In Bed with Gore Vidal

Read my first Vidal book in the 60.s: "Julian." That was food for thought debunking Christianity and heterosexuality. Sorry he never did the sequel: "My Friend Sandy."He was our last grand old man of letters with insider knowledge into the American WASP caste system and its affect on us all.'In Bed with Gore Vidal' does mean that, literally. I thought when I was considering downloading it onto my Kindle that perhaps the title was a metaphor. It ain't. Therefore, if you want the skinny as to how Gore and his mates had a good time, its all in here. Plus feedback from his pimps on the Hollywood stars you thought may have been this was or that way. Now you will know: it was thataway. I'll never watch a Western again without feeling saddle sore.Gore and his mate's favourite bath house in New York was Everhards! The author takes pains to explain the double entendre possibilities here. So you have been warned on style.Wishful thinking isn't discussed.As I write, I have forgotten most of what I read, therefore that speaks for itself as well and hence the three stars..Gore had a horrible prolonged death. Be warned. Save for your last days, you will need every penny.The guy who looked after him in his last years didn't get a sou and neither did his family/ Gore left the lot to the Harvard Library. Monumental ego, I suppose.There is a recurring theme in the book that Gore would have liked to be president. He missed out on a couple of elections, one for the senate and one for congress.Pity he wan't president. We probably would have missed out on the Asian wars, Mid East wars and he would have had a rapprochement with Cuba very early on. However, would the military industrial complex and their mates in Congress and the Senate have liked that? In a pig's eye. He probably would have gone the way of Jack Kennedy, although, it probably would have been beneath his dignity to even notice the Mafia whom he thinks did the job on Jack for Hoffa, Trafficante and Marcello, who Bobby was hounding into jail, deportation, or an assassin's bullet. The aforementioned needed Jack gone to get rid of Bobby and there had been two other attempts on Jack in the week prior to the successful assassination in Dallas. Dallas was crawling with assassins on the day. Lone gunman with mail order clapped-out rifle must be the sick joke of the Twentieth century.He didn't think Jack Kennedy was much of a president, though and that Camelot was load of baloney and Kennedy had no intention of getting out of Viet Nam. He also thought that Kennedy was living on borrowed time due to his very poor health. He was critical of bay of Pigs, Missile Crises where we all escaped annihilation by the skin of our teeth in 1962 and also the diabolical use of chemical weapons in Viet Nam during Kennedy's tenure. One year later after the missile crises Jack was about to invade Cuba AGAIN! Can you believe it. It was scheduled for a few days after the Dallas trip.Vidal claimed to have buggered 5,000 men before he reached his 25th birthday. One could say he did to them only what Johnson, Nixon and the Bushes have done to all the American people since. He was in his eighties when he died so get the calculator out. he denied that homosexuality was a condition, apparently, there are only homosexual acts and one does necessarily follow the other. If he was a aeroplane designer I don't think his prototype would fly.The tragedy of his death is that there is nobody left in America with the education, the experience, the wit and the insider knowledge to counter the day-in, day-out, assaults on democracy and the Constitution.

Good read

Gore Vidal found fame writing about homosexuality in "The City and the Pillar" but, for the rest of his life, apparently felt this accomplishment was useless as it pigeonholed him and, in a way, thwarted his career as a politician, his most cherished ambition. The American public may have wanted to know more about gay people but the New York Times seemed to feel the subject was better left in the closet (in which resided many of the esteemed critics at the Times who devalued his contribution). Needing money, Vidal found himself writing for live television at its zenith in the mid-50s. Teeman's book investigates quite thoroughly Vidal's unwillingness to label himself gay after 1948.Jimmy Trimble was Vidal's heroic, dead lover, the recipient of his undying affection and book dedications. Trimble even serves as his eternal neighbor in death, Vidal having taken the plot next to his with his longtime partner Howard Austen on the other side. Teeman's interview with Trimble's fiancee is fascinating in that it effectively bursts Vidal's bubble of veracity when it comes to Jimmy and what really went on between them (which wasn't much).Alcoholism seems to be the default escape of so many writers who've died young, yet Vidal managed to carry on with his destructive habit far longer than most, dying at a ripe old age. Of course he was barely coherent and may be said to have died years earlier, but Vidal lived long enough to betray his closest family by not remembering them after all was said and done. Instead, he donated his considerable fortune to a school he never attended. There were none of the customary bequests for those to whom one is close. Why? And that is why I like to read about Gore Vidal. Why wasn't he close to anyone? Why couldn't he appreciate the friends who stayed with him, the family members who loved him? Not even a thank-you to those who served him his whole life. (His "devoted to the end" Filipino chef, who was given nothing and returned to the Philippines to try and get by on a small pension.) How could Vidal be so cruel?Teeman answers it all. Gore Vidal was a cantankerous curmudgeon who seemed to live his life with little compassion or empathy. He paid for almost every sexual encounter he had with cash so he wouldn't have to pay for it later with his vulnerability. He seems to understand how very lucky he was to have Howard with him to run interference. The author explains in detail that, if this most primary of relationships was non-sexual as Vidal always stated for the record, it was certainly not without a deep love on both sides.This comprehensive and very readable book really gets to the heart (or the absence of one) of his subject matter and I thoroughly enjoyed it.Five stars. Great read!

The best thing about this book is the Introduction, in which the author makes some perceptive comments about Gore Vidal's character, circumstances, and sexuality -this preliminary chapter brings him to life, it is lively and useful. (This useful chapter can be read as a free sample on a Kindle.)The rest of the book unfortunately tends to prolixity and themes feel stretched. There are ideas which crop up again and again in different contexts. I certainly got the message loud and clear that, for example, Vidal was very uncomfortable with a 'gay identity' and refused to be put into a labelled box. Points such as this are often over-made. You certainly get the feeling that Gore Vidal was a 'conflicted' personality in many directions, the book makes this aspect of his nature clear -but this isn't a revelation to most observers.You sometimes wonder what the objective of this book is, and whether its theme requires an entire volume. Parts of the book get quite silly and are simply gossipy, with yawn-inducing celebrity name-drops, and superficial info about anonymous sex-encounters. How many times do we need to be told what sort of sexual partner he preferred ? A straightforward biography would probably have been much more useful.I ended up in full agreement with the comment that Vidal's chief objective in life was self-promotion: to keep his name constantly before the public - in order to sell more books - in order to finance his style of living. In this he was conspicuously successful.The most positive section of the book describes Vidal's long-lasting relationship with his live-in Bronx friend, Howard Austen, who organised his life's practicalities and gave Vidal's existence some enduring warmth, though they led independent sex lives. One of the places they lived together was Ravello, where Vidal apparently had no local friends.Vidal's principal public metier was the tv chat show, and some of his appearances as provocative social commentator (notably a hilarious encounter with Norman Mailer and Janet Flanner) will no doubt remain an ornament of YouTube. But his calculating wit, though sometimes very funny, is limited, and sounds laboured in comparison with the social perceptions of someone like Christopher Hitchens.Another comment in this book refers to Gore Vidal as "the great man". Some of us might have different ideas on what qualities make a man "great". This book appears to equate greatness with fame, which is characteristic of American culture. Fame (and possibly its sexual power) was something Vidal attentively pursued. Vidal's personality leaves an amusing if not very inspiring legacy.It will be interesting to see how time will estimate his literary oeuvre, about which this book hasn't a great deal to say.

The title should have warned me. There's a limit to the interest generated by a crotch-level view of anyone's life.So though the book has its attractions, there's not enough variety, too much repetition, and - because the author wasn't given unfettered access to Vidal's family - a sense of scratching around for anecdotes to pad out a thesis. I finished it without much enjoyment.

Too long. But enjoyed it. Maybe I have read too many books about these gay authors who knew each other's they are all mentioned in each other's books.

pretty good read overall

Fantastic book