Gore Vidal

by Fred Kaplan

  Earlier in the year Gore had shaken hands on the purchase of a villa in Positano, but the offer of sale had been withdrawn. Other properties came to their attention—a Venetian villa, an estate in Perugia, a villa on Elba owned by some anciently distant relative, Sir Ralph Gore. One or the other of the usual obstacles aborted each of these. The possibility of buying Mona and Eddie Bismarck’s villa on Capri was discussed and dismissed as impractical. Then, in September 1971, Howard spotted a classified advertisement in Rome’s II Messaggero for a house called La Rondinaia, “The Swallow’s Nest,” in Ravello on the Amalfi coast. “I located it by pure accident … having known that Gore wanted a place in the country. He felt constrained in Rome. I don’t know why. You move from America to go to Italy and then find that Rome is confining and you want a place in the country. But there it is.” Gore recalled that in 1948 he and Tennessee had gone up from nearby Amalfi to Ravello in Williams’s jeep. Ever afterward he had retained in his memory as one of the most beautiful vistas he had ever seen the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea from the belvedere of the Cimbrone, an estate that dominated the entire top of the mountain between the town of Ravello and the sharp thousand-foot descent to sea level. It had been created in the late nineteenth century by an Englishman, Lord Grimthorpe, a large, handsome house with vast ornamental gardens and decorative statuary. At his death Grimthorpe had bequeathed most of the estate to his son and a smaller piece of property of about ten acres on the lower western side in the shape of an irregular triangle to his daughter, Lucy Frost, who proceeded to have La Rondinaia built at its southwestern edge. On a nasty late-autumn day Howard, alone, went down to Ravello and saw the house for the first time. As he walked the quarter of a mile from the piazza to the house, with a vista of the sea and the distant hills to his left, a long cypress alley to his right, he intuitively felt, without even having seen the house, that Gore would want it. “When I first walked in through that gate and I saw the amount of land, I thought to myself, ‘Gore’s going to love it. It doesn’t matter what the house looks like.’”

  When Gore came down from Rome with Howard and George Armstrong and saw it, he did. But there were obstacles. The house itself—which had been completed after five years of construction in 1925, built in the Saracen style, one length of the building at the edge of the cliff with magnificent views, the other side against the cliff rising behind it, on three levels, with four bedrooms, a flowing, graceful interior design, and numbers of terraces—needed attention. During the war it had served as a convalescent home for British officers. The plumbing was dismal, the windows bad. The house could be used only in mild weather; access was difficult. The current owners, retired Italian businesspeople who lived in Rome and used it only for the summer, were eager to sell. Their aging legs made getting to the house difficult. Actually a private and level road went directly from the town square, where cars could be parked, to the house, though it was a long walk. But part of the road went across property that did not belong to La Rondinaia. The lady of La Rondinaia had had a falling-out with the lady of the private road. To get to the house, the owners of La Rondinaia had to take the only alternate route, which involved climbing steep flights of steps. Grand Italian families would not conceive of walking such a distance and over a hill. Consequently the house had been on the market for seven years. Like Edgewater, La Rondinaia came with a liability that drove down the price. The entire property, which included two agricultural terraces, was for sale for 1 billion lire. Though it was sparsely furnished, everything within came with the house. Two additional terraces, for lemon and olive groves, added another 60 million lire, in all about $272,000. Gore could pay cash. There would be no mortgage, which anyway would have been difficult for an American to get for Italian property. Early in 1972 La Rondinaia was his. He had, again and at last, what he felt was a home. In June they drove the heavily loaded old Jaguar down to Ravello. From the piazza they excitedly walked over the flights of steps until they arrived on the road level with the house. The luggage would be carried by young men from the town, happy to have employment. To the left the great sea stretched southward to Graecia Minor. To the right the cypress trees sparkled in the sun.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The View from La Rondinaia

  1972-1978

  On a splendid June day in 1972, as Gore Vidal looked out from his study at La Rondinaia, he saw two white eagles, catching the bright sunlight, turn characteristically golden. Soaring from their cliff habitation into the vista that opened south and westward, they framed themselves like white fire against the sky. As his gaze moved thousands of feet downward to the first point where he could see the water, there were fishing boats and ferries moving across the sea. Years later, each morning so regularly that he could anticipate its passage, an amplified voice from a tourist boat could be heard, saying in a half dozen languages, “There, in Ravello, in his villa, lives the famous American writer, Gore Vidal.” To his right, a stack of yellow legal-size lined sheets covered with his nearly indecipherable scrawl represented one third of the first draft of his novel-in-progress. Conceived as his first synthesis of American history and fiction, Burr began Vidal’s identification in the public mind with the great American revisionist narrative, a look at American history through the eyes of a knowledgeable realist with an analytical overview. Though novels like Myra Breckinridge would speak mainly to his literary reputation and his general notoriety, Burr and the other historical novels that followed made him a household name as a writer in his native country. Most Americans were not interested in literature. Many, though, were interested in their country’s history, which had increasingly become the fiefdom of dry specialists. Less of it was being taught in the schools, and a certain national impoverishment, as Americans became less knowledgeable about their country’s past, became evident. With Julian, a distant subject for modern readers, Vidal had seen the potential of historical fiction. His own mastery of the historical past could be combined with his talent for credible characterization, for vivid contextual evocation, and for driving narrative pace. With Washington, D.C. he had had a taste of the potential. Beginning with Burr he was to realize it over the next twenty years in a series of historical fictions that, like the two eagles over the Ravello cliffs, had moments in which they turned golden.

  Burr had coalesced in his imagination in late 1969 or early 1970, about the time Two Sisters went to press. The Auchincloss connection with the Burr family was in the distant background, particularly since his relationship with his half-sister Nini was at this time as close to a friendship as it would ever be, including their shared antipathy to Nina, with whom Nini kept tenuously in touch. Having sold her Southampton house, Nina had moved to Cuernavaca, where she did little to no drinking. At her best she played bridge competitively. At her worst, her memory failing, increasingly accident-prone, addicted to sleeping pills, she could not keep track of cards, money, or people. Overall, her life still ached with chaos, occasionally almost collapsed. Once beautiful, she hated what she saw in the mirror, an increasingly isolated figure who as always blamed others for her misfortunes. She as often boasted about her successful son as complained about his alienation. With Nini, Gore’s fondness had its frustrations, partly because she was taking so long to write her biography of Senator Gore—which became an unfulfilled lifelong project—mostly because of her own chaotic personal life. Her right-wing Republican politics and Washington clubbiness appalled him. Other than Howard, she was, though, the only family he had. Tommy and he had hardly any relationship. The rest were dead. Cousins and other relatives from the Gore or the Vidal side he had at most occasional contact with. That was that for blood kin, though when Nini gave birth to her third son, whose name celebrated the distant family connection to the Founding Fathers, Gore dedicated his new novel to “my nephews, Ivan, Hugh and Burr.” Other than with Nini, family was essentially historical, a part of his past and America’s history.

  As he worked on Burr from late 1969 to late 1972, his sense of familial i
dentification with America’s past gave to the novel’s characters a group identity and particularity, as if, in fact, each had just walked into the room. This was to be characteristic of all his historical novels, as though he had less difficulty in sustaining the metaphor of an American national family because he had virtually no immediate family in the present. Part of the compelling attraction of Burr was the subtextual inference that in the closeknit world of the Founding Fathers the great leaders were almost familially connected to one another. The effect came from both the vividness with which they were re-created and from the descriptive particularity of historical setting. And the creation of a totally invented narrator, whose unresolved parenthood eventually reveals to character and reader that his father is Aaron Burr himself, provides a fictionally powerful undercurrent, emphasizing the search for family. The invented personal narrative and the historical narrative become thematically inseparable, though Vidal’s mastery of the fictional narrative is matched by his mastery of the historical facts. The library of about two hundred books on Burr and his contemporaries he had bought in Los Angeles and shipped to Ravello he supplemented with standard editions, especially of letters, the obvious ones identified for him by Arthur Schlesinger, whom he had asked for suggestions. That Schlesinger, now holding the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at the City University of New York, was writing a laudatory account of Robert Kennedy’s life did not diminish the cordiality between them. But time and distance, and Vidal’s retrospective view that Schlesinger had been a Kennedy courtier and now was making a profession out of revisionist praise and occasional concealment, attenuated what had once been a friendship.

  Another friendship, also with a professional connection to Burr, had grown closer. Vidal had left Little, Brown for Random House. Little, Brown had treated him handsomely. They had been successful together. Two Sisters had sold poorly. But the previous three novels had been bestsellers, and Gore had found the combination of Arthur Thornhill, Sr., and Ned Bradford particularly effective. His most recent volume of essays, Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, had gone to two printings for a total of 9,000, a handsome sale given the genre, and the author recognized that nothing Little, Brown could have done would have made Two Sisters a bestseller. In fact, its publicity and distribution people had performed well. Little, Brown had recently been purchased by Time Warner, but it still maintained its independence and reputation as a serious trade press especially effective with literary books. Though Arthur Thornhill, Sr.’s, retirement was imminent, the firm was still in good hands.

  “What about our new contract?” Bradford asked Gore at the beginning of 1969. The next month Bradford had on his desk a letter from Jason Epstein: “Is there a chance that you’d let us include Gore Vidal’s Julian in Modern Library?” The answer was yes, as it could not be otherwise, since of course Bradford knew, directly or indirectly, how eager Gore was to be in a series that specialized in canonically great writers. Little, Brown’s remuneration would be small. “On the other hand,” Jason responded, “we very much want Gore in the series and I know that he would like to be there too.” The shrewd Bradford probably saw what was coming. By May, Jason could tell Gore that Julian was set for the next spring. “I must say that I’m delighted that after such coyness we’re doing the book. What shall we do next?” Epstein knew that the Modern Library bait was irresistible. “I wanted Gore as an author right from when I met him. It would be silly not to. Gore said nothing at first and waited. Then I remember,” Epstein recalled, “there was that quid pro quo with Modern Library. Maybe the failure of Two Sisters precipitated the departure from Little, Brown. We never discussed why he was leaving. One day he said he wanted to come to Random House. Something like that. I remember writing him a letter, though, about Modern Library. I would have been delighted to put Julian into Modern Library, but why not get him too?” Jason may have argued that Little, Brown’s location in Boston made it less desirable than Random House. Or that Random House would do a better job with his books. He hardly had to do much direct persuasion. Simply to imply that Modern Library would do more of Vidal’s novels was a powerful lure. In addition, they were friends, though that was never explicitly part of the discussion between 1969 and 1971 that moved Gore toward Random House. Restlessness, drift, the unwillingness to oppose gathering forces, and the latent hope that a new publisher would do more, would have fresh enthusiasm, contributed to his gradual realization that he was allowing himself to be moved. When Gore mentioned that he was contemplating a novel based on the life of Burr, Epstein, whose special interest was history and social science, encouraged him. So too did Bradford. In mid-1970 Little, Brown offered a contract for an academic to do a biographical-critical study of Vidal, an expression of their commitment to their author. “If you don’t think you’ll sustain any loss by such a book, why not?” Gore urged. In spring 1971 Bradford sent the contract “for the Aaron Burr novel together with a supplementary agreement making the accrued royalties,” almost $300,000, “on the previous books available to you in January next year,” to Gore’s accountant, Michael Hecht, Bernard Reiss’s protégé, who had been handling Vidal’s contracts since he had left William Morris. With no word to the contrary, Bradford still proceeded as if Little, Brown were to publish Burr. In June, Roger Straus, having heard from Gore that he had destabilized his relationship with Little, Brown and hoping to persuade him to move to Farrar, Straus, flattered him about his “damned good essay” in The New York Review of Books. “I gather you worked out your LB problems before you took off. Let me know when things break loose, for obviously my interest remains.”

  Bradford was not surprised when finally, in September 1971, Vidal, somewhat guiltily, broke the news. “My dear Gore,” he responded, “naturally I was saddened by your letter. And, yes, shocked—although, I must say, only in the way one is when told that the imminent death of a relative or friend has finally occurred. Now I hope you find some new green meadows in this country that look as fair to you in their way as those new ones of yours in [Ireland]. And let’s do keep in touch,” which they were to do over the next years. Once Gore made his wishes known, Bradford helped facilitate the move to Random House by cooperating in settling the complicated financial arrangements. It was an additional inducement to sign a contract with a $235,000 advance, most of it for Burr. Gradually his backlist was moved to Random House, though Little, Brown for some time had rights to the books it had most recently published. Bradford, who regretted Gore’s departure, genuinely liked and admired him. In retrospect, Gore thought Bradford, with whom he had gotten along so well, the best editor he had ever had, with the exception of Nick Wreden, mainly because Bradford was equally enthusiastic about books as different as Washington, D.C., and Myra Breckinridge. When in 1973 Bradford expressed interest in property in Ireland, Gore gave him the benefit of his own experience and later that year sent him an inscribed copy of the Random House edition of Burr. “I nearly dedicated Burr to you but then thought that this might be complicated all around.” Bradford sent back a congratulatory note. “Clearly you’re getting richer and richer. Everything considered,” the stoical editor concluded, it is “a development I view for once with utter equanimity.” Gore would have gotten equally rich, both he and Bradford knew, with Little, Brown, and over the next decades he faulted himself for disloyalty, or at least insufficient gratefulness, and often felt that the new publishing relationship had been a Faustian bargain in which he had lost, over the years, in a different sort of currency, more than he had gained.

  For both Jason Epstein and Gore Vidal the new dimension to their relationship had its hazards, though in the long run the risk was essentially on the personal side. They had been friends since the late 1950s, from Dupee-Rovere days at Edgewater. Both ambitious, both strong-willed, during the 1960s each had pursued fame and fortune in his own way. By middecade Epstein had become a powerful figure in the publishing world. That Anchor Books had led the way in the creation of the paperback industry added the cachet of vision
ary practicality to his reputation for intellectual brilliance. Now the dominant young editor at Random House, also with high management responsibilities, he had wanted Gore to be one of his authors almost from the start of their friendship. The success of The New York Review of Books had provided an additional bond, though Jason, a part owner, played no editorial role. The familial connection was intensified by Gore’s closeness to Barbara. An effective editor of his essays with whom he occasionally had differences of opinion, she had a talent for avoiding confrontation, a compelling need to soothe. If in the domestic and publishing bestiary Jason was the argumentative, peremptory bear, Barbara was the domesticated doe, the gracious, dark-eyed, and soft-spoken creature quietly grazing in the meadow, sensitive, easily startled, of whom Gore felt protective, fraternal. With Jason the closeness was never without some tension, partly two assertive personalities clashing, partly because from the start Gore was never sure he had done the right thing in succumbing to Jason’s professional blandishments.