Like many people, there are a few books that I have returned to again and again throughout my life. Since my preferred form of writing is the essay and my preferred tone is highly educated cynicism, I imagine that two of those books will surprise few of my readers: A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
In the early 20th century, Mencken was unrivaled as America’s greatest essayist. After his decline in the late 40s that title was handed to Vidal, who was better known as a novelist and playwright. The two men shared much. Both were almost entirely self-taught men of prodigious learning; both were masters of the lost art of the intellectual insult; both lampooned the many flaws in America’s system of self-government; both could eviscerate an opponent with but a single well-turned phrase. And both made me feel inadequate because, on my very best day, I could not hope to match their staggering skill with the written word. Neither, I dare say, could ever be justly called humble, but then neither had much reason to be.
For a look at just how good a writer Vidal was, particularly when engaging in polemics, I give you this, from an essay entitled Sex is Politics:
The sexual attitudes of any given society are the result of political decisions…
Although our notions about what constitutes correct sexual behavior are usually based on religious texts, those texts are invariably interpreted by the rulers in order to keep control over the ruled. Any sexual or intellectual or recreational or political activity that might decrease the amount of coal mined, the number of pyramids built, the quantity of junk food confected will be proscribed through laws that, in turn, are based on divine revelations handed down by whatever god or gods happen to be in fashion at the moment. Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around. This is a brand-new thought to most Americans, whether once or twice or never bathed in the Blood of the Lamb…
At any given moment in a society’s life, there are certain hot buttons that a politician can push in order to get a predictably hot response… It is good politics to talk against sin–and don’t worry about non sequiturs. In fact, it is positively un-American…to discuss a real issue such as unemployment or who is stealing all that money at the Pentagon.
To divert the electorate, the unscrupulous American politician will go after those groups not regarded benignly by Old or New Testament…
In desperation, the nation’s ownership has now gone back to the tried-and-true hot buttons: save our children, out fetuses, our ladies’ rooms from the godless enemy. As usual, the sex buttons have proved satisfyingly hot.
That was written in 1979 but rings as true today as when he wrote it.
Unfortunately, those decades of such matchless brilliance and wit made it all the more painful to watch his decline over the last 15 years or so, as he descended into bitterness and became a purveyor of dark conspiracies. He claimed, for example, that George W. Bush had knowledge of the World Trade Center attacks in advance and let them happen. Christopher Hitchens took note of that sad decline in 2010 and thereafter refused Vidal’s naming of him as his delfino (which he was, having taken from him the title, in my mind at least, as the nation’s greatest essayist a couple decades earlier).
But in his death, I will choose to remember him for what he was when I first came under his spell. One can easily point to a lineage of writers over the last 150 years that led perfectly, one to the other, from Twain to Mencken to Vidal and then to Hitchens. Though each has their flaws, some of them quite dramatic and seemingly damning, they were men of extraordinary intelligence and wit who found no greater joy than in the slaughtering of sacred cows. And we have now lost the last two of them in less than a year. If there is a successor to that lineage alive today, they remain sadly unknown to me. And that may be the greatest loss of all.
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F
August 1, 2012 at 11:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh hell no. (Not that this is not to be expected, as he was getting on in years, and we all stop sometime.)
I still liked some of his later work, even if tinged with some weirdness or conspiracy flavorings. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, for example, has its flaws, but is still a good read.
Michael Heath
August 1, 2012 at 11:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gore Vidal, 1979:
For those who are younger among us, Mr. Vidal is referring to a favorite justification by conservatives who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment for females. Which was that passing the Equal Rights Amendment, aka “the ERA”, would deprive females of privacy from males in bathrooms which served the public. This illustrates how conservative arguments back in that day were also dishonest, fear-mongering, bigoted, and idiotic.
Ed Brayton
August 1, 2012 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, that statement about ladies’ rooms applies as well today. The argument now is that transgender rights will lead to men cross dressing in order to enter a woman’s bathroom and rape her. It’s just as absurd as the ERA argument.
KG
August 1, 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s been noted elsewhere that Gore Vidal had some hard to forgive faults. In a 2009 interview, asked about Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl, Vidal said:
That doesn’t negate his brilliance as a writer and political commentator; but nor do those things negate this vile misogyny and rape apologia.
slc1
August 1, 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Michael Heath @ #2
Even without the Equal Rights Amendment, a court decision by Federal Court Judge Constance Baker Motley allowed female reporters into the locker rooms of male athletes. This was a preposterous decision which the cowardly professional team owners didn’t bother to appeal.
I can understand the problem of female sports reporters being treated differently then male sports reports in this regard. The correct answer was to bar all reporters from the players locker rooms. This is what I would have done if I had been an owner of a professional team in lieu of the decision and if the sport commissioner didn’t like it, and attempted to impose sanctions, I would have seen him in court.
Ed Brayton
August 1, 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
KG –
Yikes, I’ve never seen that one before. That’s just fucking vile. But it was, as I noted, said after he had jumped the shark. But that makes his decline even more pathetic.
KG
August 1, 2012 at 1:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed,
No, I hadn’t seen it either until today, and having long admired Vidal, it saddened me. Maybe, as I think you’re implying, it was the result of incipient dementia; but statements like that don’t arise out of nothing.
lpetrich
August 1, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gore Vidal on homosexuality is worth noting. In 1948, he wrote a novel, The City and the Pillar, with a homosexual main character, in which he pictured homosexual people as essentially “normal”. It was written in an plain sort of style that suggested to some people a thinly disguised autobiography.
That book caused a lot of controversy back then, with the New York Times refusing to review it.
He had defended homosexuality many times since, and he must have been happy to see the gay-rights movement grow in his lifetime.
But as to conspiracy theories, he believed in two similar ones: that GWB had allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen, and that FDR had allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor.
slc1
August 1, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ipetrich @ #8
Didn’t he also believe in a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination in Dallas?
pinkboi
August 1, 2012 at 6:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I always thought of Hitchens as a sort of reincarnation of Mencken yet it never occurred to me that the missing link between the two is Vidal. I might have been biased against him because of the 9/11 stuff.. Even crazy old Noam Chomsky doesn’t buy into that.
picklefactory
August 1, 2012 at 8:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hey Ed, have you read anything by Angela Carter? She always seemed to me to be the “highly educated cynicism” answer to Vidal and Hitchens. Shaking a Leg is her collection of essays.
picklefactory
August 1, 2012 at 8:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The UK’s answer, that is to say.