D.C. Diary: In the Words of Gore Vidal
"Most of all I hate politics. I hate the President. I hate Congress. The Supreme Court is particularly awful. I detest the military. The Diplomatic Corps should be liquidated, preferably with poisoned canapes. I loathe Washington, District of Columbia, gem of the swampland, home of the chigger, wreathed in its poison ivy, its belly stuffed with cabbage cooked in bacon grease and indigestible Virginia hams which taste like scrapings from the keels of sunken ships. Oh, let my hate give me eloquence! Shall we have a drink."
— A conversation, circa 1938, at the Chevy Chase Country Club, in Gore Vidal's work of historical fiction, "Washington, D.C."
Express' Michael Grass examines the words of writer, observer and provocateur Gore Vidal, a son of the nation's capital, who at 81, can still throw a punch.
WHEN MY FATHER interviewed writer Gore Vidal in Los Angeles last year for a documentary project, the outspoken figure told him to relay some advice to me back in Washington: "Tell your son to keep writing, even if it's a suicide note."
Looking back on Vidal's words of motivation today, I guess I should be uncomfortable with them: A former roommate of mine committed suicide earlier this month. But it's hardly the first time Vidal — who grew up near Rock Creek Park (in a residence now owned by the government of Malaysia) and has been a provocative observer of this city's socio-political history — has uttered something acerbic. That's all par for the course. Vidal moved away from town years ago, but from afar continues to jab it as he sees fit. And he's quite content doing so.
In a story in this weekend's Financial Times, reporter Victor Mallet writes that Vidal may be mellowing with age, but still lithely lobs invectives at his targets, including President Bush. In response to rumors that the president is drowning his sorrows in the bottle, Vidal said:
Well, thank God, he might make a little more sense. A group of us each vowed we would send him a bottle of whisky but I think it's heroin probably that he would need.Vidal, whose new memoir, "Point to Point Navigation," is out, also thinks that there is a strong case to be made for impeaching the president.
I wonder, when Vidal makes his final return to Washington — he is to be buried in a plot near the grave of the great American historian Henry Adams in Petworth's historic Rock Creek Cemetery — will his grave will be marked with a stirring epitaph?
Love him or hate him, it's difficult to deny that the grandson of Oklahoma Sen. Thomas Gore and stepbrother to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is a master of words, especially when he speaks them himself. (Mallet thinks that Vidal "gives the impression of trying too hard to deliver the perfect bon mot for a dictionary of quotations."
So with that, let's do a survey of Vidal notable quotables:
» During a debate with noted conservative William F. Buckley Jr. at during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago: "Vidal called Buckley a 'pro-crypto-Nazi,' a modest slip of the tongue, he later said, because he was searching for the word 'fascist' and it just didn't come out. Inflamed by the word 'Nazi' and the whole tenor of the discussion, Buckley snapped back: "Now listen, you queer," he said, 'stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in you goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.'" [Political Animals: Vidal, Buckley and the '68 Debates; YouTube]
» "I'm now a creationist. Because the distance from George Washington to George W. Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin." [Truthdig, Nov. 21, 2006]
» "I'm not a journalist. I haven't interviewed anyone since Barry Goldwater in 1964." [WaPo, May 7, 2001]
» "Once alienated, an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of Earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated." [SF Chronicle, April 21, 2002]
» "A majority of citizens should be able to read which they cannot do now. They should be able to do simple sums, too. And history should be the backbone of the public school system." [Christine Smith, Dec. 21, 2005]
» "To speak of a famous writer is like speaking of a famous speedboat designer. The adjective is inappropriate to the noun." [Quill & Quire, Dec. 4, 2006]
Photos by Charley Gallay/Getty Images
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