She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor Clark Gable. Nina Gore Vidal then was married two more times to Hugh D. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr., and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann. Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in Feldkirch, Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to the U.S. was a founder or executive of three airline companies: the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines), Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines), Northeast Airlines. Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon, and coach of the U.S. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team and an all-American basketball player. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. was director (1933–1937) of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, and was also the great love of the aviator Amelia Earhart. I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. : xix He later said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him, although he had a great influence on my life." : 4 In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader. The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed " at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal". Albans school, where Vidal attended preparatory school. Vidal was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of St. then Gore was added at my christening then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names." : 401 In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". Army officer, was then serving as the first aeronautics instructor at the military academy.
Vidal was born there because his father, a U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina S. Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. : 94–100 In Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), each protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States.
In social satire, Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability of gender roles and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. Julian was the Roman emperor who attempted to re-establish Roman polytheism to counter Christianity. In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. His style of narration evoked the time and place of his stories, and delineated the psychology of his characters. and Norman Mailer.Īs a novelist, Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazines. As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's primary focus was the history and society of the United States, especially how a militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. Senator, Vidal was born into an upper-class political family.
Senate (for California).Ī grandson of a U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. He twice sought office-unsuccessfully-as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal ( / v ɪ ˈ d ɑː l/ born Eugene Louis Vidal, Octo– July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner.