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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
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About the author
Gore Vidal
416 books1,871 followersWorks of American writer Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, noted for his cynical humor and his numerous accounts of society in decline, include the play
The Best Man
(1960) and the novel
Myra Breckinridge
(1968) .
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
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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.
September 1, 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