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Gore Vidal

(Eugene Luther Vidal)

(1925 - 2012)

aka Edgar Box, Katherine Everard, Cameron Kay

Gore Vidal was born in 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and brought up in Washington, D.C. He enlisted in the army at the age of seventeen and served as first mate on an army ship in the Bering Sea, where he wrote his first book, Williwaw. In the sixties, three praised novels established Vidal's reputation as a bestselling author: Julian (1964); Washington, D.C. (1967); and Myra Breckinridge (1968). His collected essays, United States, won the National Book Award in 1993. In 1995 he published a memoir, Palimpsest, which the Sunday Times called 'one of the best first-person accounts of this century we are likely to get'.

Vidal died at his home in Hollywood Hills, California on July 31, 2012.

Genres: Historical, Mystery, Literary Fiction

Series

Peter Sargeant (as by Edgar Box)
   1. Death in the Fifth Position (1952)
   2. Death Before Bedtime (1953)
   3. Death Likes it Hot (1955)

Narratives of Empire
   1. Burr (1973)
   2. Lincoln (1984)
   3. 1876 (1976)
   4. Empire (1987)
   5. Hollywood (1989)
   6. Washington, D.C. (1967)
   7. The Golden Age (2000)

Myra and Myron
1. Myra Breckinridge (1968)
2. Myron (1974)

Novels

   Williwaw (1946)
     aka Dangerous Voyage
   In a Yellow Wood (1947)
   The City and the Pillar (1948)
   The Season of Comfort (1949)
   Dark Green, Bright Red (1950)
   A Search for the King (1950)
   A Star's Progress (1950) (as by Katherine Everard)
   The Judgment of Paris (1953)
   Thieves Fall Out (1953) (as by Cameron Kay)
   Messiah (1956)
   Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
   Julian (1964)
   Two Sisters (1970)
   Kalki (1978)
   Creation (1981)
   Duluth (1983)
   Live from Golgotha (1992)
   The Smithsonian Institution (1995)
   Cry Shame! (2012)

Omnibus

Selected Works (1982)

Collections

   A Thirsty Evil (1956)
   The Collected Mysteries of Edgar Box (1978) (as by Edgar Box)
   Deadly Sins (1994) (with A S Byatt, Mary Gordon, Richard Howard, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, William Trevor and John Updike)
   The Essential Gore Vidal (1999)
   Clouds and Eclipses (2006)

Plays

   The Best Man (1962)
   An Evening with Richard Nixon (1972)
   Caligula (1979) (with William Howard)

Anthologies edited

Best Television Plays (1956)

Non fiction

   Rocking The Boat (1962)
   Sex, Death and Money (1968)
   Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
   Collected Essays (1972)
   Homage to Daniel Shays (1973)
   Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1977)
   Views from a Window (1980)
   The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1981)
   The Second American Revolution (1982)
   Vidal in Venice (1985)
   Armageddon? (1987)
   At Home (1988)
   Paths of Resistance (1989) (with Isabel Allende, Charles McCarry, Marge Piercy and Robert Stone)
   A View from the Diners Club (1991)
   Screening History (1992)
   United States: Essays 1952-1992 (1993)
   Palimpsest (1995)
   Virgin Islands (1997)
   Sexually Speaking (1999)
   The Last Empire (2001)
   Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2002)
   Dreaming War (2002)
   Inventing a Nation (2003)
   Imperial America (2004)
   Point to Point Navigation (2006)
   Selected Essays (2007)
   The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal (2008) (with Jay Parini)
   Snapshots in History's Glare (2009)
   I Told You So (2013)
   Vidal vs. Mailer (2014) (with Norman Mailer)
   Buckley vs. Vidal (2015) (with William F Buckley Jr)

Anthologies containing stories by Gore Vidal

First Words (1993)

Awards

Nebula Awards Best Novel nominee (1979) : Kalki

Books about Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal Writer Against the Grain (1992) by Jay Parini
The Fiction of Gore Vidal and E.L. Doctorow (2002) by Stephen Harris
Gore Vidal: A Comprehensive Bibliography (2007) by Jay Parini

Gore Vidal recommends

The Magic Christian (1959)
Terry Southern
"Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation."

City Of Night (1963)
John Rechy
"One of the few original American writers of the last century."

Eustace Chisholm and the Works (1967)
James Purdy
"James Purdy is an authentic American genius."

Those Who Walk Away (1967)
Patricia Highsmith
"One of the most interesting writers of this dismal century."

Funeral Games (1981)
(Alexander the Great , book 3)
Mary Renault
"One of the centuries most unexpectedly original works of art."

The Nehrus and the Gandhis (1985)
Tariq Ali
"A fascinating and clear-cut account of an exotic world and family like no other."

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
Jeanette Winterson
"The most interesting young writer I have read."

The Glory Cloak (2004)
Patricia O'Brien
"Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton are splendid protaganists in this vivid and revealing story of our Civil War."

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