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Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays
The American writer voices his opinions on influential figures as well as the ironies, illusions, and insensibility of life in the past two decades. Bibliogs
449 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Gore Vidal
240 books1,936 followersGore Vidal was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, playwright and political commentator known for his sharp wit, provocative opinions and criticism of American society. Raised in Washington, D.C., he attended several preparatory schools before graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1943. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, a Democratic senator from Oklahoma, profoundly influenced his early interest in politics. During World War II, Vidal served in the United States Army and worked aboard a supply ship in the Aleutian Islands. His experiences inspired his first novel, Williwaw (1946), published shortly after his military service.
Vidal attracted controversy with The City and the Pillar (1948), one of the early American novels to portray male homosexuality openly. Its subject provoked conservative critics and established his reputation as a writer willing to challenge prevailing social conventions. He subsequently explored different genres, writing novels, plays, essays and screenplays. His stage comedy Visit to a Small Planet became a theatrical success, while his work in Hollywood included contributions to the screenplay for Ben-Hur (1959).
His historical novels brought him particular recognition. Julian (1964) examined the Roman emperor's attempt to restore paganism, while Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984) offered fictional interpretations of American political history. Myra Breckinridge (1968), a provocative satire of Hollywood and gender conventions, further demonstrated his willingness to challenge cultural assumptions. His later historical fiction included 1876, Empire and Hollywood, forming part of his broader exploration of American power and national identity.
Vidal was equally influential as an essayist and public intellectual. His collections addressed American foreign policy, religion, sexuality and the political establishment. United States: Essays 1952-1992 won the National Book Award in 1993. His memoir Palimpsest (1995) offered personal reflections on his family, relationships and literary career. Vidal also became famous for televised confrontations with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. during the 1968 presidential election coverage. Their bitter exchanges made him a prominent figure in American political debate.
His political involvement extended beyond commentary. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in New York in 1960 and for the United States Senate in California in 1982. He later chaired the People's Party and remained an outspoken critic of American militarism, corporate influence and the expansion of executive power. His views frequently placed him at odds with political leaders and fellow intellectuals, including writer Norman Mailer.
Vidal spent much of his later life in Italy before returning to the United States. He continued writing essays, novels and memoirs into his final years, maintaining his reputation for intellectual independence and irreverence. His work examined the relationship between private ambition and public power, often questioning conventional accounts of American history. He died in 2012, leaving a substantial literary legacy spanning fiction, political criticism and cultural commentary.
Vidal attracted controversy with The City and the Pillar (1948), one of the early American novels to portray male homosexuality openly. Its subject provoked conservative critics and established his reputation as a writer willing to challenge prevailing social conventions. He subsequently explored different genres, writing novels, plays, essays and screenplays. His stage comedy Visit to a Small Planet became a theatrical success, while his work in Hollywood included contributions to the screenplay for Ben-Hur (1959).
His historical novels brought him particular recognition. Julian (1964) examined the Roman emperor's attempt to restore paganism, while Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984) offered fictional interpretations of American political history. Myra Breckinridge (1968), a provocative satire of Hollywood and gender conventions, further demonstrated his willingness to challenge cultural assumptions. His later historical fiction included 1876, Empire and Hollywood, forming part of his broader exploration of American power and national identity.
Vidal was equally influential as an essayist and public intellectual. His collections addressed American foreign policy, religion, sexuality and the political establishment. United States: Essays 1952-1992 won the National Book Award in 1993. His memoir Palimpsest (1995) offered personal reflections on his family, relationships and literary career. Vidal also became famous for televised confrontations with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. during the 1968 presidential election coverage. Their bitter exchanges made him a prominent figure in American political debate.
His political involvement extended beyond commentary. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in New York in 1960 and for the United States Senate in California in 1982. He later chaired the People's Party and remained an outspoken critic of American militarism, corporate influence and the expansion of executive power. His views frequently placed him at odds with political leaders and fellow intellectuals, including writer Norman Mailer.
Vidal spent much of his later life in Italy before returning to the United States. He continued writing essays, novels and memoirs into his final years, maintaining his reputation for intellectual independence and irreverence. His work examined the relationship between private ambition and public power, often questioning conventional accounts of American history. He died in 2012, leaving a substantial literary legacy spanning fiction, political criticism and cultural commentary.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 18, 2019
I was somewhat disappointed in this collection of essays written from 1952 to 1972. I expected to find the essays a lively and fascinating look at the time frame, but they seemed more like the personal ramblings of a diary. I thought several essays were difficult to follow and desperately needed an editor. It was worth a try, but I tend to think Vidal's novels were better.
March 19, 2018
This collection of forty-four essays, arranged in chronological order, permits one to see the author develop over the course of two decades. Vidal hits his stride when he and The New York Review of Books connect in 1964, shortly after it began publishing.
As is inevitable in a collection like this, some of the entries have a dated feel, but a surprisingly high percentage repay reading now, a half-century on. Vidal is one of the few writers equally at home in literature, history, and politics, and if one shares his triad of interests, there is much here to savor. But others, particularly those—now the majority of the living—too young to remember President Eisenhower or Mort Sahl, might content themselves with the one-volume anthology, United States, which culled the best of three essay collections up to 1992 (a fourth collection appeared in 2001). Completists like me, however, will want to read them all. One discovers many recurring themes, such as that the heyday of the novel as a popular art form is over, replaced by the movies, or his assertion that the U. S. became an empire in the years between Lincoln and T.R., but is now in irreversible decline. Vidal also maintained that there is no genuine two-party system in the country. Since the adoption of the Constitution, it has been governed by the Property Party, which has two wings, the reactionary (currently the Republicans) and the moderate (as of now the Democrats), and that the elected representatives of both are profoundly corrupt.
A few highlights of the collection: his lengthy report of a chat with Barry Goldwater from 1961 (after it ran in Life, Henry Luce paid it the compliment of informing his editors that he never wanted to see a piece like that again in his publications), his appreciative and insightful essay on Eleanor Roosevelt, and a review of a handful of books by Women’s Liberationists that shows how little the resistance to equality (Vidal characterizes it as Miller-Mailer-Manson man) has budged since 1971. Speaking of Henry Miller: the fact that Vidal has no moral qualms about pornography as an art form makes his skewering of Sexus all the more effective.
Admittedly, Vidal can’t hide his condescension for those not as cultured (in his opinion) as he, but he expresses his contempt in such elegant aphorisms (“the contemporary public plainly prefers mirrors to windows,” p. 170), that the reader smiles and feels exempt from the charge. Rightly or wrongly.
As is inevitable in a collection like this, some of the entries have a dated feel, but a surprisingly high percentage repay reading now, a half-century on. Vidal is one of the few writers equally at home in literature, history, and politics, and if one shares his triad of interests, there is much here to savor. But others, particularly those—now the majority of the living—too young to remember President Eisenhower or Mort Sahl, might content themselves with the one-volume anthology, United States, which culled the best of three essay collections up to 1992 (a fourth collection appeared in 2001). Completists like me, however, will want to read them all. One discovers many recurring themes, such as that the heyday of the novel as a popular art form is over, replaced by the movies, or his assertion that the U. S. became an empire in the years between Lincoln and T.R., but is now in irreversible decline. Vidal also maintained that there is no genuine two-party system in the country. Since the adoption of the Constitution, it has been governed by the Property Party, which has two wings, the reactionary (currently the Republicans) and the moderate (as of now the Democrats), and that the elected representatives of both are profoundly corrupt.
A few highlights of the collection: his lengthy report of a chat with Barry Goldwater from 1961 (after it ran in Life, Henry Luce paid it the compliment of informing his editors that he never wanted to see a piece like that again in his publications), his appreciative and insightful essay on Eleanor Roosevelt, and a review of a handful of books by Women’s Liberationists that shows how little the resistance to equality (Vidal characterizes it as Miller-Mailer-Manson man) has budged since 1971. Speaking of Henry Miller: the fact that Vidal has no moral qualms about pornography as an art form makes his skewering of Sexus all the more effective.
Admittedly, Vidal can’t hide his condescension for those not as cultured (in his opinion) as he, but he expresses his contempt in such elegant aphorisms (“the contemporary public plainly prefers mirrors to windows,” p. 170), that the reader smiles and feels exempt from the charge. Rightly or wrongly.
August 31, 2025
Gore Vidal published more essay collections than anyone else in American literature, and they are all vital! HOMAGE TO DANIEL SHAYS contains the wonderful title piece, reminding us how Americans have always hated taxes, while Gore's hero, insurrectionist Daniel Shays actually did something about them, raising a provisional army against the government in Washington, and George Washington, to stop revenue collection. Other essays touch on Vidal's favorite subjects; the decline of American letters since the nineteenth-century, political corruption in high places and "the end of the American empire" in Vietnam. Indeed, the specter of Richard Nixon looms large over these pages, but, just wait, the following year, during the Watergate coverup, Gore published his novel BURR, a scathing look at the sins of the Founding Fathers and their progeny.
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March 11, 2020Many brilliant essays, not as much of a flavour of the times as you'd expect, as Vidal seems to spend more time in the library than in the streets but many wonderful essays on the literary arts is nothing to complain about. Reminds you that there's pretty much no-one around today who is as at home discussing fiction as they are holding forth on the full range of political issues, economic and cultural
September 13, 2007
His essays remind me to be honest about my own opinions and just say it like it is and how you feel truthfully at that time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews