of anybody accused of disreputable sex stuff, which during his era tended to make him more right than wrong but probably isn't a very sound basis for a worldview.
This is so good, and totally squares with my own impression of Vidal after dragging home an essay collection from the free library up the block last year: B-plus (but interesting! But never quite interesting enough!) Dunno that I’m ever gonna forgive Tina for what she did to the NYer (who was it that said she “has the same relationship to contemporary letters that William T Sherman did to the state of Georgia?” after she slashed the amount of fiction they published in half?), but I sure wish I’d kept my old copies of Talk magazine. Probably the purest hits of end-of-the-90s zeitgeist ever manufactured
Also obviously he's done an OK job steering the magazine through the collapse of print media but David Remnick seems like kind of a mediocrity to me which doesn't speak well to TB's ability to pick successors. Maybe we just live in mediocre times though.
Oh my God, Renata's book is worth it just to watch her tee off on Adam Gopnik. Her contempt for him (and also for Bob Gottleib) is . . . really something. (How have I never seen those reactions? They're INCREDIBLE.)
Remnick, yeah. I mean . . . it's not a ringing endorsement to say "he's not bad by contemporary standards." He's . . . typical of the age, I'd say. Better than Charles fuckin' McGrath
All right you've convinced me, I have tons to read for both professional and personal obligations but I've put the Renata book on hold.
Her tenure aside one very charming aspect of the TB book is her passion for the Shawn era NYer and the old Vanity Fair. She speaks very lovingly about the freshness and energy of the magazines in the 30s and 40s -- I really want to sit down and dive into the archives of both of those soon, Condé might suck but it's incredible that they've digitized every issue of both.
Oh, yeah. I'll have to check out TB's book. My sense of her is really tainted by a (now-outdated) feeling that she was a Harvey Weinstein-flattering philistine, but by today's standards she probably seems like Shawn herself. I'll have to ask Renata sometime about Remnick. (Or not. She'll probably have a stroke.)
Can't believe I just discovered your newsletter. Clicked when I saw Vidal--I read Point to Point Navigation but always avoided Palimpsest for the exact reason you seem to debunk (and side with): I'm never a fan of childhood writing. Figured Palimpsest was mostly that. Definitely plan to pick it up, based on this.
Good but kinda death-obsessed. He goes into strangely haunting detail about how he was making a sandwich when Howard dropped dead.
Have you read Jay Parini's memoir-bio about his friendship with Vidal? He talks about Vidal, in his 80s, sitting at home beside a record player for hours, drinking an entire bottle of scotch while sobbing, listening to Howard's LPs on repeat. Apparently almost every post-2003 video you see online of Gore Vidal - he's drunk. He never wanted to play up his love for Austen but he was just totally shattered by the death. I guess it brought up some Jimmy Trimble baggage...
It is! All the more painful because you realize how earnest and vulnerable he was, all those years that he was posing as totally irreverent, unaffected, blase. Still got my fingers crossed they tap someone good for a big Vidal bio any day now...
Fantastic piece. Give Vidal’s novels a shot. Myra, Burr, Washington D.C.. All great!
You're asserting that these are "great novels"?
I suppose I am.
Really enjoyed this! My favourite Vidal piece is his essay on the American postmodernists (“American Plastic” I think it was called?) wherein he accuses them of being always jocose but never funny. It’s very cutting, tho of course part of the pleasure of reading it today is that he was — at least with Pynchon and R. Barthes, and whether he knew it or not — boxing above his literary weight class. That’s my ideal paradigm for criticism: the Achievement-Gap Relationship.
His criticism of Pynchon's prose, then my favorite author has stuck with me for years. I'd have to find the passage but something to the extent that he had no flow, and when I read him, I think that yeah, this is correct more often than not (of course there are passages of utter subliminity). At least in Gravity's Rainbow and Crying -- though the "beat" style is something I've come around and more lucid than he gives it credit for
Just read this, pretty good. I love Pynchon as well, GR used to be my favorite but I've come around to the idea that there is a certain academic remove there that dates it, all these references to Reich and cybernetics and all these concerns that seem wedded to their time. I think he could have continued in this vein and become more like the other postmodernists Vidal criticizes but I find that his late work feels a lot freer, like Mason & Dixon is just a great novel full stop. I've always felt as if he has endured not only bc he is a great writer but bc he feels to me like a chill stoner guy who just happens to be a genius rather than a cold academician attempting to dissect the form. And I've never got the sense that he had any truck w/ the french theory stuff, though I'm sure he's familiar w/ it.
I loved this piece, it is spot on about Vidal. His cultural and political views are a bizarre cocktail of respectable Cold War era left-liberalism and strains of a deeply unpleasant Henry Adams / H. L. Mencken style conservatism that was so antique that even in the 70s nobody knew what to make of it.
Kissinger popping up in Brown's diaries is also very funny. I thought the best send-off to him was Thomas Meaney in NLR, entitled "Persona Grata." The point to make about Kissinger, at least from from the NLR perspective, isn't that he was uniquely bad but that he was a typical US foreign policy mavin, with his truly stand-out talent being for self-promotion. Part of Meaney's evidence is that everybody wanted him at their parties.
Also, a piece of gossip that not enough people know, which I share at every opportunity. Did you realize that the young Kissinger had an affair with the great Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who now occupies a place in German-language culture roughly equivalent to Sylvia Plath's in the English speaking world? (He was neither famous nor right-wing at the time, but my jaw still drops at the idea of the two of them together.)
https://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2017/12/beauty-and-the-beast-ingeborg-bachmanns-encounters-with-henry-kissinger.html
I had no idea! His seductive abilities are one of the great mysteries of our age.
They were both in their late 20s and the politics were almost the reverse of what you'd think, he was the good kind of German who had had to flee and then came back with the US army, she was a Nazi's daughter (a fact she evidently concealed from him).
Her admirers are sort of embarrassed about the whole business but the only embarrassing thing are his love letters, which grow increasingly plaintive as she looses interest. At one point he calls he "my bizarre poetess." ("When I was in Cambridge the other day, I received the book of poems which you wrote. I think they are extraordinarily sensitive and surprisingly masculine. I don’t know whether you consider that a compliment.")
Excellent piece, also enjoyed both books (and seconding endorsement of Vidal’s “narratives of empire” novels—they’re slyly queer, witty & fun).
As for Vidal’s Clinton takes, and speculative support for Bernie, have also wondered how he might have played 2016. To me, hearing him talk about Hillary, there’s a genuine fondness and solidarity with her privately dark sense of humor in his tone—I *think* he’d have, in his own way, Been With Her.
Yeah like, you're the ultimate gimlet-eyed Washington cynic until it comes to the Clintons of all people? I find it hard to square with his anti-imperialist commitments but who knows.
He was generally on the side of anybody accused of disreputable sex stuff, which during his era tended to make him more right than wrong but probably isn't a very sound basis for a worldview.
This is so good, and totally squares with my own impression of Vidal after dragging home an essay collection from the free library up the block last year: B-plus (but interesting! But never quite interesting enough!) Dunno that I’m ever gonna forgive Tina for what she did to the NYer (who was it that said she “has the same relationship to contemporary letters that William T Sherman did to the state of Georgia?” after she slashed the amount of fiction they published in half?), but I sure wish I’d kept my old copies of Talk magazine. Probably the purest hits of end-of-the-90s zeitgeist ever manufactured
Haha, maybe I overestimated her tenure. I really want to read the Renata Adler book about how much she hates the post-Shawn NYer (maybe it was her?). The reactions here are also hilarious: https://web.archive.org/web/20101201234651/http://www.salon.com/media/1998/07/09media.html
Also obviously he's done an OK job steering the magazine through the collapse of print media but David Remnick seems like kind of a mediocrity to me which doesn't speak well to TB's ability to pick successors. Maybe we just live in mediocre times though.
Oh my God, Renata's book is worth it just to watch her tee off on Adam Gopnik. Her contempt for him (and also for Bob Gottleib) is . . . really something. (How have I never seen those reactions? They're INCREDIBLE.)
Remnick, yeah. I mean . . . it's not a ringing endorsement to say "he's not bad by contemporary standards." He's . . . typical of the age, I'd say. Better than Charles fuckin' McGrath
All right you've convinced me, I have tons to read for both professional and personal obligations but I've put the Renata book on hold.
Her tenure aside one very charming aspect of the TB book is her passion for the Shawn era NYer and the old Vanity Fair. She speaks very lovingly about the freshness and energy of the magazines in the 30s and 40s -- I really want to sit down and dive into the archives of both of those soon, Condé might suck but it's incredible that they've digitized every issue of both.
Oh, yeah. I'll have to check out TB's book. My sense of her is really tainted by a (now-outdated) feeling that she was a Harvey Weinstein-flattering philistine, but by today's standards she probably seems like Shawn herself. I'll have to ask Renata sometime about Remnick. (Or not. She'll probably have a stroke.)
Can't believe I just discovered your newsletter. Clicked when I saw Vidal--I read Point to Point Navigation but always avoided Palimpsest for the exact reason you seem to debunk (and side with): I'm never a fan of childhood writing. Figured Palimpsest was mostly that. Definitely plan to pick it up, based on this.
How was Point to Point Navigation?
Good but kinda death-obsessed. He goes into strangely haunting detail about how he was making a sandwich when Howard dropped dead.
Have you read Jay Parini's memoir-bio about his friendship with Vidal? He talks about Vidal, in his 80s, sitting at home beside a record player for hours, drinking an entire bottle of scotch while sobbing, listening to Howard's LPs on repeat. Apparently almost every post-2003 video you see online of Gore Vidal - he's drunk. He never wanted to play up his love for Austen but he was just totally shattered by the death. I guess it brought up some Jimmy Trimble baggage...
No! Jesus, that sounds pretty rough.
It is! All the more painful because you realize how earnest and vulnerable he was, all those years that he was posing as totally irreverent, unaffected, blase. Still got my fingers crossed they tap someone good for a big Vidal bio any day now...
This was fun. Love reading about the heyday of magazines. And do tell us more about the adventure with your car!