Although many characterize the late Gore Vidal as an insatiable
curmudgeon, whose only satisfactions were an unyielding dissatisfaction, the
tenor of his own voice, and the aristocratic regality of his finely textured public
persona, he represented to me the quintessential bitch goddess, sassy yet
eloquent, fierce yet composed. If Paradise exists then I'm certain the Gods
have bought back his damned soul from the Underworld so as to get a lecture on where They
went wrong.
Among other qualities, his gift for gab, his pointed wit, his fashion,
and his diction positioned him in that rarest category of American intellectual
that breaches deeply entrenched social and class divides. Yes, Gore was born a
child of enormous privilege. He grew up and maintained an aristocratic mien which
at first glance is easily resented, and were we to fall solely for the form and
miss the content it would be understandable to presume him another one-percenter
groomed like a dressage horse for attention, waste and wealth. But we'd be mistaken, because Madame Vidal (I
say Madame, as Genet might, only as a
result of his grandeur) had another quality, which doubtlessly must seem
strange to most Americans- he had empathy, and while I believe the cold slush
in his veins made weeping for us nearly impossible, it didn't stop him from heatedly
leveling his Apollonian brass down on the masters of hypocrisy, deceit, power, rape,
plunder and murder.
That he did so dramatically also must seem strange to most of us raised
in the company of the television or computer without table manners, Shakespeare
or whole foods. Of the upper class, Vidal was nevertheless more working class
than the majority of American laborers. He
knew what he was and he did a fine job of helping us discover who we were. What
good is the working class if it can't identify, or refuses to identify itself
as such? Minus the ability to articulate our place in this swamp, we're liable
to delusions of grandeur, the most common of which is the belief that each one
of us enjoys an equal share in that most coveted and mythical American middle
class. The fantasy that is the American
Dream has the uncanny capacity for making what could be is. In the tradition of Arthur Miller, Vidal illustrated its
deficiencies. It wasn't always a pretty picture, but it was rational.
It must also be said that for those under fifty who didn't take the
humanities seriously old man Gore was something of an anachronism; that or an
outlandish cartoon-like snide, snotty and snooty buffoon- according to this
estimation circa 2012, the former is doubtlessly true, and the latter, based on
the solipsistic consumer-driven diarrhea we swallow as culture, understandable.
What's sad about Vidal's death is not necessarily that few remain from his
generation that matured in a time when there was room, even in the bustlingly
industrious anti-red, infantile America, for intellectual figures to loom sage
and sometimes notorious in your living room or kitchen on a Saturday night
(after all, people die). Christopher Hitchens, while much younger, caught the
tail-end of this phase in popular culture (sadly, he's gone too). It's that
there's no room left, not popularly anyhow, for new figures to emerge. As we
market ourselves like sneakers and appraise the apparel that is our peers, the
demand for this space is absent from our catalogue of retail desires. People
like Gore never look good in window displays (unless in print) or on a shelf
next to other shoes or on racks in a mix of various suits. There's more to
Gore's book than a face.
That is, except for our new line of charlatans, otherwise known as
pundits, each one customized to fit the precise network that floods their
pockets full of snot to mislead us in the rotten ways we want to be misled. The
Glenn Becks, E.J. Dionnes, Rachel Maddows, Ezra Kleins, and Chris Hayes'
(pardon my emphasis on the liberals, but I have a special distaste for those
who so well feign the progressive appearance of sincerity and reason until election
season arrives) and whoever else feels no shame in unconditionally towing some
pseudo-party corporate line, these soulless and sexless ultra-chic twits today
people our intellectual landscape.
In his old age there was something lecherous in Vidal's glare and that
creeping, cynical smile of his. I genuinely got a kick out of seeing him as a
guest on major news networks. Were it not for his cultural capital, of which
until not long ago an abundance remained, these same stations would have called
on security to pepper spray his face for that look of his. But they had to have
him, because somehow, though our collective mind has blistered in the microwave
of the self, many of us still longed to enjoy his pageantry, to listen to what
he had to say, whether to condemn, approve, or learn from.
After I'd heard of his death I took a day to read The City and the Pillar, Vidal's 1948 novel about the social
politics of sex and identity during the formative years of the generation Tom
Brokaw has termed "The Greatest." The hero, Jim Willard, maneuvers cautiously
throughout his many adventures on his journey toward self-realization, avoiding
as best he can the stock classifications we keep on hand for understanding each
other, particularly with regard to his sexuality: Gay, straight, soldier,
actor, athlete, black, white, etc.
After the publication of his most recent memoir, Vidal
pointedly explains during an interview what to the novel's young man was
little more than an inclination: "Anybody who's dumb enough to think
anyone else's personality is governed entirely by his sexual taste is insane.
There's no such thing as a gay person. There's a gay act, we know what that is,
or can be. That's it. Once you allow yourself to be categorized Adolf Hitler's
gonna come along and say I don't like your category. I think we better remove
you, you types."
Imagine for a moment the type of country America may have been if not
for the caveman way we go about assessing and containing the Other: for/against, us/ them, Muslim/Christian, black/white, gay/straight, good/evil, ad
absurdum.
Gore Vidal was a genuine personality and a man of fertile intellect
and imagination. America is a little grimmer without him.
