Gore Vidal's epitaph

Gore Vidal described himself with the following quote, which I found in an excellent LA Times obituary earlier today: "I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise." The quote is from Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999) by Fred Kaplan.

I'm not sure I would want that as my epitaph, but then again, I am clearly no Gore Vidal. Still, I sometimes value being right over the people in my life. I know at heart that it is the people that matter, but sometimes, I just want to be right, so I can sympathize with Mr. Vidal's sentiment. I am also sad to see Mr. Vidal go.

I admired Mr. Vidal's Lincoln as a work of historical fiction. He imagines Mr. Lincoln much more darkly than some historians, viewed primarily through the eyes of his clerk. The portrait he paints of Lincoln is not flattering, but it is compelling. In the end, it is the scholarship and work of the imagination that led to Lincoln that hovers over the book, and Mr. Vidal himself almost becomes a character with the way he powerfully describes Mr. Lincoln. After reading his novel and a couple interviews about him, I came to view Mr. Vidal as an imposing figure -- a worldly, masculine person who defied not only categorization but also self-definition. After all, no one can really be summed up in one sentence, after all.

According to letters published in the LA Times, Mr. Vidal also had a lively debate with Charlton Heston over a gay sub-text for Ben-Hur. I found the photo above on the LA Times website -- Gore Vidal is third from the left, next to Charlton Heston.