PLANK AUGUST 1, 2012
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My father, the late William F. Buckley, Jr. had a bit of history with the now-late Gore Vidal. In what actually might be the quintessential unscripted TV exchange, Vidal called him a “crypto-nazi.” WFB returned the compliment by calling him a “queer.” This amidst the tear gas and noise of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention.
Harold Hayes, the legendary editor of Esquire asked both gentlemen to write about the episode. Their articles are included in the anthology, Smiling through the Apocalypse, and are well worth reading. Hayes transgressed on the arrangement whereby each had mutual right of veto over items in the other’s essay, resulting in a long lawsuit by WFB against Esquire, and an ultimately victorious out-of-court settlement.
When WFB died, in 2008, I found in his study, more cluttered than King Tut’s tomb, a file cabinet bursting to the seams, labeled “Vidal Legal.” Into the dumpster it went, and I still remember the sigh of relief upon heaving it in.
WFB’s body was still warm (I exaggerate only slightly) when Vidal rendered his obsequies: "RIP WFB—in hell." It was a thorny wreath indeed that he laid on the grave: “a world-class liar,” “a hysterical queen.” I got the hell and liar bits, but I’m still scratching my noggin over “hysterical queen.” As my college-age son would say, “Whatever.”
Vidal also took pains in that valedictory to call me “creepy” and “brain-dead.” Who am I to disagree? As the saying goes, De gustibus, non disputandum est. At the time, though, I couldn’t resist pointing out that the first line in Vidal’s most recent memoir was: “As I move—I hope gracefully—toward the door marked Exit..”" Ahem.
Fun aside, one was left to wonder what it was within him that animated such hatred in him, at such a late stage? I speculated that it might be envy over the outpouring of respect and admiration for WFB—from all corners, by the way, of the ideological map.
Why was Vidal’s cauldron of bile still set, not on “simmer” but on high in his final years? WFB had—to my knowledge—not once opened his mouth or uncapped his pen against his old adversary since the early 1970’s. I was present, on a number of occasions when WFB was accosted by an interviewer or lunch guest, asking for comment about Vidal. Without exception, he demurred—and demurral was emphatically not WFB’s default position. One time I remember vividly was a TV show. WFB deflected the question with a wan smile and almost penitential mildness: “I guess Gore Vidal always brings out the best in me.” So why—one wonders—the final fuck-you upon WFB’s death?
In Charles McGrath’s fine eulogy in today’s New York Times, he quotes Vidal (on Vidal’s always-favorite topic, namely, Vidal): “I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.” And so the water remained, to the end.
My, alas, also late friend, Christopher Hitchens had history with Vidal. His fine collection of essays, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, published in 2000, bore this single endorsement on its back cover: “I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.”
This was, truly, blurbing of the gods. Dauphin! The Sun King on his throne, extending a silk-gloved hand to be kissed by the brightest blade in the court. For years, I teased Christopher without mercy. “And how is the dauphin today?” But I acknowledged then—and to an extent, still—that this was a perfectly condign vernissage. I’ve often referred to Christopher as "our Gore Vidal," and I say it without irony. Vidal’s mastery of the essay was supreme, just as Christopher’s mastery of the form was in my generation.
Their once close relationship was not to last, largely due to 9/11. For Christopher, this was a hinge moment, when Islamofascism (his coinage, I believe) revealed itself to be the prime enemy of civilization. For Vidal, it was simply a chickens-coming-home-to-roost moment, another—yawn—predictable instance of deserved U.S. imperial blowback.
This languorous what else could we expect? shrug was too much for Christopher. Nine years later, when his former beau ideal’s mind had terminally succumbed to paranoia, he wrote in Vanity Fair: “If it’s true ... that we were all changed by September 11, 2001, it’s probably truer of Vidal that it made him more the way he already was, and accentuated a crackpot strain that gradually asserted itself as dominant.”
The crackpot strain included Vidal’s persistent—and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, ultimately tedious—charge that FDR had incited the Japanese to start a war and contrived to conceal intelligence about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor.
More vile, in my own view, was Vidal’s friendship with and championing of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Vidal wrote of him that he was “a noble boy.” Remember that phrase next time you see the famous photograph of the fireman cradling the dying body of the infant Baylee Almon. But we must allow Vidal this: He wasn’t kidding when he said that under the ice was cold water.
So despite all the gorgeous writing that he left us—and I have numerous volumes of it on my own study shelves—it’s a bit hard to say, “Now cracks a noble heart.” The evidence suggests Vidal never deserted his demons and took them with him to the grave. Though I draw some hope from McGrath’s obituary, which concludes on a note that toward the end perhaps the cold water within Vidal had ever so slightly warmed.
A final footnote, and to my knowledge, not widely, if at all, known. If you look closely at the footage of the 1968 TVcontretemps between WFB and Vidal, you’ll see WFB trying to rise out of his chair at the moment of maximum heat. If you look very closely, you’ll see him physically straining, but something holding him back.
A few days before, he was sailing in Long Island Sound when a Coast Guard cutter zoomed past his sailboat, knocking him to the deck, breaking his collarbone. During the Chicago debates, he was wearing a clavicle brace. It’s possible that the brace prevented the moment from being truly iconic.
Christopher Buckley is the author of 15 books, most recently the novel “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
photo by Carl van Vechten; used under creative commons.
24 comments
I will never forget, from many years ago, an episode of Firing Line, with two guests, one a well-known conservative with a mean streak, the other a well-known liberal with money (no, not Vidal), and Mr. Buckley admonishing the one with the mean streak, who, losing whatever point he was debating with the liberal, questioned the liberal's right to reside in such a large, fine house while opposing the position of the conservative. No, said Mr. Buckley, that isn't allowed on his show. I suppose Christopher Buckley inherited has grace as well as his intelligence and gift for writing from his father and mother. If only all others could be so fortunate.
- rayward
August 1, 2012 at 5:03pm
As usual, I repeat myself. If I get bored with reading AARP's publications (which I quickly do), I can always turn to the TNR comments for prime examples of senile dementia. Extra points when it is directed at me. Especially when it is not a new sock puppet of Arnon (up to three so far), as when Basman chewed my ankle the other day while at the same time kissing Arnon's fundament. Now that's a "triple double," almost worth of Buckley-Vidal.
- skahn
August 1, 2012 at 5:14pm
I've read that Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-fascist", rather than a "crypto-nazi". The NYT obit agrees.
- dshayer
August 1, 2012 at 5:27pm
"I've read that Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-fascist", rather than a "crypto-nazi". The NYT obit agrees." I'm not sure I understand why the fallible intuitions of the Liberal Journal of Record should over-ride the evidence of one's own senses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8
- dburchell
August 1, 2012 at 6:23pm
Skahn: "Extra points when it is directed at me." Now that's a puzzler. I believe that the one thing senile dementia is not, is "directed." It might have hostile content but, dude, it's dementia. The person articulating is not present, so to speak, as an active conscious mind.
- ironyroad
August 1, 2012 at 6:40pm
I mean, de very mention of it . . . .
- ironyroad
August 1, 2012 at 6:41pm
Good article by Chris Buckley on a despicable human being. CB doesn't mention it (perhaps he doesn't know and why should he) but Vidal also wrote an introduction to a vile antisemitic book: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/01/gore-vidal.html the book in question is by a Swedish Russian Jew hater who calls himself Israel Shahak. Shahak's book has since been commented on every Nazi and white supremacist website who cite the fact that Vidal endorsed the book as proof that it is fact. Unlike David Frum who said: "I've never been sure how seriously to take the odor of anti-Semitism that pervaded so many of Vidal's public utterances. He was capable of calling American supporters of Israel a "fifth column." He wrote an introduction to a crackpot book of anti-Semitic propaganda, in which Vidal accused Jews of buying Harry Truman's support for the founding of Israel for $2 million in campaign cash." I never had any trouble figuring out that Vidal was a died in the wool antisemite who resented Jews because they didn't "appreciate him" as a kind of "demi-god." Vidal was no liberal and no champion of human rights. That he is being cited on many nazi and white-supremacist web sites is pretty ironic. They think they found in Gore Vidal a soul mate.
- arnon1
August 1, 2012 at 8:50pm
Vidal, was, indeed, a nasty soul. He took his acceptance by people who liked his mediocre plays and books as carte blanche to say any mean-spirited thing that came into his head. Myra Brekinridge? Get serious. I never read any of Vidal's essays, which Christopher Buckley refers to as "gorgeous writing." If Buckley is right, that was the only thing gorgeous that Vidal produced. His anti-Americanism and Antisemitism, as arnon notes, were ugly.
- magboy47.
August 1, 2012 at 11:46pm
I'm with Magboy 47 and Arnon on this. I'd recommend Norman Podhoretz's essay on Vidal from the eighties. It's easy enough to find on line.
- basman
August 2, 2012 at 12:13am
Hitchens was wrong about Iraq. Buckley was wrong about pretty much everything.
- heppner52
August 2, 2012 at 9:37am
Vidal was the smart, socially-awkward kid in the corner of the room, resenting his exclusion from the inner circles he thinks are his birthright, picking up all of the unflattering gossip about the people he resents (and wants to be). At home, in his room, he puts pen to paper and attempts to make his jealousy and hurt feelings sound like lordly disdain. But he can never really hid the hurt kid under the august pose . . .
- lump516
August 2, 2012 at 10:19am
heppner52 "Hitchens was wrong about Iraq. Buckley was wrong about pretty much everything." So you are saying that Vidal was right about.... about was he right? About his antisemitic views? About 9/11? I would rather be wrong about Iraq, than wrong about the nature of Islamicists regimes which deny civil rights to everyone not of their ilk, especially women and members of other faiths. Vidal was wrong also about the threat these Islamists pose to Europe.
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 10:23am
Leaving everything else aside; I thought The Best Man was a great play. One of the movies I can't turn off before the conclusion.
- stanmvp48
August 2, 2012 at 10:44am
I never felt any affinity for Vidal's essays or political points, I saw him as a provocateur and contrarian just to be a provocateur and contrarian. While some of his essays with regards to literature showed an affection for the written word, his inner poisons - his denial of self, denial of being a 'gay' author versus being a author who was gay, his viciousness towards others he thought stole his limelight (Capote being one of them), his far-left/far-right paranoia and anti-Americanism made sure that any rational argument he might have made fell on the deaf ears of the sane and rational. Vidal remained a pompous ass to the very end, left in the dark with only his bitterness of life, the hole in his heart, and fatuous nature of his paranoia to keep him company.
- singlspeed
August 2, 2012 at 11:06am
Good analysis, singlespeed.
- magboy47.
August 2, 2012 at 2:00pm
Arnon, is "Swedish Russian Jew hater" a Swede who hates Russian Jews, or a Swede of Russian descent who hates Jews generally, or a Jew of Russian descent who lives in Sweden who hates Jews (or maybe existence in general), or a Jew of Swedish descent who lives in Russia who hates Jews, or ... okay, I will stop now. On a more pertinent note, having watched that interview and taken stock of Gore Vidal's life and musings on 9/11, Israel and such, I do regret that I was not evern in the same room with him so that I could punch him the way Bill Buckley apparently could not.
- wildboy
August 2, 2012 at 2:00pm
Vidal called Timothy McVeigh a "noble lad," implying America got what it deserved by McVeigh's bombing. Not enough critically bad can be said about Vidal.
- basman
August 2, 2012 at 2:25pm
"Leaving everything else aside; I thought The Best Man was a great play. One of the movies I can't turn off before the conclusion." It was a good movie, but I wouldn't have called it great.
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 3:48pm
wildboy "Arnon, is "Swedish Russian Jew hater" a Swede who hates Russian Jews,...." Wildboy, is a "widlboy" a wild man who is also a boy, or a boy who is wild, or a wild man who loves boys, or a boy who loves wild man or all of the above?
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 3:51pm
A rhetorical question, Arnon, if there ever was one -- but where do you get the "love" part from wildboy? It could be a wild man who hates boys or is merely indifferent to them.
- wildboy
August 2, 2012 at 4:27pm
...in Vidal's case, a vile solipsist whose eloquence was a skill, not a virtue... Very nicely put.
- basman
August 2, 2012 at 6:48pm
Correction, Vidal did indeed write the preface to an antisemitic book. However, the book's author Israel Shahak was not the Swedish-Russian Jew hater, that was "Israel Shamir." Israel Shahak, was a troubled man with a different history and psychology who tended to blame Jews for the Holocaust. The Holocaust turned a number of Jews against their own people, (not as many a one might have expected given the nature of antisemitism) Israel Shahak was one of them.
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 7:43pm
wildboy, if you want to engage in witty banter, that's fine with me, but don't take umbrage when I use terms that you don't approve of. There was nothing behind the word "love" and if you want to substitute "hate" go right ahead. (I can understand your nervousness being from PA as you are.)
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 7:48pm
More on Vidal: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history_lesson/2012/08/gore_vidal_don_t_believe_the_rosy_obituaries_he_was_a_racist_and_an_elitist_.single.html "Stop Eulogizing Gore Vidal He was a racist and an elitist, forever mourning the decline of his era of aristocratic privilege. " By David Greenberg|Posted Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012, at 11:41 AM ET
- arnon1
August 2, 2012 at 8:41pm