by Gore Vidal
Unfortunately, Miss Sontag’s intelligence is still greater than her talent. What she would do, she cannot do—or at least she has not done in Death Kit, a work not totally structured, not even kind of. Worse, the literary borrowings entirely obscure her own natural talent while the attitudes she strikes confuse and annoy, reminding one of Gide’s weary complaint that there is nothing more unbearable than those writers who assume a tone and manner not their own. In the early part of Death Kit, Miss Sontag recklessly uses other writers in much the same way that certain tribes eat parts of their enemies in the hope that, magically, they may thus acquire the virtues and powers of the noble dead. No doubt the tribesmen do gain great psychological strength through their cannibalizing, but in literature only writers of the rank of Goethe and Eliot can feed promiscuously and brazenly upon the works of other men and gain strength. Yet the coda of Miss Sontag’s novel suggests that once she has freed herself of literature, she will have the power to make it, and there are not many American writers one can say that of.
Book World, September 10, 1967
GORE VIDAL
In the Secret Miracle, Borges remarks of his author-protagonist, “Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performances, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.” This seems to me a sad truth. Even André Gide, when young, used to wonder why it was that strangers could not tell simply by looking into his eyes what a master he would one day be. The artist lives not only with his performances (which he tends to forget), but with his own private view of what he thinks he has done, and most important, what he still plans to do. To the writer of a given book, what exists in print is only a small, perhaps misleading, fraction of the great thing to be accomplished; to the critic, however, it is the thing itself entire. Consequently critic and writer are seldom on the same wavelength.
As it must to all American writers who stay the course, and do not have the luck (sometimes good) to die after a first success, I am now confronted with a volume called Gore Vidal. It is the work of Ray Lewis White, a young professor at the University of North Carolina. For two years he has written me probing letters (sensibly, he never proposed a meeting), examined my papers at the University of Wisconsin, and immersed himself in what is probably, in plain bulk, the largest oeuvre of any contemporary American writer. At all times he has had my sympathy, even awe, as he worked his way through a career that has endured for a quarter century. The result is now at hand, one hundred fifty-seven dense pages, describing and judging ten novels (stopping short of the apocalyptic Myra Breckinridge), four plays and seven short stories. Omitted are the politics, most of the essays, the political journalism, the television writing and performing, and the movie hack work. Omitted, too, is the personal element. There are no revelations. Unlike Mary McCarthy, the Subject (as I shall now be known for modesty’s sake) does not extend confidences to biographers nor, to Mr. White’s credit, were they solicited. He has addressed himself entirely to the work, only bringing in the life as a means to show when and where—if not why—something was written. From this point of view, his book is meticulous and, I would suspect, accurate. Suspect because the Subject has no memory for dates or chronology. As a result, the story of his life unfolds for him like that of a stranger. Even so, the effect is disquieting: what a lot of time the Subject mis-used or simply wasted. And of all that he wrote, how little now seems to him remotely close to what he originally planned and conjectured (but still plans and conjectures!).
Mr. White’s detailed plot outlines of the novels and plays will doubtless not encourage many people to read the original works. Worse, in an age of non-readers, those who like to know about writing without actually reading books will be quite satisfied to skim Mr. White’s study and feel that their duty to the Subject has been more than discharged since it is well known that in any year there is only One Important Novelist worth reading (there is some evidence that the Subject’s year occurred at the end of the 40’s). Yet perhaps it is best to be known only in outline: part of the genius of Borges is the lovely way he evades making books by writing reviews of novels that he has not written, demonstrating not only what he might so perfectly have done but inviting our respect for then not doing it.
Mr. White divides the Subject’s career as novelist into three parts. The first phase was both precocious and prolific. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four (1945-1949), the Subject wrote and published six novels. The first was the war novel Williwaw, still regarded by certain romantics as a peak he was never again to scale. Among the other five novels, only The City and the Pillar, and perhaps A Search for the King, have much interest for anyone today except as paradigms of what was then the national manner: colorless, careful prose, deliberately confined to the surface of things. Then, according to Mr. White, came the second phase and the flowering.
Between 1950 and 1953 the Subject published The Judgment of Paris, Messiah and the short stories in A Thirsty Evil. These works resembled hardly at all the books that had gone before. But unfortunately the Subject was by then so entirely out of fashion that they were ignored. Only gradually did they find an audience. For some years now the paperback edition of Messiah has been much read, particularly on the campuses, and now The Judgment of Paris (“Vidal’s Peacock-like novel-as-dialogue”) is being discovered. But the original failure of these books made it necessary for the Subject to earn a living and so from 1954 to 1961, he wrote plays for television, Broadway, films, as well as criticism and political journalism; concluding his head-on encounter with the world by running for Congress in 1960—all in all, an interesting and profitable decade. But looking over Mr. White’s neat chronology at the beginning of the book, what a waste it now seems. Yet the Subject was having his life if not art; and Strether would have approved. Then, world exhausted, the Subject resumed an interrupted novel about the apostate emperor Julian, and so became a novelist once more, embarked upon his third (and terminal?) phase.
What does Mr. White make of all this? He is cautious, as well he might be; in many quarters his author is still regarded with profound suspicion. He is adroit at demonstrating the recurring themes from book to book. He makes, however, inadequate use of the essays, relying too heavily upon newspaper interviews—usually garbled—or on taped answers to questions in which the Subject has a tendency to sound like General Eisenhower with a hangover. He also betrays his youth when he tries to reconstruct the literary atmosphere in which the books were published. He places In a Yellow Wood (1949) in the company of books by Busch, Heyliger, Burnett and Mayo, who also dealt with the problems of a returned veteran. It may be that these novels were most worthy but they were quite unknown at the time. Lucifer with a Book, That Winter, Barbary Shore were the relevant books everyone read. But then no one has yet captured the sense of excitement of the literary scene in the 40’s. Between VJ day and the beginning of the Korean war, it looked as if we were going to have a most marvelous time in all the arts; and the novel was very much alive, not yet displaced at the vulgar level by movies, at the highest by film.
These complaints registered, Mr. White has written—how for me to put it?—a most interesting book, astonishingly exact in detail and often shrewd in judgment. The series to which it belongs is aimed at a university audience and Mr. White has kept within the bounds prescribed. Here and there one sees the beginning of something extra-academic, but he shows his tact, as one must in dealing with a living author little prone to autobiography. The inner life will come later—inevitably, since all that is apt to be remembered of any mid-20th century author is his life. Novels command neither interest nor affection but writers do, particularly the colorful ones who have made powerful legends of themselves. I suspect that eventually novels will be read only to provide clues to the author’s personality; and once each of his characters has been satisfactorily identified, each of his obsessions duly noted, each key turned in its giving lock, the books may then be put aside for good, lea
ving us with what most concerns this artless time: the story of the author as monster most sacred, the detritus of his life enriched by our fascinated gaze, the gossip of his day our day’s gospel. Of such is the declining kingdom of literature in which Mr. White has staked out with some nicety the wild marches of a border lord.
The New York Times Book Review, September 1, 1968
THE TWENTY-NINTH REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
The dark blue curtains part. As delegates cheer, the nominee walks toward the lectern, arms loose, shoulders somewhat rigid like a man who….No, as Henry James once said in quite a different but no less dramatic context, it cannot be done. What is there to say about Richard M. Nixon that was not said eight years ago? What is there to say that he himself did not say at that memorable “last” press conference in Los Angeles six years ago? For some time he has ceased to figure in the conscious regions of the mind, a permanent resident, one had thought, of that limbo where reside the Stassens and the Deweys and all those other ambitious men whose failures seemed so entirely deserved. But now, thanks to two murders in five years, Richard Nixon is again a presidential candidate. No second acts to American careers? Nonsense. What is lacking are decent codas. At Miami Beach, we were reminded that no politician can ever be written off this side of Arlington.
The week before the convention began, various Republican leaders met at the Fontainebleau Hotel to write a platform, knowing that no matter what wisdom this document might contain it would be ignored by the candidate. Nevertheless, to the extent issues ever intrude upon the making of Presidents, the platform hearings do give publicity to different points of view, and that is why Ronald Reagan took time from his busy schedule as Governor of California to fly to Miami Beach in order to warn the platform committee of the dangers of crime in the streets. The Governor also made himself available to the flower of the national and international press who sat restively in a windowless low-ceilinged dining room of the Fontainebleau from two o’clock to two-thirty to “just a short wait, please, the Governor is on his way,” interviewing one another and trying to look alert as the television cameras, for want of a candidate, panned from face to face. At last, His Excellency, as Ivy Baker Priest would say, entered the room, flanked by six secret servicemen. As they spread out on either side of him, they cased us narrowly and I knew that simply by looking into my face they could see the imaginary gun in my pocket.
Ronald Reagan is a well-preserved not young man. Close-to, the painted face is webbed with delicate lines while the dyed hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes contrast oddly with the sagging muscle beneath the as yet unlifted chin, soft earnest of wattle-to-be. The effect, in repose, suggests the work of a skillful embalmer. Animated, the face is quite attractive and at a distance youthful; particularly engaging is the crooked smile full of large porcelain-capped teeth. The eyes are interesting: small, narrow, apparently dark, they glitter in the hot light, alert to every move, for this is enemy country—the liberal Eastern press who are so notoriously immune to that warm and folksy performance which Reagan quite deliberately projects over their heads to some legendary constituency at the far end of the tube, some shining Carverville where good Lewis Stone forever lectures Andy Hardy on the virtues of thrift and the wisdom of the contract system at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The questions begin. Why don’t you announce your candidacy? Are you a candidate? Why do people feel you will take votes away from George Wallace? Having answered these questions a hundred times before, the actor does not pause to consider his responses. He picks up each cue promptly, neatly, increasing the general frustration. Only once does the answer-machine jam. “Do you want to be President?” The room goes silent. The smile suddenly looks to have been drawn in clay, fit for baking in a Laguna kiln. Then the candidate finds the right button. He pushes it. We are told what an honor it is for any citizen to be considered for the highest office on earth….We stop listening; he stops listening to himself.
“Governor, even though you’re not a candidate, you must know that there is a good deal of support for you….” The questioner’s irony is suitably heavy. Reagan’s lips purse—according to one biographer this is a sign he is displeased; there was a good deal of lip-pursing during the conference not to mention the days to come. “Well,” he speaks through pursed lips, “I’d have to be unconscious not to know what was going on but….” As he continues the performance, his speech interlarded with “my lands” (for some reason Right Wingers invariably talk like Little Orphan Annie), I recalled my last glimpse of him, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco four years ago. The Reagans were seated in a box, listening to Eisenhower. While Mrs. Reagan darted angry looks about the hall (displeased at the press?), the star of Death Valley Days was staring intently at the speaker on the platform. Thus an actor prepares, I thought, and I suspected even then that Reagan would some day find himself up there on the platform: as the age of television progresses, the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. “Thank you, Governor,” said a journalist, and everyone withdrew, leaving Ronald Reagan with his six secret servicemen—one black, a ratio considerably better than that of the convention itself where only two percent could claim Africa as motherland.
* * *
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Seventy-second Street beach is a gathering place for hustlers of all sexes. With some bewilderment, they watch one of their masters, the Chase Manhattan Bank made flesh—sweating flesh—display his wounds to the sandy and the dull, a Coriolanus but in reverse, one besotted with the vulgar. In shirtsleeves but firmly knotted tie, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller stands on a platform crowded with officials and aides (most seriously crowded by the Governor of Florida, Claude Kirk, who wears a bright orange sports jacket and a constant smile for his people, who regard him, the few who know who he is, with bright loathing). Ordinarily Rockefeller’s face is veal-white, as though no blood courses beneath that thick skin. But now, responding to the lowering day, he has turned a delicate conch pink. What is he saying? “Well, let’s face it, there’s been some disagreement among the pollsters.” The upper class tough boy accent (most beautifully achieved by Montgomery Clift in The Heiress) proves effective even down here where consonants are disdained and vowels long. Laughter from the audience in clothes, bewildered looks from the hustlers in their bathing suits. “Like, man, who is it?”
“But now Harris and Gallup have agreed that I can beat—” Rockefeller quotes at length from those polls which are the oracles of our day, no, the very gods who speak to us of things to come. Over and over again, he says, “Let’s face it,” a phrase popular twenty years ago, particularly among girls inclined to alcoholism (“the Governor drinks an occasional Dubonnet on the rocks before dinner,” where did I read that?). Beside him stands his handsome wife, holding a large straw hat and looking as if she would like to be somewhere else, no loving Nancy Reagan or loyal Pat Nixon she. The convention is full of talk that there has been trouble between them. Apparently….One of the pleasures of American political life is that, finally, only personalities matter. Is he a nice man? Is she happy with him? What else should concern a sovereign people?
Rockefeller puts down the polls, takes off his glasses, and starts to attack the Administration. “Look at what they’re doing,” he says with a fine vehemence. “They’re exhilarating the war!” But although Rockefeller now sounds like a peace candidate, reprising Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, he has always been devoted to the war in Vietnam and to the principle underlying it: American military intervention wherever “freedom is endangered.” Consequently—and consistently—he has never found any defense budget adequate. Two years ago at a dinner in New York, he was more hawk than Johnson as he told us how the Viet Cong were coldbloodedly “shooting little mayors” (the phrase conjured up dead ponies); mournfully, he shook his head, “Why can’t they learn to fight fair?” Nevertheless, compared to Nixon and Reagan, Rockefeller is positively Lincolnesque. All of us on 72nd Street Beach liked him, except perhaps the hustlers wanting to s
core, and we wished him well, knowing that he had absolutely no chance of being nominated.
* * *
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By adding the third character to tragedy, Sophocles changed the nature of drama. By exalting the chorus and diminishing the actors, television has changed entirely the nature of our continuing history. Watching things as they happen, the viewer is a part of events in a way new to man. And never is he so much a part of the whole as when things do not happen, for, as Andy Warhol so wisely observed, people will always prefer to look at something rather than nothing; between plain wall and flickering commercial, the eyes will have the second. As hearth and fire were once center to the home or lair so now the television set is the center of modern man’s being, all points of the room converge upon its presence and the eye watches even as the mind dozes, much as our ancestors narcotized themselves with fire.