Gore Vidal

by Fred Kaplan

  Having signed a new two-novel contract with Random House in 1977, he had delivered Kalki, which had done adequately in hardcover, unexpectedly poorly in paperback. The contract, for $1.2 million—the smaller portion for Kalki, the larger for an unnamed novel that, it was generally agreed, would be a historical fiction—had been negotiated by Owen Laster, the senior literary agent at William Morris. Laster had been handling Vidal’s backlist for the contracts Helen Strauss had negotiated before Gore himself took over handling the rights to his literary works in the United States. Graham Watson at Curtis Brown still took care of British rights. Foreign-language contracts, except for Germany, had been managed by Little, Brown. Over the years, as Laster rose at William Morris, he had eventually, by 1976, persuaded Vidal to allow him to negotiate all his other literary contracts. A soft-spoken New Yorker, both self-effacing and clever, Laster, a great movie enthusiast in his youth who had first heard of Vidal as a famous scriptwriter, had risen through the ranks at William Morris from the mailroom in 1961, then into the television department, and finally the literary department. When Strauss left, he became the senior literary agent. In the early 1970s Gore “asked me some questions about what kind of deal I had for Michener. He might not have said Michener explicitly, but he knew that I had the big one, and I think he was fishing around. It was a very entertaining meeting: he did imitations of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. It was the first time I was alone with him…. I remember saying to him that I get paid for this kind of advice and I remember suggesting that we work together. He said, ‘I bet you’re going to insist on the movie situation.’ I said, ‘Ya.’ He said, ‘Well then, I don’t think so.’ I went back to the office and went in to see Nat Lefkowitz. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I think I can get Gore Vidal back as a client, but I can’t get back everything. He just won’t do it.’ Nat said, ‘Stay after him.’ … Then he did another contract with Random House for Myron and 1876. It was around the time of publication of 1876 and Kalki that he agreed to come to William Morris in all areas.” Eager to capitalize on the success of Burr and 1876, Random House had consented to part with a huge sum for the two-book contract, which helped affirm Laster’s argument that not only could he relieve Vidal of tedious detail for which he had little patience and less talent but that William Morris could negotiate better contracts for him than he could for himself. When, influenced by Robert Gurland, an American lawyer practicing in London, Vidal proposed to Laster and Random House that instead of the usual arrangement for an advance against royalties the contract be structured as a loan, which the recipient, not Vidal but a newly created corporate entity, would pay back over a ten-year period, both Laster and Random House felt uneasy, partly because it was so different from the usual publishing-industry practices. As the tax advantage to Vidal would be considerable, Random House reluctantly agreed to the new configuration. “This was the summer of 1977,” Laster recalls. “I was watching television, and suddenly the screen went blank. There had been a blackout in New York, the notorious 1977 blackout. Soon afterward, during that vacation, I was talking to Gore…. For some reason, I think at least partly because of the blackout, Gore had become very concerned about this complicated deal.” Life in the modern world, he told Laster, had become “too complicated … the infrastructure too fragile. Everything might collapse. He suddenly said, ‘Just go to Random House and do the equivalent of an ordinary contract.’”

  Jason Epstein, who probably had in mind another novel like Burr or 1876 as the second in the 1977 contract, discovered to his surprise that the new book Vidal was working on in Los Angeles, where he had finished Kalki, had nothing to do with American history. It was set in the fifth century B.C., its subject a panoramic presentation through the eyes of a fictional Persian diplomat and world traveler of the religious beliefs and cultures of Persian Zoroastrianism, Indian Buddhism, and Chinese Confucianism. Vidal’s interest in religion dominated the novel, which, Epstein soon saw, combined what seemed to him an antinovelistic preoccupation with descriptive pedagogy and a fictional travel narrative in which the narrator was less important than what he observed. Epstein’s notion of fiction was grounded in the realistic tradition and in the coordinates of modernism. Vidal had the eighteenth-century novel of ideas and Thomas Mann as his models, though his late-twentieth-century adaptation had its particular Vidalian obsessions, including his concern with the interaction between culture, personality, and power, as well as his general detestation of Christianity, which—with its two collegial monotheisms, Judaism and Islam—had done, he felt, great damage to the human condition. Of the three nonmonotheistic religions of Creation, the eventual title of the novel-in-progress, it is Confucian materialism that the novel most admires. As in Julian, Vidal evokes the details of the life of these disparate worlds with a specificity that makes ancient history and religions compellingly real. Retrospectively narrated in old age by Cyrus, a fictional fifth-century-B.C. Persian diplomat, his account of his adventures gives the novel its narrative unity. Having spent his life traveling to Greece, Asia Minor, India, and China as a high-level representative of his government, he finds himself, on his last mission, compelled to serve as special ambassador to the quarrelsome, uncivilized Athenians. An eager adventurer as well as diplomat, he has obtained on his various voyages pleasures, burdens, thrills, wives, and some wisdom, particularly in his lifelong effort to answer the central cosmological questions associated with the history of religion: what is the nature of existence and is there a creator of all things? As the grandson of Zoroaster and a believer in his religious philosophy, Cyrus has a passionate interest in the fundamental issues with which the dynamic emerging world religions of the first half of the fifth century B.C. are grappling. As a novelist, historian, and cultural anthropologist, Vidal puts us into Cyrus’s mind: we see the Persian-Greek hostilities from the Persian viewpoint; Cyrus’s Zoroastrianism, vaguely anticipating some Christian doctrine, is the touchstone against which he measures Buddhism, Tao (“The Way”), and Confucianism, the progenitors of all three of which Cyrus meets and queries. In the end it is Confucius’s engagement with the ethical problems of this world (especially how to balance the interests of the individual and the community) that Cyrus finds most compelling, a novelistic striking of the characteristic Vidalian note.

  What was to be both a critical and a commercial triumph did not, however, come easily. There were two problems to overcome: the size to which the manuscript quickly grew and Epstein’s dissatisfaction with its execution, partly its length and his preference for a more fully novelized presentation in the realistic tradition, mostly his concern that the subject matter did not have a large enough audience to result in the sales necessary to justify the huge advance. Epstein did not believe, Vidal thought his attitude implied, that Americans cared to read about ancient religions or religious subjects at all. By late winter 1979, as Vidal’s Hollywood stay drew to a close, he had done over fifteen hundred longhand pages. “I have made five visits to various health spas,” he wrote to Judith Halfpenny, particularly La Costa, “and so avoided the glory and the agony of le show biz while completing the Chinese section…. Since I’ve not read the book for almost a year, I expect all sorts of surprises when it comes time to see just what pattern there is in this carpet. I suspect one large circle, which could be zero-nothing or O! Or a circle; indeed, the presiding emblem.” Voyage was the working title. He himself preferred O, though Epstein disliked it. They settled on Creation as a compromise, though Gore was certain he would never like that title and soon grew to hate it. “It is apt, certainly. But one does not quite like the Michenerian ring.” Confucius seemed to him “the only one of my Great Figures done in the round. Most likeable. I haven’t got to Socrates but I suspect he’ll be a minor irritant. He sets on edge the teeth of my Persian narrator…. The Buddha is the Cheshire cat … but then he is not.” But doing characters in the round was not in his judgment germane to the nature and intent of Creation. Soon after Gore finished the manuscript in Rome and Ravello in sp
ring and early summer, Jason registered his dissatisfaction, though he agreed with Gore that “you don’t need a conventional narrative with a sustained plot and so forth; this would be impossible in any case, and would trivialize the material. Yet there are stretches where Cyrus seems to be simply a chronicler, not a participant, and the effect of this is for the reader to lose track of him as a character, and thus lose track occasionally of the story as well.” Part of the problem was focus, part length: the manuscript was twelve hundred typed pages. Gore did some sustained rewriting, making substantial cuts in two sections, which he believed weakened the book. He felt he was “trudging up a mountain of work.” Jason still was dissatisfied. “The first third he said he thought one of the best things he’d ever read. But the second third—he’d figured out that the American people wouldn’t like it…. He did everything to block it, including one of the dreariest tricks in the business which was to get a copy editor to check every line I’d written. Can you prove that Tibet is actually west of China? It was nothing but dragging feet, trying not to publish it.” There were other irritants, including the attempt of the Ravello municipality to hold him responsible for the damage done by mudslides to the houses a thousand feet down the mountain. “The sindaco would like me to spend a million or two dollars to shore up a very large mountain. Phrases like until hell freezes over come to my lips in dialect.

  In early September, Laster, who had been vacationing in Milan, came down to Ravello for two days, his first visit to La Rondinaia, partly in the hope that he could help resolve the disagreement between Gore and Jason about Creation. Almost as soon as Ignazio, a Ravellese who had become Gore’s regular driver (they found it easier to make an annual arrangement for regular limousine service to take them everywhere locally or to the airport at Naples than to drive themselves), had delivered Owen to La Rondinaia, Gore sat him down on the sun-filled terrace with a chapter of the manuscript. “The place is absolute paradise. It was so gorgeous,” Laster recalled. “You’re fifteen hundred feet up, looking down at the sea. But that was the last time I ever offered any editorial comment and certainly not in conjunction with the publisher.” As Owen read, Gore walked down to Amalfi to get newspapers. When he returned, Owen remarked that maybe Jason had a point, especially about the length of the book. Gore exploded into a tirade. “I couldn’t get another word out. He was so furious with me. He was always, I think, difficult to edit. He’s always wanted it his way. I recognized then that in the future I was not to take any editorial positions. Just see what Gore wanted. From that moment I backed away.” As usual, Gore’s situational anger affected neither his loyalty nor his hospitality. That night they went to Zacharia’s in Amalfi, his favorite local restaurant, where they dined on delectable seafood, and then stayed up late drinking and talking, his usual routine with visitors, which he expanded, on Owen’s next visit, to include listening to pop records, amused by some young tourists who came back to the villa with them, dancing into the morning hours. “It was totally social, nothing sexual, though Gore asked me if I wanted one of the kids, saying, ‘I think that one likes you.’ I wouldn’t have dreamed of it, in his house.” Jason’s attempt to pressure Gore to make additional changes continued, particularly to make more cuts and to add touches that would increase the illusion of conventional realism. Epstein feared that the novel was still too long for its subject matter, that Americans would not make a bestseller out of a pedagogic novel about non-Western religions. By mid-fall, Gore issued an ultimatum: either publish this last version or release him from his contract. He half hoped the latter would be the case. He also regretted, even resented, that Owen’s manner with Random House was conciliatory rather than confrontational. The notion of returning to Little, Brown had its attractions. Finally Epstein gave in. Creation, which was published in March 1981, quickly rose almost to the top of the bestseller list. When, in Vidal’s view, Random House failed to capitalize on its immediate success, which he assumed came as a surprise to the publisher, and the book’s sales consequently did not continue their ascent, he strongly registered his resentment to Epstein. Jason, he believed, was to blame. Though Gore could partly forgive him, the disjunction between their sensibilities, as well as what seemed to him Jason’s meddling beyond his purview or his abilities, had now become even more of an ongoing consideration.

  What had been a serious disjunction soon threatened to become permanently divisive. They had taken another of their eating trips through southern France, and both did their best to act as if their differences about Creation had not affected their personal relationship. When Gore was in New York, they had their usual social interactions, though the gradual disaffiliation between Barbara and Jason made even more pronounced the difference between the closeness of Gore and Barbara and the growing chill between Gore and Jason. “Barbara’s relationship with Jason also deteriorated,” Vidal recalled. “They got a divorce. Then everything improved. They still work as a team and help each other out. But they aren’t in each other’s way.” Gore simply felt he had an insufficiently sympathetic editor who seemed to think he knew better than his author. But his editor was also his personal friend, almost a family member. After Howard and Barbara, and a less full embrace of Diana Phipps and Claire Bloom—both of whom by the early to mid-eighties Gore saw less of—Jason was one of three or four people with whom he had an intimacy familial enough to be fraternal. At Rome and Ravello there were numbers of friends at the next closest circle: Mickey Knox somewhat, but particularly George Armstrong, Luigi Corsini, and Michael Tyler-Whittle, though the last was, under pressure from his wife, to return permanently to England. In America, Christopher Isherwood and Richard Poirier had a touch of the familial. Nini had more than a touch, but differences of ideology and personality made the relationship less a friendship than a bloodline burden. Corsini, a slim, handsome man, whose fascination with America had made him one of Italy’s foremost experts on American culture, visited frequently at La Rodinaia as he moved back and forth between Rome, where he lived, and Salerno, where he taught at the university. Howard was, of course, the center of Gore’s personal life. Rat, whom he adored, came a bestial but important second. That Jason was also a member of the inner circle made their differences about Creation especially difficult, though less so for Jason, who assumed that his function as an editor and an independent personality required that he make himself bluntly clear on literary issues. If there was honor in that, there was also danger of solipsistic self-assertion. But Jason did not anticipate that such differences would undermine their friendship, as if Gore were any more capable than another author of separating his editor’s lack of support for his work from the personal relationship. From the beginning Jason had felt no attraction to Gore’s “Chinese boxes,” though previously he had not revealed any coolness about historical works of the sort that Gore assumed Creation was. “Barbara liked them. I didn’t hate Myra Breckinridge, “ Epstein recalled, “but I saw the point of it too quickly. I got it right away and said, ‘Okay, now what, and why bother?’ He told the joke, and let’s go on from here. Then he kept writing it over and over again,” which was precisely his response when, after the publication of Creation, Gore turned to a new “invention,” a surrealistic comedy as darkly wild and imaginatively satirical as Myra Breckinridge.

  Duluth, which reached bookstores in April 1983, brought Epstein and Vidal almost to the breaking point. When Jason responded unenthusiastically to the manuscript, Gore, furious, proposed that Jason’s young assistant, Gary Fisketjon, who admired Duluth and seemed temperamentally sympathetic to Gore’s inventions, edit the new novel rather than Jason. Angry and hurt, Jason felt rejected. “I said, ‘Jason, just stay away from the goddamned book. I don’t want to hear your opinions. Let Gary Fisketjon handle it.’ He said fine. Then he started to interfere, which was his way of destroying it. He went to the salesmen, saying this is not the Vidal book. We’ll wait for the next historical. Gary was the buffer between Jason and me for Duluth.”

  Vidal himself thoug
ht more highly of his “inventions” than his historical novels, as he told Richard Poirier, who had read the new novel in manuscript and thought it brilliant. With respect and appreciation, Gore dedicated it to him. “I do value more highly the Brecks and Duluths than the historical meditations but then I like invention. Just back from a week in Moscow (where I am much read—they even study TV tapes!) and outer Mongolia (where no one is). We must hand it to our masters: the notion that USSR is a formidable opponent, ever-restless, with genocide in its heart must be, easily, the finest PR invention since Ivy Lee [Rockefeller’s publicist] got J.D. Rockefeller to give away dimes.” Duluth is, among other things, a novel that indirectly dramatizes American Cold War follies, the surreal madness of the “Russians are coming” scenario that drove American domestic and foreign-policy considerations for decades. “Duluth is my favorite of these books,” Vidal recalled. “The same thing happened with Duluth as with Myra. ‘Duluth! Love it or loathe it, you can never leave it or lose it.’ That sentence just came thundering into my head one day as I was walking down the street in Rome. What on earth is that, I thought. I sat down at the desk, and there it was: the whole novel just opened itself before me.” As with Myra, he wrote it quickly, at white heat, and he himself determined that, like Myra, the book would be kept as long as possible from reviewers. “Duluth emerges in the book stores in April” 1983, he wrote to Judith Halfpenny. “The plan is no advertising, no review copies sent out, no appearances by the author. There will be a billboard on Sunset Blvd showing the somewhat surreal dust jacket; and another near the Queensborough Bridge, Manhattan. Then we shall see what happens…. The book is a tribute to the Family and, of course, to warm mature Hetero relationships; there are also tributes to Consumerism and Lying, the two American specialties.”