From the
Common Courage Press:
From the cousin of both Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, Gore Vidal’s The American Presidency is a how-to manual on the twin tasks of empire building and hiding the resulting moral decay.
Vidal provides a series of portraits of American presidents designed to give a unique twist to the understanding of history:
Of the Constitutional Convention, which was actually a meeting of landowners frantic to prevent both monarchy and true democracy, establishing instead something they all agreed on: “the best sort of government for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men of property to do business.”
Of George Washington, the man who acquired “his fortune in the most honest way — he married it.”
Of Jefferson, who owned several of his children who were born to his slaves: “Flashing forward to today, it makes one wonder just what Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr is so upset about concerning the current president — whose middle name is also Jefferson.”
From Lincoln, who assumed dictatorial powers during the Civil War, to Teddy Roosevelt, who Vidal calls the rhetorical precursor to Mussolini, the underpinnings of the ruthless reasons of state are starkly — and entertainingly — exposed.
See also:
The Plutocratic Presidency, 1789 – Present Day:
Commentary on the subject matter in The American Presidency.
About the Author
 photo by Stathis Orphanos |
Gore Vidal was born on October 3rd, 1925 in West Point, New York, where his father was an aeronautics instructor. His grandfather was Thomas Pryor Gore, the populist senator from Oklahoma. Vidal graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in 1943 and then joined the U.S. Army at the age of 17, serving during World War II.
The author of 22 novels, five plays and numerous essays, articles and reviews, Vidal wrote his first novel at the age of 19 and was widely hailed as a young genius. Many of his subsequent novels have been number-one best-sellers, and his writing is said to have remained in top form for all this past half-century. If anything, he has gotten better with time.
While Gore Vidal is world-famous for his writing in general, he is particularly loved and respected for his courageously outspoken criticism of the predatory American Empire. Many consider his political essays to be his most important writing, but the consensus is that all of it is good: full of eloquent, humorous, insightful analysis of American society, history and politics.
Vidal is noted for such novels as Myra Breckenridge (1968), in which he lampooned contemporary sexuality and American culture. When asked in an interview about the gender of his first sexual encounter, he said: “It was dark and I was too polite to ask.”
Having thoroughly overcome such verbal inhibitions in the intervening years, he has, since the early 1950s, written screenplays for Hollywood and plays for live T.V., made numerous film cameos, spoken on T.V. talk shows, and given speeches before many an appreciative audience. (The unappreciative ones have minds mass-produced by the corporate mass-media.)
In addition to his literary career, Vidal has twice run for office. In 1960, he was a candidate for Congress in upstate New York, where he got the most votes in his district of any Democrat in half a century. Running for the U.S. Senate in the 1982 Democratic primary in California, he received half a million votes and finished second in a field of nine.
In 1982, Vidal won an American Book Critics Circle Award for his collection of essays, The Second American Revolution.
Major written works
Essay Collections
The Last Empire
2001
From the Foreword (mysteriously removed from the published edition):“I am writing this note a dozen days before the Inauguration of the loser of the year 2000 presidential election. Lost republic as well as last empire.
“We are now faced with a Japanese seventeenth-century-style arrangement: a powerless Mikado ruled by a shogun vice president and his Pentagon warrior counselors. Do they dream, as did the shoguns of yore, of the conquest of China? We shall know more soon, I should think, than late. Sayonara.”
Gore Vidal
11 January 2001Excerpt:
“Shredding the Bill of Rights”
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/v/01vida.html
The American Presidency
1998
Virgin Islands
1992-1997
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
1986-1992
United States
1952-1992
Screening History
1992
A View from the Diners Club
1991
At Home
1988
Armageddon?
1983-1987
Vidal in Venice
1985
The Second American Revolution
1976-1982
Sex Is Politics and Vice Versa
1979
Matters of Fact and Fiction
1977
Homage to Daniel Shays
1952-1972
Sex, Death and Money
1969
Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship
1969
From the Preface:“I have selected a title which seems to me altogether apt this bright savage spring with Martin Luther King dead and now Robert Kennedy. The fact that these deaths occurred at a time when the American empire was sustaining a richly deserved defeat in Asia simply makes for added poignancy, if not tragedy.”
Rocking the Boat
1951-1962
Novels
Williwaw
1946
In a Yellow Wood
1947
The City and the Pillar
1948
The Season of Comfort
1949
A Search for the King
1950
Dark Green, Bright Red
1950, revised 1968
Ballantine Publishing Group (October 1986)
ISBN 0-345-33457-4
Dark Green, Bright Red is Vidal’s first novel to explore the fact that the United States is an imperialistic predator among nations. It was based on personal experience. He lived for awhile in Guatemala, and the novel uncannily presages the bloody CIA-engineered overthrow of the democratically elected, progressive Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.
The “Dark Green” in the title refers to American money power, and “Bright Red” refers to the bloodshed of American state terrorism and popular rebellion, and also the alternative of communism.
The Judgement of Paris
1952, revised 1961
Messiah
1954
Messiah is another prophetic novel. It illustrates the power of the mass-media to brainwash people by the millions.
Julian
1964
Washington, D.C.
1967
Myra Breckinridge
1968
Two Sisters
1970
Burr
1973
Myron
1975
1876
1976
Kalki
1978
Creation
1981
Duluth
1983
This satire of American culture (or the lack thereof) is one of Vidal’s personal favorites.
Lincoln
1984
Empire
1987
The title refers to the American Empire, baptized in the blood of 200,000 Philippine men, women and children, from 1899 to 1902. The novel deals mainly with sordid intrigues among the American ruling-class of that era.
Hollywood
1990
Live from Golgotha
1992
The Smithsonian Institution
1998
The Golden Age
2000
Autobiography
Palimpsest: A Memoir
1995
Interviews
Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal
1980
Interview of Vidal by Harry Kloman
1991
Short Stories
Three Strategems
1950
A Thirsty Evil
1956
Plays
An Evening with Richard Nixon And...
1972
Tricky Dick meets George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Adlai Steventon, Spiro T. Agnew, Gloria Steinem, Harry S Truman, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Hubert H. Humphrey, Martha Mitchell, Nikita Khrushchev, Lt. William “Babykiller” Calley and many others. A satire of American political corruption.
Weekend
1968
Romulus
1962
On the March to the Sea
1960-61
The Best Man
1960
Visit to a Small Planet
1957
Related sites
Excerpt from The Last Empire:
“Shredding the Bill of Rights”
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/v/01vida.html
A foreword by Gore Vidal to the book:
Money and Politics: Financing Our Elections Democratically
http://www.tompaine.com/features/1999/11/02/
The Gore Vidal Index
http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/vidalframe.html
Gore Vidal Reader:
books, interviews, reviews, sites, discussions
http://www.coolmemes.com/reader/vidal.htm
IN DEFENSE OF GORE VIDAL
His take on McVeigh arouses neocons’ wrath
by Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j050901.html
Related pages
The Plutocratic Presidency, 1789 – Present Day
Commentary on the subject matter in The American Presidency.
Solutions: American Revolution 2 and a Humane Future of International Socialist Democracy
Thomas Jefferson Calling: The Time for Revolution is NOW
by John Kaminski
Civil Disobedience and Tax Resistance
The two-headed, two-faced American plutocracy
Revealing Quotes 2: Corporate Capitalist Plutocracy
Corporations Have a Chokehold on the U.S. Media
Our Hidden History: Corporations in America
The Corporate Domination of American Culture and Politics
Related books
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Against Empire
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Lies My Teacher Told Me:
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Market Elections:
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Democracy for the Few
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What Uncle Sam Really Wants
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Dumbing Us Down:
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Killing Hope:
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Western State Terrorism
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Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
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Pressure Drop Press, 1991
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
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The Culture of Terrorism
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The Beast Reawakens
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Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
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The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
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Deadly Deceits:
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The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
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Toxic Sludge is Good for You!:
Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
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War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors