Posted on 11/25/2013 3:01:49 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Aside from being an essayist, novelist and screenwriter, Gore Vidal was a grade-one gossip, his published writings and private conversation stuffed with rumour and conspiratorial hints. But now, less than 18 months after Vidal passed into history, he is himself subject to the most reputation-destructive scuttlebutt there is: the suggestion that he may have been a paedophile.
In connection with a new book about Vidal, his half-sister and a nephew have hinted that he may have had a secret passion for underage boys. And Vidal more or less admitted it himself, writing in his memoir Palimpsest that he was "attracted to adolescent males".
Given this context, an incident in 1977 will also now bring literary cops running. Martin Amis, interviewing Vidal for the Observer, was required to give him copy approval, and was asked to change Amis's description of "homosexual" to "pansexual". Vidal was prissily fastidious about the meaning of words and his suggested substitution can be taken as a confession that nothing and no one was erotically off-limits.
A sexual dirt file allegedly kept by one of Vidal's many enemies, the late conservative thinker William Buckley, is said to have been thrown away after Buckley's death, and so definitive proof will be tricky. It also seems odd that no one claiming to be a victim has come forward, especially as Vidal left an estate of $37m (£23m) – a possible source of ire from his relatives, as he bequeathed the lot to Harvard University, where he had never studied, rather than them....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
IIRC, only living people can receive Nobel Prizes.
He was a spoiled rich kid who looked down on ordinary Americans especially Christians and Conservatives.
When ABC News placed him on the same set as William F. Buckley during the 1968 Democratic Convention, Gore Vidal famously called him a crypto-Nazi. Buckley responded on the air, “Listen you fag, call me a crypto-Nazi again and I'll smash you in the Goddamn face and you will stay plastered.”
This was a time when Conservatives stood up for themselves and their principles.
In one debate I heard William f Buckley call Vidal to his face an “intellectual cow” and when asked a question about Vidal at an interview Buckley said “Vidal? Oh, you mean that fag?”
Gore Vidal was another poor little rich kid sent off to private schools where he probably was held down and violated. People need to think twice before they have their children warehoused because the can’t be bothered.
They will soon be required reading in the Core Curriculum.
I don’t know if that matters for Democrats. They sure votealot when dead.
They’ll probably issue a postage stamp in his honor.
“With the exception of the last few decades, the norm for homosexual behavior around the world and throughout history has been between an adolescent male and an older man.”
This is still the norm. It has not changed in the last few decades.
Homosexuals prefer younger partners. They sometimes settle for older ones as a last resort.
The play The Vagina Monologues detailed a relationship between an adult lesbian and a 12 year old girl.
This has been openly discussed for some time. I remember a line from one of Jonah Goldberg’s columns about ten years ago to the effect that “I have been busier than a Nicaraguan cabana boy at a Gore Vidal pool party.”
How come all these worthless bastards end up rich?
Fairly easy to get rich once you’ve sold your soul.
Share the wealth?
Old Gore liked to go to Thailand to go motorcycle riding with young boys. Sometimes, he would get behind the boy and ride, and sometimes the boy would get behind Gore and ride and sometimes they’d even get on the motorcycle.
Relatives are contesting Vidal's final will leaving everything to Harvard, alleging that he wasn't sane when he wrote it.
And indeed, if you didn't actually go to Harvard thinking that they'd actually need your money more than anyone else would is pretty crazy.
Vidal feared Buckley kept a file on his activities, and Christopher Buckley relates finding a file on Vidal in his father's belongings after WFB died and throwing it out without looking inside.
Other Vidal friends -- did he actually have any and manage to keep them? -- dispute that he had sex with minors. Vidal wasn't just strange or queer. He was strange and queer in very, very strange and queer ways. Anything too straightforward said about him probably is only a small part of the truth.
NO WAY!!!
Wise response, you.
Well, he couldn't take it with him. After reading what I've just read, my guess is he's going to freak when he finds out he can't buy his way out of hell.
LOL!
bump
Like arguing a forest cannot be called trees
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