P 056 INTERVIEW W-NS GORE VIDAL A-DW THE OUTRAGER The Stop Smiling Interview with Gore Vidal BY NILE SOUTHERN PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN WINTERS “We are beyond law, which is not unusual for an empire. Unfortunately, we are also beyond common sense.” — Gore Vidal, 2007 Gore Vidal is seething. His outrage is genuine, his dismay com- Vidal stands between many worlds: his Washington “insider” plete. In an age when anyone with a laptop can share, lob or world (a grandfather in the Senate, family links to Jackie O and otherwise spew their instant opinions on politics, sexuality, war Al Gore), his heavy-duty literary world (Lewis Lapham, Italo and America’s raison d’être, one pines for the eloquent, reasoned, Calvino, Anäis Nin, Kenneth Tynan, Paul Bowles and my father, take-no-prisoners prose that is Vidal’s trademark. Indeed, Gore Terry Southern, to name a few), and the film world (Paul Vidal has spoken out with informed, blistering vitriol on Newman, Tom Hanks, Grace Kelly, Orson Welles). Such lineage America’s devolution into “a seedy empire led by frat boys,” puts him in a regal cultural position from which to hurl literary and has asserted himself as America’s most uncompromising bricks at the Establishment — and to do so with credibility and critic. His outrage borders on the outrageous: He has often perfect pitch. Vidal has written over 20 novels and hundreds of called for reconvening the Continental Congress — which orig- essays, prompting John Keates to pronounce him the 20th inally gathered in 1774 to respond to the “Intolerable Acts” century’s “finest essayist.” The Boston Globe declared him instituted by Britain against America. America’s “greatest living man of letters.” Not since Montaigne, creator of the “essai” form, has a writer so As novelist, screenwriter, playwright and essayist, Vidal has artfully displayed such insights on human nature — using a free- produced an impressive range of work. His breakthrough novel, wheeling mélange of historical allusions, classical Greek and The City and the Pillar (1949), was considered scandalous for Roman texts and personages to shape his arguments. Recently, its naturalistic portrayal of homosexual characters. An unforgiving in the tradition of Tom Paine’s Common Sense essays, Vidal New York Times refused to review his next five novels, prompt- has written “counterrevolutionary” pamphlets with titles such ing Vidal to pursue screenwriting in Hollywood, where he as “It’s Time to Take Action Against Our Wars on the Rest of worked on such films as Ben-Hur, Suddenly, Last Summer and the World” (Counterpunch) and “The Enemy Within” (The Is Paris Burning? His hit transsexual comedy Myra Breckinridge Observer). Indeed, since the Bush administration’s reaction to (1968) sparked a renewed flurry of literary output, including a 9/11, Vidal has been documenting the “collapse of the Republic” series of satirical novels that included Myron (1974) and wildly in a series of books: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How dystopic visions such as Duluth (1983) and the hilarious Live We Got To Be So Hated (2002), Dreaming War: Blood for Oil from Golgotha (1992). and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002) and Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004). Some of Vidal’s life’s work has been the telling of America’s “narrative of his essays have been censored in the US. One of them, “The End empire” from its inception until the present, offering an histori- of Liberty,” was written for (and killed by) Vanity Fair. In that article, cally informed, often jaundiced view of many of the republic’s Vidal concludes: “The awesome physical damage Bin Laden most cherished leaders. His efforts to correct historical misper- and company did us on Dark Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties,” and that “the Bush administration, though eerily inept in all but its principal P 057 Gore Vidal in Hollywood, CA 2006 task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes, has casually torn up most of the treaties to which civilized nations subscribe.” P 058 INTERVIEW W-NS GORE VIDAL A-DW ceptions have advanced on a variety of fronts: through his Gore Vidal: Everything is breaking up now in the country. And historical novels (which some call the “American Chronicles”), I don’t know how it could have happened, unless there is such including Washington, D.C. (1967), Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), a mood of disgust in the land. This is not the country I was Lincoln (1984), Empire (1987), Hollywood (1990) and concluding brought up in. with The Golden Age in 2000; his prodigious essay writing, public talks and radio addresses, and his appearances in documen- SS: Martin Luther King once said that America was the “greatest tary films, including Why We Fight, Inside Deep Throat and The purveyor of violence in the world today.” Do you think this kind U.S. vs. John Lennon. Master of deadpan, Vidal appeared in of apparently random shooting is an effect of war waged in the Bob Roberts as a senator, and in Family Guy — as himself. name of “freedom”? Point to Point Navigation, a follow-up to his 1995 memoir, GV: Well, it’s a very strange country. There’s no template for Palimpsest, is an immensely readable account of a life lived what the United States has become. I mean, after all, what is it knowing the movers, shakers and history makers of 20th century based on? Consumerism. After 9/11, the president says “keep arts, letters and government: From Charles Lindbergh to “Fred” on shopping, keep on shopping” — keep the coffers filling with Fellini, from JFK to Eleanor Roosevelt, many of the most valu- your hard-earned money. And what is consumerism based on? able players of the last century walk on and off Gore’s lively Advertising. What is advertising? Deliberate untruths designed mindscreen — and if Gore doesn’t know them, he has them to get you to buy something. And it is applicable, of course, to pegged. Vidal’s elegant and astute character studies (and the selling of candidates. assassinations) sum up lives with a savvy, world-weary elo- quence. From castles in Rome to the halls of power in SS: What do you make of the differences, if any, among the Congress and royal Ascot lawn parties, Vidal gives us his pro- current candidates? foundly witty, and often moving perspective on those with beauty and power. About Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess GV: Some are brighter than others, but my God, you have to Margaret, whom Gore adored, he describes her reading aloud parse them pretty hard to find any concrete meaning in any- a “graphic” passage from his novel Duluth: thing they say. The best McCain can do, like Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush — the best he can do is: “If we don’t fight them over As PM shut the book, she said, “I don’t know what there is there, we’ll have to fight them here!” This is such a palpable lie! in me that is so low and base, that I love this book.” I can How are they going to get here? There is no Greyhound bus answer that now that years and death have separated us: that can go over the Atlantic Ocean that I know of. She was far too intelligent for her station in life. She often had bad press, the usual fate of wits in a literal society. SS: I much prefer what your grandfather said, “I shall not rob your children’s cradles …” Vidal also reflects on his own personal absurdities, as in his memory of film producer Sam Spiegel, for whom Vidal wrote GV: “… to feed the dogs of war!” It needs a Mississippi accent. (with Tennessee Williams) Suddenly, Last Summer: SS: Speaking of war profiteering, you’ve been writing a lot Everyone asked why I did a second film since with Spiegel about the Bush administration. What are your latest thoughts there was always trouble about payment or credit or both. on Bush’s legacy? My cheerful response was, “I couldn’t believe it the first time.” Also, I had grown morbidly fond of Sam with his GV: I did a play on Broadway called Romulus the Great. He was vast appetite for food and hookers. the last Roman emperor, and he becomes emperor of Rome in order to liquidate it. Perhaps W has a secret plan, like Romulus. Vidal has lived for much of his life in Los Angeles and, until the Perhaps, by appointing someone who hates the UN to the UN death of his partner Howard Austen five years ago, in Ravello, in order to destroy it, someone not competent to run the World Italy. Tucked away in one of the oldest of Hollywood’s hills, Bank, like Wolfowitz. As he goes about these selections, which, Gore sits up in his grand drawing room, a vast low table yawn- one by one, wreck the Constitution, and as he fights an illegal ing before him, bedecked with books, magazines and foreign war in order to wreck the American Army, which is what’s hap- editions of his work. Couches and chairs fan out around him — pening. I speak now as somebody born at West Point and, like furniture that has seated many a guest — in Italy as well as most people connected to the military, I like nothing about what Tinseltown. Sometimes the phone rings and he’ll pick it up he’s doing. No, it is a royal mess. And I’m just saying there is mid-interview, often helping out some author with a publisher behind it, as there was in Romulus, a small intelligence, longing — or vice versa.