As a writer I consider him the greatest American stylist since at least WWII, if not since his beloved Henry James, as well as our finest essayist by quite a stretch. But I think his astonishing RANGE was most impressive of all–here was a fearless and fearsomely talented artist who conquered Television during its Golden Age, Hollywood, Broadway, Sci-Fi & Detective Fiction, the Experimental Novel, the Historical Novel, Literary & Film Criticism, and Political Analysis, each at the very highest levels! His writing on Sexuality and U.S. Foreign Policy already seems astonishingly prescient, and should eventually merit consideration as the definitive statements of his time, if they haven’t already. And his seven-novel “biography” of the United States is a dizzying achievement all by itself. The Nobel Committee truly disgraced itself by not awarding its increasingly irrelevent Literature “Prize” to a man whose many & varied accomplishments dwarf those of any recipient in my lifetime! In addition, he was a rather good film & TV actor, and the single greatest talk show guest of all-time! If anyone raised the filmed interview to an art form, it was Gore. I’m grateful that his work found me during my early-twenties, as that afforded me sufficient time to find and savor his entire 65-year body of work over the past 25 to 30 years. There will never be a comparable figure, so if you haven’t read him, this would be a great time to get started. For the neophyte, I’d recommend the astonishing essay collection UNITED STATES (1992), the once-scandalous/still-hilarious Hollywood novel, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE (1968), for Ancient History his first of many #1 bestsellers, 1964’s JULIAN, and amongst the seven-volume American series, the deliciously wicked BURR (1973), which brings alive The Founding Fathers as no other work ever has or likely ever will! I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at Town Hall about a decade ago, and will forever cherish having been in the same room with Greatness of that magnitude! Farewell, Great Gore, never to be forgotten…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/books/gore-vidal-elegant-writer-dies-at-86.html
– Tom Kipp
