United States: Essays 1952-1992

by Gore Vidal

From the age of Eisenhower to the dawning of the Clinton era, Gore Vidal’s United States offers an incomparably rich tapestry of American intellectual and political life in a tumultuous period. It also provides the best, most sustained exposure possible to the most wide-ranging, acute, and original literary intelligence of the post—World War II years. United States is an essential book in the canon of twentieth-century American literature and an endlessly fascinating work.

Genres: Essays, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Literature

1295 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Works 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.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gore Vidal's sequence of novels that sprawl across the young American republic's two centuries plus of existence—Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, Washington, and The Golden Age—in my estimation are amongst the greatest series of historical novels ever written; and United States is surely one of the finest collections of essays by undoubtedly one of the greatest essayists that America has produced in the twentieth century. Penned in Vidal's inimitable arch and elegant style, insightful, biting, witty and learned, and covering multiple topics over four decades in the States of Art, Politics and Being, this mammoth tome is an absolute treasure.

For a lengthy spell after I found myself single once more this book had pride of place as my Bathroom Reader, helping to make those secondary missions entertaining and edifying in addition to their biological necessity. Indoor plumbing and essaying prose—has their ever been a more boon set of companions for the seated individual? What's more, United States claimed that privileged position for quite some time, due to the undeniable fact that almost every one of its constituent pieces is a true treat and brilliant slice of informed and insightful thought. In particular, his droll exegesis of the postmodern novel—criticisms of personal favorites like Pynchon provide cool appraisals before delivery of the cutting blow, but all with a brow-bowed deftness that can't help but draw forth some acknowledgement, uncomfortable and/or rueful though its arisen presence be, while his pleasant surprise with the likes of Herman Wouk's Winds of War and War and Remembrance (a pair of books that I loved, what with Natalie and Byron's love story making my teenaged heart ache and sing) reveal the literary honesty that operated within the man—and his biting mordancy as he surveys the growth of Imperial America—including a near-surreal and comical interview with a pre-presidential nominee Barry Goldwater—regale and inform in equal measure. The highest recommendation.

RIP Gore Vidal—yet another singular and singularly American voice stilled by the inexorable tread of time's forward passage. Perhaps he and William F. Buckley, Jr. will exchange the epithets Crypto-Fascist and Queer with less heat and more fondness now that their existential energy has assumed a presumably less material and partisan form...

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent compilation of 114 of Gore Vidal’s essays which won the National Book Award. The book is divided into three parts: State of the Arts, State of the Union, and State of Being.

The first section on the State of the Arts are essays about other famous authors and books and is outstanding. This is Gore Vidal at his best, as a book critic. There are six essays which were so good, witty, at times caustic, and certainly educational and have held up very well with the passage of time.

1. Norman Mailer’s Self Advertisements
2. The Bookchat of Henry James
3. The Oz Books
4. John dos Passos at Midnight
5. Tennessee Williams
6. The Death of Mishima

The essay on Tennessee Williams was my absolute favorite.

The next section on the State of the Union is about politics, a topic which many people associate with Vidal. I personally don’t think he is a great political writer. Most of the essays about politicians are irrelevant today and so short in duration there is little to be learned. I think the essay on Nixon however was quite good and written in Vidal’s typically cheeky manner. The others were so so.

The last section on the State of Being was also good. In particular, an essay called On Flying is one of the best articles I have read. It is autobiographical and there are a surprising number of world firsts related to Vidal and his experience with early flight. It is fascinating.

So overall I would give the book 4.5 stars, there are numerous essays that are clearly among the best that I have read.

[Gonzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone at all surprised by Gore Vidal’s pedophilia cannot be the kind of person who ever liked Gore Vidal in the first place. The man who recognized no distinctions between sexual proclivities—or if he did, did so with a discrimination usually seen only amongst Calvinist theologians—, the man who never lacked reason to cite the fraudulent Kinsey Report, was of course a man who took yearly holidays to Bangkok with little interest in learning Thai. In a sick way, it would almost be disappointing to find Vidal was not a pederast; the licentiousness and cruelty of the man pointed him to such perversion out of logical necessity, and if he hadn’t indulged in such Oriental pleasures he would have been admitting of great hipocrisy, which is after all the only mortal sin in our United States of Ambrosia.

Ah, that’s a coining of yours truly. Vidal loved to pound out that phrase of his, United States of Amnesia, when insulting modern Americans, all the while woefully or willfully ignorant of the cause of that great forgetting. For this reason, Vidal’s lifelong project of situating the United States in the context of world history—and this monumental work, United States, is Vidal’s greatest accomplishment towards this end—is always perversely incomplete. To think that the American people are oppressed by their lack of hedonism becomes more damnably laughable each passing month of 2016. Vidal’s black soul casts a shadow over this work, and it weakens the structure of his otherwise wonderful literaty and political edifice. Vidal had a right to claim himself the greatest biographer of the United States since Henry Adams; that this chair proceeded from a wry cynic to a sodomite misanthrope is proof that Adams not cynical enough about Darwinism.

Aristocratic, witty, outrageous, and genuinely well-learned, Vidal at first appears to be a gift from the British, most obviously in the fact that, unlike most Americans, he does not badly suffer when compared to his British peers. Most of what passes for literary society in the United States is characterized by extreme banality, extreme shallowness, or a sick obsession with the academic. For this reason America can produce professors unable to muster the barest wit or literary merit; America can produce emotive, erratic, and overall shallow scribblers like Dorothy Parker. The American literary establishment has always been barren and moribund, and needed but a slight twerk to become what it is in the present day, a bastion for un-Jewish Hebrews whose beliefs have nominal connection with the historical West and whose lives and intellects are mere endurance against entropy. In this environment, Vidal’s wit and learning make him a giant among men, or better than this, a Briton among Yanks.

Vidal’s literary criticism is excellent, so good it seems to belong to a long ago era of liberal minds. “American Plastic” is a wonderful summation of what is wrong with the modern American novel, which manages to be turgid, insipid, and overly intellectual at the same time. Such analysis can be applied to every other aspect of aesthetic life as well. For all Vidal’s often sterile libertarianism, he never loses sight of the fact that art cannot merely be ornament but must have some element of heart and soul driving it. The gap between the “University Novel” and the “Public Novel,” as Vidal labels them, is less notable now that no one on a university campus can be trusted to be realiably literate, and juvenile literature must stand in the place of wisdom lit.

Vidal is too enamored with the fellow sex-case, Henry James, but his encomiums towards the other Henry—Henry Adams—helped guide me to the greatest writer America has yet produced. His adovocacy of Calvino is almost sweet. In praising Eleanor Roosevelt, he expresses a nostalgia for the age of puritanism which his ilk helped kill. Mrs. Roosevelt is the one woman in American political history whose accomplishments deserve more than a limerick’s length. Her husband was intellectually and spiritually sterile; Mrs. Roosevelt provided brains, heart, and soul to the most momentous administration in American history, one which would consitute a bare technocratic takeover if not for Eleanor’s humanity.

Admirably for a scribbler, Vidal does not waste his time with trifles. His one-time “dauphino” Christopher Hitchens wrote fairly lousy literary criticism because he never rose above the level of personal pugilism; see particularly his terrible reviews of Philip Roth’s (admittedly lousy) late novels. When Hitchens lambasted Updike’s twilight novel, Terrorist, he hunts and pecks for lousy passages in a lousy book to write a lousy review which leaves the reader with no further insight beyond the fact that the one book isn’t very good. Vidal’s takedown of Updike (in The Last Empire) spans the author’s whole method and career, and whether or not the criticism is deserved, its magnitude certainly is. Vidal not only ravages Updike’s 1997 novel, but his famous 60s and 70s output; the genitalia Updike put in all his work speaks more to an emperor not having any clothes than literary or political transgressiveness. I still can’t pick up an Updike novel without thinking of Vidal’s savaging; this is how effective his criticism is.

Vidal’s takedowns of Scott Fitzgerald and Oscar Wilde are similarly wonderful. Fitzgerald wrote one great novel, one good novel, a handful of fine short stories, and reams and reams of dreck. He was a shallow, self-obsessed manchild; his best work found pathos in this sad self-obsession, but Fitz had nothing to offer beyond this. The idolatry of Fitzgerald is a testament not to Fitzgerald’s work, but to Americans’ own self-obsession. Don’t all of us poor dreamers have green lights on the ends of our harbors? Vidal’s criticism of Oscar Wilde is similarly sharp, because although Wilde’s intellect was far greater than Fitzgerald’s, his grand self-obsession was not justified in his literary work. Wilde’s early plays are tame melodramas with some fabulous one-liners; Salome is OK; Dorian Gray is one grand idea, bolstered by Wilde’s wit, dragged down by needless length, and overall a fatally inconsistent work of art. Only Earnest and a few essays are perfect. But like Fitzgerald, Wilde’s sad fate wins admirers, and one suspects his fans spend more time in contemplation of the man than reading his work. Who can resist placing a kiss on his sepulchre? This is what modernity has made of us: The only genuineness we believe in people is self-regard, and the only tragedy we can envision is when this self-regard is not fully realized.

Vidal’s war against “scholar squirrels” is quite wonderful. The emphasis on studying every envelope licked by ever author that ever made it into the New York Times was a sign that the value-less, work-for-work’s-sake mentality had infected academia, and paved the way for the value-less, don’t-even-do-any-work environment of modern academia. “Gender theory” has the benefit of being completely inscrutable. The scholar squirrels could be lampooned in Pale Fire and even gently lauded in Possession, but the Morlocks of todays ivory tower are too monstrous to give answer to.

In politics, his cocktail party liberalism is enlivened by his open advocacy for the Southern Cause, and recognition that the evils of American Empire spread throughout the world in the 20th Century could be seen in utero in the wreckage of the Confederacy. If Vidal had done nothing but expose the NYRB clique to the Southerner’s side of history, his work may have been worth it. That Vidal’s just Lincoln-bashing had to be accompanied by rote bullying about Lincoln’s racism, his seeming agnosticism, and his possible homosexuality, was just the price one pays for living in decadence. Broad minded readers could see that Lincoln’s tyrranny brought to bear questions at least as old as Sparta and Athens, as Caesar and Cato, without necessarily bringing in the indulgences of Oedipus and Socrates.

All of Vidal’s historical work can be seen as an attempt to place America within the context of the world and of world history; this is to his great credit. Yet Vidal is not quite ready to place America in this context without the most American of creations, that which we might well call Scientific Hedonism. Strangely for a man who so clearly understood the immortal, unchangeable undercurrent which runs through all great literature, Vidal could not recognize the moral undercurrents which have united all great societies from Hellas to the Western Empire of today. And in fact, putting modern America into the context of history without the dubious insights of Freud, Sanger, and Kinsey would invite too many comparisons to the decadence of Rome and Greece. Though Vidal is clear-eyed about America’s decline, he is unable to see that this decline has its roots in decadence, an oversight too great to be chalked up to ignorance. Surely the incisive eye of Literary Vidal cannot be the same eye casting sight over American history, which is so fatally glaucomic? This requires another question: Did Vidal ever think of his sexual politics as truly transgressive? or did his perversions come first, with libertarianism acting as a pretext for boy-buggery?

It's hard to tell. As far back as “The Twelve Caesars” in 1952, Vidal was inveighing against the moral taciturnity of Suetonius, who complained that a minority of them had proper sexual desires. The great Roman historians, Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, understood that a system of government is only as good as its people. This is an immortal fact, along with the one that our sexual ethics extend into our political ethics. Julius' desire for sexual conquest extended into a desire for land and power; the sad0-masochism of Nero and Caligula extended to the torture of their subjects; the temperance of the Antonines was the basis of their just reigns.

Jesus Christ knew that a man who commits a sin is a slave to that sin; pagan Horace knew the same. Vidal has no honorable reason to be obtuse. Not only is his morality faulty, but his perversions sully his art. Can Vidal not see that the servile, sheeplike, American amnesiacs he lambastes are the product of decadence and convenience? That the “National Security State” which he inveighs against can have no opposition in a nation convulsed by pornography and commercial vice? The Puritans of New England could battle George III precisely because they had first tamed their sin; the stomachs made hard by fasting could endure the hunger of embargo, the souls made taught by spiritual warfare could endure the depredations of battle. Now that it allows in transexuals, the modern Army cannot depend on its men being able to endure a pair of cotton trousers! We deserve to be slaves—and we are slaves—because we are first passion’s slaves, waiting for a tyrant to suppress us.

It must also be said that Vidal would have been anathema to North and South in any other period of American history; he would have been anathema to the NYRB set if not for his homosexualism, but the acceptance of sodomy is as crucial a criterion in accepting a man today as it would have been justification for expulsion in the past. The lover and biographer of the United States would have rightly despised by almost everyone who had ever lived in it. In good societies, men like Vidal are castigated and their perversions exposed. In bad ones, they are confused for trifles, topics for ironical discussion. That Vidal knew we live in an almost fatally bad society is grand. But to understand the cause of this, he would first have had to discovered the cause of the wretchedness in himself. One broaches ugly Freudianism in making the assessment, but with Gore it is undeniable that all his valuable output first had to win approval from his genitals. Vidal’s work is expansive and his understanding deep; yet who will remember the brilliant syntheses he wrought next to the chaos of his eternally shallow and fraudulent sexual politics? Who, in the future, will be able to remember the day when any consideration besides the mammalian existed at all?

United States should be a grand work, but grand works must to some extent come from grand men. To be such a man, Vidal would have had to transcend hedonism, the most tempting of all Americanisms which he otherwise tried so assiduously to hover above. More important than our politics, government, history or art is our appetite. We live in the United States of Ambrosia. Our material wants are so thoroughly sated that we rely on marketers to supply us with wants themselves; we have reached the point that we expect the hand that feeds us to also make us hungry again. This level of servility would abash the denizens of late Rome. But there is no turning back. To acknowledge history at this point is to give up the game; it is to admit that we have stripped and sodomized the balustrades erected by twenty generations’ toil. A new Bill of Rights would ensure a man’s right to pornography over provocation; a specious right to be defended rather than a right to defend oneself; a right to be free from God rather than the freedom to find His light yoke of temperance and charity. The disingenuous complaints about morality are below a man of his intellect, but this was Vidal's choice, who willfully placed his intellect on a level below his ejaculate; and Vidal’s capacious work must be judged, as America will be, with mind to the children he defiled, and the stain he spread from New York to Italy into the Third World.

[Hollis Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly one of the best essay collections published in the previous century and I'm not getting my hopes up that there will be anything to be surpass it in the present one. Vidal is sometimes angry and irascible but always witty and provocative, always erudite. His enthusiasm about certain authors is always infectious. I doubt that any reader will agree with all of his opinions. He denies that there are such things as heterosexuals and homosexuals: people just follow their sexual appetites and commit individual sexual acts wherever they might take them. I can't imagine huge amounts of people agreeing with that. He thinks that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are really just two wings of one party: there are both paid and financed by businesses and there is no real choice for the people. He thinks that all English professors are hacks. I'll leave that one for you to ponder...

A lot of things he says are just plain right. He argues that monotheism is the worst disaster to befall the human race, which it is. He points out that academe has ruined the cultural lives of many people and spoiled their appetite for reading. Nearly all English students are involuntary readers: they have no real appetite for reading and will stop reading anything apart from the odd volume of housewife fiction or gormless fantasy trash as soon as they graduate. I remember sitting in on an English seminar once with some first-years and I was absolutely amazed by the fact that not a single one of them had read the assigned book: 'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf. I asked all of them in the corridor beforehand and no-one had read it. We get to the discussion and they are all able to give a magnificently fluent impression that they have read the book and can discuss it at length (although they fall strangely silent when it comes to the specifics). Truly wonderful: how to perfect the art of pretending to have books you haven't, suitable training for a lifetime of polite society. One guy next to me also admitted that he had not bothered finishing 'Jane Eyre'. He got halfway, got bored and then skipped to the last 50 pages and read the ending. Astonishing. It's amazing how university arts departments have created a new kind of ignorance: educated ignorance.

Of course, the lack of voluntary readers is a larger symptom of the overall problems that affect us. It's sad but there is nothing that can be done if that is the way society is moving.

''World gone, no voluntary readers. No voluntary readers, no literature - only creative writing courses and English studies, activities marginal to civilisation'' ~ from his essay on William Dean Howells.

Vidal's insight is really amazing: he penetrates through academia and media alike and goes straight to the heart of the debates in question. If you are able to read this volume straight through without having your eyes opened even slightly on matters of art and politics, then nothing will ever open them.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember watching Gore Vidal on television, usually on one of those talk shows he seems to view with contempt. He seemed to be a living opinion. Switch him on and opinions stream out. But usually those opinions, though often partisan and colourfully stated, were always pertinent, well-informed and incisive, despite the fact that, verbally at least, he tended to play the Gore Verbose, often using five words where one would do. But what words they were.

In print, he is much more economical with language, and often delivers a point like a poniard stab. Succinct perhaps is a strange word to describe a book that runs just short of 1300 pages and around 600,000 words. But this is a collection of essays, criticisms and occasional pieces spanning forty years, 114 of them, loosely bound into three sections - State of The Art, State of the Union, and State of Being. Literary criticism forms the bulk of the material, with the politics the author became famous for largely intruding as asides and comments. There is very little here on the process of his own writing, so this is far from autobiography. When he does engage with his own work, it is often to answer criticism of what he wrote. In these instances, he does not pull the punches he throws.

The wit is certainly there, as are many of the super egos of US politics, media and literature, not to mention a sprinkling from Hollywood. But here Gore Vidal is mainly analysing the written word, both from his contemporaries and from the past. Here is my own selection of that wit.

On criticism. The best a serious analyst (of a novel) can hope to do is comment intelligibly from his vantage point in time on the way a work appears to him in a contemporary, a comparative, or historical light.

On changing taste. The bad movies we made twenty years ago are now regarded in altogether too many circles as important aspects of what the new illiterates want to believe is the only significant art form of the twentieth century.

On education and Reagan. Obviously, there is a great deal wrong with our educational system, as President Reagan recently, and rather gratuitously, noted. After all, an educated electorate would not have elected him president.

On stars. In England, after Guelph-Pooters and that con-man for all seasons, Churchill, Bloomsbury is the most popular continuing saga for serious readers.

On Ford Madox Ford. Certainly, Ford never lied deliberately in order to harm others, as did Truman Capote, or to make himself appear brave and strong and true as did Hemingway, whose own lying finally became a sort of art-form by the time he got round to settling his betters’ hash in A Moveable Feast. Ford’s essential difference was the fact that he was all along what he imagined himself to be that latter day unicorn, a gentleman.

On attitudes. Today’s reader wants to look at himself, to find out who he is, with an occasional glimpse of his next-door neighbor.

On literacy. Having explained that rulers never wanted general literacy, on the grounds that it might provoke ideas of revolution. The more you read, the more you act. In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That’s what happens when you take writing too seriously. Happily, Americans have never liked reading all that much. Politically ignorant, we keep sputtering along in our old Model T, looking wistfully every four years for a good mechanic.

On empire. Historians often look to the Roman Empire to find analogies with the United States. They flatter us. We do not live under the Pax Americana, but the Pax Frigida. I should not look to Rome for comparison but rather to the Most Serene Venetian Republic, a pedestrian state devoted to wealth, comfort, trade, and keeping the peace, especially after inheriting the wreck of the Byzantine Empire, as we have inherited the wreck of the British Empire.

On ornithologists. To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

On a Moscow hotel. We had all met at the Rossya Hotel in Moscow. According to the Russians, it is the largest hotel in the world. Whether or not this is true, the Rossy’s charm is not unlike that of New York’s Attica Prison.

I confess I once stayed in The Rossya, and for more than one night. It was colossal and was demolished because its unimaginative glassed-in concrete box kept intruding into pictures of Red Square, Basil’s and the Kremlin. I was told not only which room to use, but also which entrance, with the qualification that “it might be difficult” if we use any of the other doors. Red rag to a bull… Yes, we accessed the place via one of those other entrances and we found that inside the place was a veritable rabbit warren, with floors in one part of the building not matching floors elsewhere. We got so lost that we had to find our way back outside and approach our room from our usual entrance.

It is an image that informs a review of this book, in that taken as a whole, it is a very long, arduous and at times repetitive read. I am sure that the publishers and certainly the author wanted these pieces to be read singly, and that way the ideas remain fresh.

Overall, we are reminded that the standard of debate, both political and literary, has declined since Gore Vidal left us these superb essays.

[Evan Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every year or so for at least the past decade a Vidal interview appears in print or on TV in which he makes grand, outrageous comments about how lame the United States is and also how stupid most of the public discourse about it remains. In his latest, he referred to the 13-year-old rape victim of Roman Polanski as a "hooker." In the public pronouncements he struck me as a clown curmudgeon. Worse, his public opinions are so predictable. Was it any surprise that he would characterize Bush as an idiot fascist? Of course not.

In 2005 I received a PEN award at a function at which he was also honored. At the awards dinner, attendees were each given a bag of books, mine and his and a bunch of others. After the torture of long speeches and even longer video presentations (why do they always have long video presentations at dinners for writers. Isn't video an insult to our craft?) I grabbed my free Vidal book and approached him, with my then 14-year-old nephew in tow, to ask for his autograph. I thought it would be cool for my nephew to meet him. Vidal signed our books, but had no interest in small talk. Rude, but in a dignified way. Made him a appealing.

When I arrived home that night I cracked open United States, expecting to find four decades--toughly a thousands pages!--of predictable, curmudgeon opinions, as I knew Vidal from him public persona. From the earliest section of essays I was stunned. Vidal is such an astonishing and original thinker and observer in these. Beautiful prose and arguments. Such breadth of subjects and commensurate breadth of experience and thought bearing on them. Among my favorites are his essays on John Adams and John Quincy--second and sixth Presidents--H.L. Mencken and Watergate spook E. Howard Hunt. Vidal writing on Mencken is one the greatest reading pleasures I have had in the past few years. Vidal is certainly up there with Mencken as an American essayist. As far as I'm concerned, there is no greater compliment.

I have concluded there are at least two Vidals: Man of letters and media whore. The former is the one who matters.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most important feature of my reading career is that books have tended to come along at the right time for me. This was especially interesting when I bought bunches of used books and stacked them biggest to smallest and fattest to thinnest--this makes for an eclectic order. But order there always was. And as I read more and more, my ability to make connections and fill in gaps improved and I probably even MADE the order myself. But there were still moments of coincidence and serendipity to fill my little reader's heart with joy.

That is all the long way of saying that, again, another book came to me at the right time. This is the penultimate on the reading list compiled of several reading lists of the "great books" of the twentieth century. And that's as it should be, given that Vidal takes on so many of the other authors I've read and is connected to so many other figures on the list. I would not have had half the appreciation for this book if I had not read so much beforehand.

Two cultural references before we go on. Before this, other than being aware that he existed, I didn't know much about Gore Vidal's career or major themes. The most direct reference I had was an episode of Frasier in which Frasier is convinced to go on a cruise because Gore Vidal wrote a blurb about how great it what and Gore Vidal "hates everything." So I knew I was in for snark and a good screed. The other is Jamie Lee Curtis's response to Kevin Kline's assertion in A Fish Called Wanda that apes don't read philosophy: "Yes, they do, Otto. They just don't understand it." In many ways, although I have read many works of the "canon" and "Littratoor," I have done it from an untutored layperson's perspective. Unless a style really resonates with me or is incredibly unusual, I would not be able often to tell you WHAT makes writing great. I tend to focus more on plot and character, less on the craft of writing. I wouldn't be able to make half the observations and comparisons that Vidal (and others he chats with) makes in this book. I guess that's why we have a Gore Vidal: to make those connections.

OK. So his writing style. He has some witty one-liners and nice turns of phrase in which he manipulates the words of the figures he reviews. When I got the allusions, I felt smart and included. When I didn't, I felt excluded but like I couldn't ask or question it. And I think that's much the point of his writing style. He will often critique the writing of others (using [sic] or correcting their grammar or misuse of words or just saying it's bad) without articulating his standards. Because if you're in on it, it feels good to keep the boundaries up and hold the line against the barbarians at the gate. His writing is as clique-ish as his social circle. Which takes me to my next point: he is a terrible name/place dropper: when Norman Mailer and I were at a conference in Moscow, when I used to meet my grandfather on the Senate floor, barefoot, no less (Gore, not his grandfather the Senator from Oklahoma), when Tennessee Williams and I discussed art on my balcony in Rome. He ran in high circles, and he lords it over us. Sometimes he uses it to obtain credibility--well, Eleanor Roosevelt told ME that that's not how things REALLY were. My grandfather heard from Lincoln's close friend and associate that he (Lincoln) had syphilis and gave it to his wife and made her crazy and that's also why some of their kids died young. He says that people/historians/academics/critics objected to his insinuation that Lincoln had syphilis because it doesn't fit the "Great Men" narrative for our presidents. It bothers ME because it relies on gossip and his own credibility as a third-hand witness to such gossip. Portions of his writing rely on the credibility of his privilege. Sometimes this works, sometimes it's alienating--just like a clique-ish cocktail party would be. You wouldn't miss it, but sometimes you roll your eyes.

The book is divided into 3 sections: art, politics, and autobiographical/miscellaneous. The art section had many book reviews. Also, now I need to read Dawn Powell's work and Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. When he likes something, he's able to convey what's good about it and get you excited to see for yourself. When he hates something, it's almost like you feel guilty for not knowing why or for not agreeing. The politics section spans the era of the Great Golfer all the way through Reagan and one or two references to Bush I. This is the other way that this book came my way at the right time: it is both comforting and horrifying to see how little we have progressed in all that time. Or, maybe better said, it shows the strange path along which our country has traveled that has brought us to where we are today. Trump is a little bit Harding (corruption, speculation), Hoover (Republican controlled government, more speculation), Nixon (paranoia, surveillance, listening to strong advisers), and Reagan (puppet for a scary agenda, mentally uncertain). Gore's review of history shows how long certain groups have been fighting for equality and how little they have gained from the more conservative/reactionary groups in our society. He has many good points: the Cold War allowed us never to demilitarize, to have "peace" and "war" at the same time, preparing the profits to businesses who can then funnel money into politics to get the candidates and policies they want to keep making profits. The fact that there really has only been, going back to the beginning of the Union, ONE party: the property party, which currently (at his time and ours) has two branches, the Democrats and Republicans. Both sides want to protect property and capitalism, the only difference is that the Democrats pay lip service to the civil and human rights of women, minorities, and the poor. The religious right wants to punish women and the poor. This is a hard one for me. I know so many religious people; I grew up in the Lutheran church and I have very strong religious feelings still. But this book and my current experience of the justifications for policies toward women et al in this country have finally convinced me that the major political impulse of religious people in this country is to punish women--for being women they are inherently lesser, and if they choose to be sexual they alone must bear the consequences of their decisions (without being allowed abortion)--and minorities (not white, so lesser, less deserving of rights) and the poor (poor because they're lazy and so deserve punishment). I do not say this lightly. I know many religious people who believe in the teachings of Jesus to care for the oppressed. But the intersection of Christianity with politics emphasizes the need to punish the wayward and undeserving and unruly masses--don't give them health care and education, spend money on "defense" that doesn't make us safer and on policing the population at home. Gore's ideas emerge over more than a hundred articles, and I'd boil down his political, historical views into one seeming contradiction. Some of the founding fathers were elitist, didn't trust the masses, and wanted to preserve their property and position above all, but they formulated a system of government and set of guidelines that had the potential to serve a wider number of people. If only we didn't always pervert them in favor of the few and the powerful. The fight goes on...

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well that was quite something!
Gore Vidal was a cranky but brilliant man who saw through bullshit both secular and religious with ease. His pen and tongue were razor sharp and merciless.
This collection of essays is fantastic.
There are a some on literary subjects. By far the best were his essays on W. Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
There are other essays on politics. Vidal is especially critical of what he calls "the national security state" that condition of almost permanent warfare and military readiness that America has been in since the end of the Second World War. Looking at these essays now and when they were written one feels the tragedy of America. If only they'd listened to Gore Vidal.
His analysis of the American political scene, namely that there is only party the "property party" and that elections are a joke, is so sharp and cutting.
This is a book that every serious thinker must read.

[ThereWillBeBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is clearly unreasonable to expect to be cherished by those one assaults. It is also childish, in the deepest sense of being a child, ever to expect justice. There is none beneath our moon...What matters finally is not the world’s judgement of oneself but one’s own judgement of the world. Any writer who lacks this final arrogance will not survive very long in America.”

This was written about Norman Mailer, but I suspect that the sentiment was one of the keys to Vidal’s longevity and continued relevance.

United States features over a thousand pages of Vidal’s best essays from 1952-1992, dip in and out at your leisure and I promise you you’ll find something funny or noteworthy on nearly every page.

There are certain authors that you come across at the right time in your life, ones that enrich you and are lucid and poignant enough to change the way you think. Life could have been one way without them and now it is another way and you are richer for it. I suspect that you only get a handful of these over the course of your life, and I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon Vidal.

[Laura Leaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure freakin' genius!

It was totally worth the four years it took me to finish. All the once white pages are now a yellowy color.

I laughed through every essay. Gore Vidal accurately skewered our American paradise with wit and nuance.

Some favorite lines:

To read of Eleanor and Franklin is to weep at what we have lost. Gone is the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action. Eleanor never stopped believing this. A simple faith, no doubt simplistic--but it gave her a stoic serenity.

Is Howard R. Hughes the most boring American? Admittedly, the field is large; over two hundred million of us are in competition."

Every schoolboy has a pretty good idea of what the situation was down at Sodom but what went on in Gomorrah is as mysterious to us as the name Achilles took when he went among women.

It is no accident that in the United States the phrase "sex and violence" is used as one word to describe acts of equal wickedness, equal fun, equal danger to that law and order our masters would impose upon us.

Patriarchalists know that women are dangerously different from men, and not as intelligent (though they have their competencies: needlework, child-care, detective stories).

Favorite title:

Edmund Wilson, Tax Dodger

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful historical perspective-throwing diversion from the yip-yip-yip of the 2012 election cycle or any other. I'm glad to own this collection on paper, in hardback.

Essays including "Theodore Roosevelt: American Sissy," "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt," "What Robert Moses Did to New York City," and "Sex is Politics" (Playboy, 1979) should be required reading in any number of 20 C American History/American Studies courses. Most of the essays playfully seduce the reader to further investigation of persons or affairs mentioned often just in passing.

Plus, the essays are good background for observing and thinking about the politics of the current popular vogue for the fashions of Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire.

[Michael Mohr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disagree with a lot of his views but he's an incredibly insightful writer, satirist and polemicist.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read Mr. Vidal’s essay collection over the 40 years in which it was published, The amount of repetition would probably not be as notable as it was listening to this nearly 1300 page tome over a couple of weeks. The 115 or so pieces included covered the water front of his long tenure as a national commentator.

This is probably not something that I ever could’ve read in a book printed in paper. The fact that I listen to the audible book while I followed along with the e-book made it possible. I can assure you my attention drifted on more than several occasions. And I am also certain that I snoozed through some of it!

I will be glad to return to some of the Vidal historical novels that I still have not managed yet. I think they are his best writing.

[rndgmoat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vidal remains, bafflingly, an underrated novelist but an acknowledged master of the essay. This book, a massive tome, illustrates why. The collection is divided into three parts:

State of The Art

This was, funny enough, the part of the book that made me hesitate the longest about embarking on this collection of essays. I've read almost nothing he reviews, shamefully, and couldn't see the point in several hundred pages of critical discussion about works with which I was not familiar. This, as it turned out, was a very stupid prejudgment. While I went into the book most excited for his bomb-throwing works of political contrarianism, I have to admit this turned out to be my favorite part of the collection. Vidal is at his best when he is discussing the art of the novel, an art form he dedicated his entire life to studying and practicing. While I would agree that the essential nature of some individual pieces is debatable--I do not get the joke in the opening essay--all in all this section is a brilliant trip through an idiosyncratic syllabus. Gore prizes and celebrates a certain kind of literary fiction, the works that while usually findable in used penguin editions aren't often heavy hitters in American literary discourse and are often as not given the bizarre moniker of "minor masterpieces" if recognized at all. As Gore's famous takedown of the postmodernists, American Plastic, demonstrates, he is rebelling and working against what he views as an ossifying academic consensus. A non-college graduate himself, Gore rejects the idea of the creative writing degree and the dominance of professor/writers within the American literary field.

Instead, he celebrates a number of other writers, who while certainly not obscure, were probably not fashionable at the time of the writing: George Meredith, Henry James, William Dean Howells, W. Somerset Maugham, Ford Maddox Ford, Frederic Prokosch to name a few. He has a lot to say about the literary scene of the 1940s--a scene that he was a young upstart member of--and also includes some great takes on popular fiction as well as more skeptical analyses of heavyweights like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Yes, his constant pessimism about the death of the novel as an art form is a bit tiring in a collection like this. However, I cannot help but wonder if he was right. Today, we read less than ever. Novels seem to fit into either the kind of brightly colored "literary" objects that can be sold at Target or the pretentious products of MFA and Ph.D. mills. The kind of literary adventuring--often conducted by upper middle class aristos--does not really occur much these days. Oh well. Anyway, while I don't always agree with everything Vidal writes in this section--his attacks on academics feel sometimes unnaturally defensive and I like Pynchon quite a bit--I loved reading about literature from his perspective. I have to admit that, as a result of this collection, my own personal library grew threefold as I began to search out and enjoy those writers he discusses at length, amidst the usual personal anecdotes and political asides (because, after all, he was never really beholden to categories in the way this collection wants to pretend).

State of The Union

These are, nominally, the "political" or historical essays. Of course, it is a bit of a misnomer--much of the pieces here were actually published as book reviews, although Vidal often takes great liberties with the form and often uses the text as a jumping off point for his own philosophizing and witty takedowns of American society. There's a lot of great stuff in here about major 20th century figures and events, many of which he was proximate to in some way, shape or form (Vidal's ego means we are always, in a sense, reading an essay about Vidal). Vidal discusses Kennedy, Nixon, and--a theme that threatens to become tiresome when these pieces are read in short succession--the rise of the American Empire, and in his view, the death of the Republic. Vidal defends his unique mix of libertarianism, midcentury liberalism, and stubborn penchant for good old fashioned isolationism with scathing attacks on American hypocrisy, warmongering, and invasion of human rights and individual dignity. Vidal's politics are complex and often reduced to simplistic caricature. Yes, he was deeply shaped by an aristocratic childhood during the reign of Roosevelt, but it is fascinating to see the way in which his intellectual curiosity and (sure) contrarian rebelliousness pushes him toward positions that frequently aligned him with the vanguard of the liberal movement. Vidal also takes some shots at religion--always a target for this atheist--as well as another sacred cow, the State of Israel. It is this latter topic that got him into so much trouble in the 80s. Read today, his critiques of Israeli militarism (and his acknowledgement of basic facts still denied, like the Nakba) mean that his allegedly antisemitic comments don't seem quite as inflammatory and, instead, would comfortably put him within the leftist mainstream. I'm willing to admit, however, that this is one topic that is, like so many left-leaning liberals, problematic for the author. Even if I "get" the intent, it's hard to deny that openly stating you "don't like" Israel while survivors are still constructing the state in question is impolitic at best. Vidal refused to play nice, however, and apparently believed intellectual consistency meant that no one got special treatment when he was wielding his pen.

State of Being

This final section is a bit of a mishmash. Ostensibly, these are the more autobiographical pieces about his privileged youth, his time spent with Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, and his experiences in Hollywood to name a few topics. Yet, the pieces don't neatly fit any one theme; his obsession with the "Hearts"--Henry Adams and his friends, including John Hay and Henry James--is an admittedly odd place to end the book, for example. Perhaps it is included to reflect Vidal's nostalgia for a recent past, an image of an intellectual American aristocracy that he believes he is connected to and whose traditions he believes he is carrying forward. There's also some fun journalism-type pieces here, including a great piece about a trip to Mongolia. If anything, I wish he did more journalism--he's a great writer in that form as well. Anyway, if you want the gossipy stuff about celebs and "RG" (reflected glory, his term throughout the final essay), here's where to start your reading.

So, all in all, a great collection by one of the most fascinating and important writers of the 20th century. Yes, it's a lot to get through. Yes, he has flaws, flaws which become apparent when 50 years worth of writing are compressed into 1,200 pages of back-to-back writing. Anyway, this book is probably essential reading for anyone who cares about the art of the essay, the art of the novel, American history, or any of Vidal's other subjects. Some of the essays are so good, so pleasing to read, you almost cannot believe his talent. An awe-inspiring collection by a first-class mind. I'm so happy I completed this project of reading this thing--even if it did take 2 years off and on!

[Justin Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

United States (1992) is Gore Vidal’s most comprehensive essay collection, encompassing over 100 essays across 40 years. The book is separated into three parts: State of the Art (literature and drama), State of the Union (politics and history), and State of Being (autobiography and memoir). Regarding literature, Vidal gracefully reflects on such varying subjects as the changing literary style of French writers to the wisdom of epigrammatic wordsmiths like Logan Pearsall Smith. My favorite section, and where I think Vidal shines brightest, is on politics and history. From his critique of the “scholar-squirrels” of academia in their study of Abraham Lincoln to his passionate critique of American imperialism, Vidal displays his deep knowledge of America and his disdain for the brutality done in its name. In the final section, Vidal discusses growing up in Washington, D.C., flying an airplane at the age of 10 with his father, and his love for the Oz books. He ends the book with an essay on glory, gained either directly or through reflection on the glory of others, something he understood first-hand in his long and storied career as a novelist, essayist, and political candidate.

Since he covers so much ground in this massive volume, it’s relevant to discuss some broader themes that tie his essays together. First, his lifelong love of learning, reading, and thinking and his contempt for academics who thwart that love in others through a dogmatic presentation of knowledge. Second, his deep sense of injustice— which comes through clearly in impassioned essays on police brutality, sexuality, and imperialism. Finally, his zest for life, chronicled in essays on his favorite books, his love of intellectual debate, and passion for travel. In all, one feels both victorious and saddened when finishing this book; victorious in that you completed such an immense tome, but saddened in that it’s now over. Gore Vidal, in my humble opinion, was the greatest English-language essayist of the 20th century, and one needs to look no further than the United States to see that the proof is in the pudding.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE PEOPLES PATRICIAN, OR THE CLEVER BUGGER

United States is a collection of Gore Vidals essays that were written up to 1992. The book is a hefty tome, 114 essays over 1271 pages (806 grams if your hard of holding), divided into 3 sections: (1) State of the Art - on American writing, (2) State of the Nation - on American politics (3) State of Being - of which I am not quite certain what the theme is.

The essays are exemplars of their kind, abounding with his caustic humour, intelligence and world weary despair at the direction that the U.S. has taken both home and abroad. The first and second sections contain the best essays, his knowledge and intelligence regarding American letters is immense and his political writing is as always sharp and entirely lacking in any delusions of American grandeur. Spades are always called spades but in a wonderfully funny and erudite manner.

I thought there were a couple of weak essays in the third section (I dont think travel writing is Vidals forte) but otherwise the quality is consistently high. I was also left thinking that it would have been to the collections advantage if the sections were dispensed with and the essays simply put into chronological order. It would have been of interest to see how his essay writing had developed over time, and there being some overlap in a few of the essays subjects and themes the element of repetition that on occasion appears would be dispersed somewhat.

Apart from those minor quibbles, it is an amazingly readable book - perhaps best read an essay or two at a time though the "one more before lights out" factor means that I was all to often merrily reading away into the small hours. A book that is very good company.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

United States, the 1993 Winner of the National Book Award, it covers the years from 1952 until 1992. I am hesitant to recommend this tome that weighs in at 1295 pages and is the size of a reference book, but does seem all but indispensable, because it has many excellent and interesting essays. It is divided into three sections: state of the art (literature), state of the union (politics), and state of being (personal responses to people and events, not to mention movies and children's books). Not a light book to take on the train, this tome took me the better part of a year to finish, but was well worth it.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fab book from witty essayist. One of the best writers of of this last century. That would be the 20th. Knows the Ancients, their writings and what connects them to us like neighbors down the block. And that's not even the tip of the historic iceberg which covers Many chapters on three states. The State of Art, the Union, and Being.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This superb collection confirms Vidal as a modern Montaigne, the best essayist of the 20th century. My personal favorite: "Pink Triangle and Yellow Star," surely one of the wittiest and most malicious pieces of polemicism ever penned.

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vidal has always been a better critic and essayist than a novelist, and this is his masterwork. A stunning collection of often transcendent (and not infrequently hilarious) pieces on sex, politics, literature and culture. One of my favorites.

[Billy O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who wants to look behind the scenes at the dirty business of politics should read these essays. No one tells it better.
One of America's most brilliant writers and one who drips intellectual sarcasm. A great read. Each and every one of them.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

The breadth of the author's interests and the depth of his knowledge is simply astounding as was his ability to keep these essays so lively and human. No matter what you are interested in, you are sure to find at least a few of these pieces great reading.

[Simon King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitchy, exciting, incendiary, provocative, pugnacious, original, thoughtful, judicious. (Sorry about the adjectives.) If I wrote columns, they'd be along the lines of these.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wickedly smart, savagely funny, and wise. This is the most important book in my library. It arguably made me who I am today (so blame him).

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gore Vidal was a mediocre novelist, a good screenwriter, and a perfect essayist. This is the best publication by Gore Vidal I've read. He is America's greatest wit—bar none.

[Jason Overstreet · Rating 5 out of 5]

An full education in one book. You'll thank me for recommending this one. Vidal is a genius.

[Josephine Waite · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I used this series of essays as a way of educating myself about literature and politics. In the beginning I heard them in his voice, but it became my own.

[Barry Belmont · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent, massive, Montesquieuean tome.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of vidal’s usual themes exist within this crazy long group of essays, i.e. his disgust with american empire (and the military industrial complex) and our decaying culture, his disgust with academia, his critiques of a pro family/heterosexual society, his belief that we are destroying the planet and overpopulation, his arguments that the two main political parties are very similar and protect the rights of property more than the average man, his critiques of executive orders and the supreme court’s judicial review (I didn’t realize this was something not in the constitution, but created by a case seen by the supreme court), his critiques about the extra legal way the CIA was created and continues to be funded.
Reading these essays back to back to back, there is a lot of overlap/repeat on his main/pet? themes. Regardless, it is instructive to see how on target he was with some of his themes and off base with others, reading these essays decades after they have been written.
Sometimes I think he’s right on point, at others he seems to exceed his grasp with his all consuming cynicism (ever for a cynic like me). Though it is somewhat easy to read many of these essays and see how on point vidal is about the many problems of this country and things have gotten worse, not better, in the 40 plus years since the essays were written. I can’t begin to imagine what vidal would have to say about Donald trump, the Iraq war, and what that says about our country, for example.
As per my previous experience, vidal seems most engaging when writing about politics and political figures in particular. This represented my continued effort to read vidal’s entire oeuvre, this was enjoyable, though I was lost at times with vidal’s erudite, esoteric references/language/knowledge, particularly the essays pertaining to literature and not politics.
Vidal’s knowledge and experience is vast, there are lots of essays on writers I’ve heard of but not super familiar with, or totally unknown to me, or 19th century figures I was not familiar with. Some of his witticisms are amusing, though parts of the recounting/summary of obscure books, I could have done without.
His section on politics/philosophy/esoteric subjects were more what I was looking for, vidal expanding on topics of interest.

[Jim Manis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first of Gore Vidal's works I've ever read, which is odd, considering that his career more or less spanned my life. Vidal's writings don't fit into any easy categories, and perhaps that's why he is generally ignored by English departments. And the fact that he was always highly disparaging of the criticism that came out of such places and the writers who inhabited them.

I first became aware of Vidal in 1968, when the TV network, ABC, which had poor ratings, hired him and William F. Buckley, Jr. to serve as high level talking head commentators on the Democratic and Republican conventions. I was familiar with Buckley from his PBS TV show, "Firing Line." I admired Buckley's linguistic gifts even when a rarely agreed with his perspective, but I never expected that I would feel sorry form. Gore Vidal did that. The Buckley v. Vidal events became must see TV, just as the police riots in the streets of Chicago were.

This collection of essays covers the years listed in the title. It was highly acclaimed after it came out, and now that I've made my way through it, I see why. Vidal's writing style is immensely entertaining in a way that I never found his conversational style in all the TV appearances he made over the years, during which his patrician/condescending mannerism were often off putting. On the page, he seems incredibly prescient. His criticism of academia and the lack of American literacy is as spot on today as it was at any time in the 40 years that the essays cover. I found his essay on Egypt, for instance, published in 1963, as current today as it must have been then. In fact all of the essays, and there are many of them within this 1273 page tome, all seem as though they could have been written today.

For those who are not familiar with Vidal, he not only wrote essays, but also short stories, novels, TV shows during its so called golden age, and film, including having worked on the continuously popular "Ben Her" with its hidden homosexual story line.