I have linked the titles in this blog to the new catalog. I also added a video of an interview with Gore Vidal to the Imperial America record. You can see the video under "Community Activity ". The section on the left-hand side of the new catalog titled Recent Videos highlights this new feature.
Gore Vidal left behind a shelf of books: 25 novels, including Myra Breckinridge, Lincoln, Julian, and Burr. He wrote witty plays, numerous screenplays, short stories, gossipy memoirs, and essays collected in volume after volume.
He was admired as an independent thinker - in the tradition of Mark Twain - about literature, culture, politics and, as he liked to call it, "the birds and the bees." He picked apart politicians, living and dead; mocked self-righteousness and prudery; opposed wars from Vietnam to Iraq, and insulted his peers, once observing that the three saddest words in the English language were "Joyce Carol Oates."
Many readers’ fascination with Vidal starts when they get a hold of his United States: Essays 1952–1992 (Vidal has also called it the United States of Amnesia). Vidal writes of the American ascent to world power and the descent of American intellect. He maintained that the American constitution is the work of four geniuses who have since not been seen in the country. I learned my American history from him. He introduced me to Lincoln, another human being Mr. Vidal seems to be in awe of. However, in his other historical fiction, Vidal lampooned revered figures as grasping opportunists: He loved Jeffersonian democracy but had no illusions about Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton got what was coming. Theodore Roosevelt started an unnecessary war to prove he wasn’t a sissy. In his American history cycle (six novels), he emphasizes that poorly informed US politicians frequently translate domestic interests into foreign policy and ride roughshod over the rest of the world. With Gore Vidal's death, the world of letters has lost a valuable voice. He was known and appreciated world-wide. As he said: "There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would do simply as I advise."
