Writer Gore Vidal, who filled his novels and essays with acerbic observations on politics, sex and American culture while carrying on feuds with big-name literary rivals, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of complications from pneumonia. He was 86.
Vidal’s literary legacy includes a series of historical novels - “Burr,” “1876,” “Lincoln” and “The Golden Age” among them - as well as the campy transsexual comedy “Myra Breckinridge”.
He started writing as a 19-year-old soldier stationed in Alaska, basing “Williwaw” on his World War II experiences. His third book, “The City and the Pillar,” created a sensation in 1948 because it was one of the first open portrayals of a homosexual main character.
Confirming his death, his official website posted a memoriam with two pictures of Vidal, one as a young military warrant officer during WW II and another as the iconoclastic writer he would become.
He referred to himself as a “gentleman bitch” and was as egotistical and caustic as he was elegant and brilliant.
In addition to rubbing shoulders with the great writers of his time, he banged heads with many of them. Vidal considered Ernest Hemingway a joke and compared Truman Capote to a “filthy animal that has found its way into the house”.
His most famous literary enemies were conservative pundit William F Buckley Jr and writer Norman Mailer, who Vidal once likened to cult killer Charles Manson.
Eugene Luther Vidal Jr was born on October 3, 1925 in West Point, New York, and eventually took his mother’s surname as his first name. He grew up in Washington, where his grandfather, Democratic US Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, had a strong influence on the boy. The young Vidal developed an interest in politics as he read to the blind senator and led him about town. A distant cousin is former US Vice President Al Gore.
Vidal also was known for his sharp essays on society, sex, literature and politics. He was fervent about politics.
In 1960 Vidal ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in New York and in 1982 failed in a bid for a California Senate seat.