Gore Vidal Biography

American Novelist, Essayist and Playwright, Famous for Essays

Oct 4, 2008
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Gore Vidal, American Novelist and Essayist - Wikimedia Commons

Brief biography of Gore Vidal, American author, dramatist and essayist of the Post-Modernist literary movement, noted for early novel The City and the Pillar

American writer Gore Vidal is best known for his many satirical essays primarily about politicians and politics. He is author of many novels, including Washington, D.C. (1967) and Duluth: A Novel (1983), a satire of the TV show Dallas, and an early novel, The City and the Pillar that deals with homosexuality, controversial that time. He is also known for his plays Visit to a Small Planet and The Best Man.

Early Life of Gore Vidal

Eugene Luther Vidal Jr. was born on October 3, 1925, at the military academy in West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal and Nina Gore. His father was an aeronautics instructor. He spent much of his childhood in Washington, D.C., with his maternal grandfather Thomas Gore, Democratic senator from Oklahoma, a witty and scholarly man from whom he adopted the name Gore and learned a lot about political life.

In 1943, during World War II, at the age of 18, Vidal served on an army supply ship in the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska. This experience became the background of his first novel, Williwaw, published to critical acclaim when he was only 21.

Vidal and Homosexual Work

Two years later, his writing career suffered a setback when his novel The City and the Pillar was published. The novel, which deals with homosexuality, was classified too controversial at that time. It is about a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. He continued writing and he also found additional work as a television dramatist and political commentator.

Novelist and diarist Anais Nin claimed an involvement with Gore Vidal in her The Diary of Anais Nin, but he denied the relationship in his Palimpsest: A Memoir.

Gore Vidal's Historical and Christian Themes

In 1960 Gore Vidal ran for congress and lost. He returned to writing novels in which many of his characters are real historical figures. For instance, Julian depicts the Roman emperor's struggle against the new Christian religion during the fourth century AD. Lincoln is a carefully researched novel about the former president Abraham Lincoln, a part of a series of novels about American history. In Live from Golgotha, Vidal portrays events in the Bible as though they are being reported on television.

Vidal also recollects his early life and his friendship with top American leaders and politicians, among them, President John F. Kennedy's family. He included this in his Palimpsest: A Memoir.