83-518: Golden Bowl may refer to: The Golden Bowl , a 1904 novel by Henry James The Golden Bowl (TV series) , a 1972 BBC series adapted from James's novel The Golden Bowl (film) , a 2000 film adapted from James's novel The Golden Bowl (Manfred) , a 1944 novel by Frederick Manfred Goldenbowl lily, a member of the genus Calochortus See also [ edit ] Golden bowl of Hasanlu , an ancient artefact from Iran Topics referred to by
166-521: A Protestant church in Sharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown) after the wife of a pastor had sold a house to a Jewish family. Additionally, Vidal later claimed to know for a fact that Buckley was "rather infatuated" with him. Buckley again sued Vidal and Esquire for libel and Vidal filed a counterclaim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of Myra Breckinridge (1968) as
249-671: A major general in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina. Through Auchincloss, Vidal also was the step-brother once removed of Jacqueline Kennedy . The nephews of Gore Vidal include Burr Steers , a writer and film director, and Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), a figurative painter . Raised in Washington, D.C., Vidal attended the Sidwell Friends School and St. Albans School. Given
332-432: A pornographic novel . The court dismissed Vidal's counterclaim. Buckley accepted a money settlement of $ 115,000 to pay the fee of his attorney and an editorial apology from Esquire , in which the publisher and the editors said that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of Vidal's assertions. In a letter to Newsweek magazine, the publisher of Esquire said that "the settlement of Buckley's suit against us"
415-553: A Nation . In 1995, he published a memoir, Palimpsest , and in 2006 its follow-up volume, Point to Point Navigation . Earlier that year, Vidal had published Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories . In 2009, Vidal won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation , which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture". In
498-605: A conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. Everything the Bushites touch is screwed up. They could never have pulled off 9/11, even if they wanted to. Even if they longed to. They could step aside, though, or just go out to lunch while these terrible things were happening to the nation. I believe that of them. In the American Conservative article "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that Vidal's favorite American politician, during his lifetime,
581-467: A crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered. ABC's Howard K. Smith intervened, and the debate resumed without violence. Later, Buckley said he regretted having called Vidal a "queer", but still expressed some distaste for Vidal when he said that he was an "evangelist for bisexuality". In 1969, in Esquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in
664-426: A day together visiting a cathedral and an inn but whether or not they have sex remains ambiguous. Maggie begins to suspect the pair. She happens to go to the same shop and buys the golden bowl they had rejected. Regretting the high price he has charged her, the shopkeeper visits Maggie and confesses to overcharging. At her home, he sees photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte. He tells Maggie of the pair's shopping trip on
747-502: A former mistress from his days in Rome; they had met in Mrs. Assingham's drawing room. Charlotte is not wealthy, which is one reason they did not marry. Although Maggie and Charlotte have been dear friends since childhood, Maggie does not know of Charlotte's and Amerigo's past relationship. Charlotte and Amerigo go shopping together for a wedding present for Maggie. They find a curiosity shop where
830-589: A gunman in the New Mexico territory Lincoln County War (1878), and later an outlaw in the U.S. Western frontier. Another is 1979's Caligula (based upon the life of the Roman Emperor Caligula ), from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed because the producer, Bob Guccione , the director, Tinto Brass , and the leading actor, Malcolm McDowell , rewrote the script to add extra sex and violence to increase its commercial appeal. In
913-431: A high regard for his last work, describing it to his American publisher as "distinctly the most done of my productions ― the most composed and constructed and completed...I hold the thing the solidest, as yet, of all my fictions." Created during what critics label James's third phase of writing, The Golden Bowl showcases the dense prose (often called James's "late style") that characterises his final novels. Although
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#1732788054255996-451: A margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. Campaigning under the slogan of You'll get more with Gore , Vidal received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in fifty years and outpolled John F. Kennedy (who lost the district with 38 percent of the vote). Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward , friends who spoke on his behalf. In 1982, he campaigned against Jerry Brown ,
1079-480: A minute". Moments later, the following exchange transpired: BUCKLEY: Some people were pro-Nazi, and the answer is that they were well treated by people who ostracized them. And I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. VIDAL: As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, I would only say that we can't have— BUCKLEY: Now listen you queer, stop calling me
1162-527: A naïve, immature American, the Prince seems impressed by his wife's delicate diplomacy. The novel ends with Adam and Charlotte Verver about to depart for the United States. Amerigo says he can "see nothing but" Maggie and embraces her. The Golden Bowl's intense focus on its four main characters gives the novel both its tremendous power and its peculiar feeling of claustrophobia. Henry James himself had
1245-493: A novelist. Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as Martin Amis , admitted that "Essays are what he is good at ... [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating." For six decades, Vidal applied himself to socio-political, sexual, historical and literary subjects. In the essay anthology Armageddon (1987) he explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in
1328-679: A public intellectual, Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the old Democratic Party. In 1960, Vidal was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 29th Congressional District of New York, a usually Republican district that included most of the Catskills and the western bank of the Hudson River, including Newburgh , but lost to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton , by
1411-430: A science-fiction drama about genetic engineering ; and Igby Goes Down (2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew, Burr Steers. Vidal began to drift towards the political left after he received his first paycheck, and realized how much money the government took in tax. He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, then it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education. As
1494-472: A screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay. Two plays, The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960, made into a film in 1964) and Visit to a Small Planet (1955), were theater and movie successes. Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. Billy the Kid (1989) is one, about William H. Bonney ,
1577-659: Is collected in The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings from the time. Vidal riposted in Esquire with the September 1969 essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." and said that Buckley was "anti-black", " anti-semitic " and a "warmonger". Buckley sued Vidal for libel . The feud continued in Esquire , where Vidal implied that in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized
1660-555: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James . Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James's career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on
1743-525: Is no difference between the two parties. In 1975, Vidal sued Truman Capote for slander, over the accusation that he had once been thrown out of the White House for being drunk, putting his arm around First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy , and then insulting her mother . Said Capote of Vidal at the time: "I'm always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day." Mutual friend George Plimpton observed: "There's no venom like Capote's when he's on
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#17327880542551826-473: Is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation . Vidal took the pseudonym "Edgar Box" and wrote the mystery novels Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death before Bedtime (1953) and Death Likes it Hot (1954) featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. His satirical novel Messiah , detailing the rise of a new nontheistic religion that comes to largely replace
1909-455: Is rotting away – and to not expect Barack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In this interview, he also updated his views of his life, the United States, and other political subjects. Vidal had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the United States in his essay "The State of the Union" (1975), There is only one party in the United States,
1992-543: The New Statesman , the New York Review of Books , and Esquire magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer . As a novelist, Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His style of narration evoked
2075-566: The 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon , and coach of the U.S. pentathlon). In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. was a founder or executive of three airline companies: the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines ), Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines ), and Northeast Airlines . Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in Feldkirch , Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to
2158-480: The Abrahamic faiths , was also published in 1954. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well and earned the blacklisted Vidal a secret living. That mystery-novel success led Vidal to write in other genres, where he produced the stage play The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960) and the television play Visit to a Small Planet (1957). Two early teleplays were A Sense of Justice (1955) and Honor . He also wrote
2241-481: The Aleutian Islands . After three years in service, Vidal suffered hypothermia , developed rheumatoid arthritis and, consequently, was reassigned to duty as a mess officer. Vidal's literary works were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity, Petronius (d. AD 66), Juvenal (AD 60–140), and Apuleius ( fl. c. AD 155); and from
2324-754: The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the First Iraq War , 1990–91) had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as an act of revenge for the FBI's Waco massacre (1993) at the Branch Davidian Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that
2407-787: The Second World War began in early September, the group was forced to return home early. On his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, where they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joe Kennedy (the father of John Fitzgerald Kennedy , later the President of the United States of America). In 1940 he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School and later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy , in Exeter, New Hampshire , where he contributed to
2490-550: The United States Senate (for California). A grandson of U.S. Senator Thomas Gore , Vidal was born into an upper-class political family. As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's primary focus was the history and society of the United States , especially how a militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire . His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation ,
2573-453: The consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight. Prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman, is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver, only child of the widower Adam Verver, the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector. While there, he re-encounters Charlotte Stant, another young American and
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2656-472: The 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country". Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972, Vidal was a chairman of the People's Party of the United States. In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader for U.S. president in the 1972 election . In 2007, he endorsed Democrat Dennis Kucinich in his candidacy for the U.S. presidency (in 2008), because Kucinich
2739-513: The 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director Federico Fellini , for whom he appeared in a cameo role in the film Roma (1972). He also appeared in the American television series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and in the films Bob Roberts (1992), a serio-comedy about a reactionary populist politician who manipulates youth culture to win votes; With Honors (1994), an Ivy league comedy-drama; Gattaca (1997),
2822-420: The 20th century . Some critics believe that The Golden Bowl was an inspiration for Iris Murdoch , a known fan of James, and, in particular, her novel A Severed Head . The title is taken from Ecclesiastes 12: "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and
2905-608: The Exonian , the school newspaper. Rather than attend university, Vidal enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 and was assigned to work as an office clerk in the USAAF . Later, Vidal passed the examinations necessary to become a maritime warrant officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps , and subsequently served as first mate of the F.S. 35th , a US Army Freight and Supply (FS) ship berthed at Dutch Harbor in
2988-458: The People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States. Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York , the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina S. Gore (1903–1978). Vidal was born there because his father, a U.S. Army officer,
3071-585: The Pillar (1948), caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality. The novel was dedicated to "J. T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of his boyhood friend and St. Albans classmate, James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, and that Trimble was the only person he ever loved. Critics railed against Vidal's presentation of homosexuality in
3154-595: The Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently ... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there
3237-682: The U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis. In concluding the Vanity Fair article, Vidal refers to McVeigh as an "unlikely sole mover", and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved. Vidal was very much against any kind of military intervention in the world. In Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002), Vidal drew parallels about how the United States enters wars and said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked Imperial Japan to attack
3320-488: The U.S. to justify the American entry to the Second World War (1939–45). He contended that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the dawn-raid attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). In the documentary Why We Fight (2005), Vidal said that, during the final months of the war, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but Truman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop
3403-540: The U.S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann. Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard , in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. Nina Gore Vidal then was married two more times; to Hugh D. Auchincloss and to Robert Olds . She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with
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3486-557: The United States" and said that Bush's foreign policy was explicitly expansionist . He contended that the Bush Administration and their oil-business sponsors, aimed to control the petroleum of Central Asia, after having gained hegemony over the petroleum of the Persian Gulf in 1991. Vidal became a member of the board of advisors of The World Can't Wait , a political organization which sought to publicly repudiate
3569-492: The United States. Bloom himself contends that such limited recognition resulted more from Vidal's "best fictions" being "distinguished historical novels", a subgenre "no longer available for canonization". Vidal's literary career began with the success of the military novel Williwaw , a men-at-war story derived from his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty during the Second World War. His third novel, The City and
3652-568: The actor Clark Gable . As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention . The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal—Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss —one step-brother, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III from his mother's second marriage to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and four step-brothers including Robin Olds from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds,
3735-448: The blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, and was his Senate page , and his seeing-eye guide. In 1939, during his summer holiday, Vidal went with some colleagues and a professor from St. Albans School on his first European trip to visit Italy and France. He visited Rome for the first time, the city which came to be "at the center of Gore's literary imagination," and Paris. When
3818-576: The bombs ... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the balance of power in the world. To declare war on communism . Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war". As a public intellectual, Vidal criticized what he viewed as political harm to the nation and the voiding of the citizen's rights through the passage of the USA Patriot Act (2001) during the George W. Bush administration (2001–2009). He described Bush as "the stupidest man in
3901-415: The book, Charlotte is a calculating, amoral character who manipulates and manages those around her with a glance or a smile; however, in the movie, Charlotte appears to suffer from some mental disorder , exhibiting symptoms of paranoia and obsessive love. Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal ( / v ɪ ˈ d ɑː l / vih- DAHL ; born Eugene Louis Vidal , October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012)
3984-535: The collection of essays The Last Empire , then such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace , Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta and Imperial America , critiques of American expansionism, the military–industrial complex , the national security state and the George W. Bush administration . Vidal also wrote a historical essay about the Founding Fathers , Inventing
4067-536: The contemporary United States. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan , as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and that of his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the world in the late twentieth century. In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology United States: Essays 1952–92 (1993). In 2000, Vidal published
4150-419: The documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995), Vidal explained that Messala's failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur ( Charlton Heston ) and Messala ( Stephen Boyd ). Vidal said that Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenwriter agreed to keep Heston ignorant of
4233-403: The essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" (August 1969), in which he portrayed Vidal as an apologist for homosexuality; Buckley said, "The man who, in his essays, proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher." The essay
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#17327880542554316-633: The essay and developed two types of fiction. The first type is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics. The New York Times , quoting critic Harold Bloom about those historical novels, said that "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe." The historical novels formed the seven-book series Narratives of Empire : (i) Burr (1973), (ii) Lincoln (1984), (iii) 1876 (1976), (iv) Empire (1987), (v) Hollywood (1990), (vi) Washington, D.C. (1967), and (vii) The Golden Age (2000). Besides U.S. history, Vidal also explored and analyzed
4399-462: The eve of her marriage and their intimate conversation in his shop. (They had spoken Italian, but he understands the language.) Maggie confronts Amerigo. She begins a secret campaign to separate him and Charlotte while never revealing their affair to her father. Also concealing her knowledge from Charlotte and denying any change to their friendship, she gradually persuades her father to return to America with his wife. After previously regarding Maggie as
4482-658: The first two names." Vidal was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of St. Albans School , where Vidal attended preparatory school . The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed [into the Episcopal faith]" at the Washington Cathedral , in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal". He later said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at
4565-582: The foreign-policy program of the Bush Administration (2001–2009) and advocated Bush's impeachment for war crimes , such as the Second Iraq War (2003–2011) and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law. In May 2007, while discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories that might explain the "who?" and the "why?" of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Vidal said I'm not
4648-457: The history of the ancient world, specifically the Axial Age (800–200 B.C.), with the novel Creation (1981). The novel was published without four chapters that were part of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher; years later, Vidal restored the chapters to the text and republished the novel Creation in 2002. The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as Myron (1974),
4731-483: The incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate; Vidal forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate ( Pete Wilson ) would win the election . That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No (1983), directed by Gary Conklin . In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh perpetrated
4814-504: The narrative is very focused compared to his earlier works, with minimal characters, the writing is complex and elaborate. Gore Vidal attributed this verbosity in part to James's habit at the time of dictating his novels to stenographers rather than typing the manuscript himself. Vidal thought the style of The Golden Bowl , as well as The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Ambassadors (1903), mimicked James's own rhetorical manner, which
4897-487: The narrator, commenting on the development of the story very much in the style of Henry James. This version, presented on Masterpiece Theatre , was more faithful to the book than the later Merchant-Ivory film in the U.S. In 2000, The Golden Bowl was filmed by Merchant Ivory Productions , directed by James Ivory , and starred Uma Thurman , Nick Nolte , Kate Beckinsale and Jeremy Northam . In some ways Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 's adaptation differs from James's novel. In
4980-459: The novel as natural, as it was viewed generally at the time as unnatural and immoral. Vidal claimed that New York Times critic Orville Prescott was so offended by the book that he refused to review or to permit other critics to review any book by Vidal. Vidal said that upon publication of the book, an editor at E. P. Dutton told him "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now, you will still be attacked for it." Today, Vidal
5063-570: The number of characters to four. He describes James's style of expressing consciousness as "a system of clauses, sub-clauses, modifications, qualifications and in some cases ruminations", which anticipates the later styles of stream of consciousness writing by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf . John Banville also compared James's modernist stream of consciousness technique, which characterises The Golden Bowl , to James Joyce, summarising it as "a style designed to catch, with immense, with fiendish, subtlety, and in sentences of labyrinthine intricacy,
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#17327880542555146-405: The post-Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), and George Meredith (1828–1909). More recent literary influences included Marcel Proust (1871–1922), Henry James (1843–1916), and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966). The cultural critic Harold Bloom has written that Vidal believed that his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the literary community in
5229-468: The presidential era of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945); and Myra Breckinridge (1968), a satire of the American movie business, by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by a transsexual woman, the eponymous anti-heroine. After publishing the plays Weekend (1968) and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972) and the novel Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), Vidal concentrated upon
5312-486: The presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. After days of bickering, their debates deteriorated to vitriolic ad hominem attacks. During a moment of crosstalk while discussing the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests , the pair argued about freedom of speech ; namely, the legality of protesters to display a Viet Cong flag in America, Vidal snapped at Buckley to "shut up
5395-522: The prowl—and Gore's too, I don't know what division the feud should be in." The suit was settled in Vidal's favor when Lee Radziwill refused to testify on Capote's behalf, telling columnist Liz Smith , "Oh, Liz, what do we care; they're just a couple of fags! They're disgusting." In 1968, the ABC television network hired the liberal Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. as political analysts of
5478-638: The pulp novel Thieves Fall Out under the pseudonym Cameron Kay but refused to have it reprinted under his real name during his life. In the 1960s, Vidal published Julian (1964), about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstate polytheistic paganism when Julian viewed that Christianity threatened the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire; Washington, D.C. (1967), about political life during
5561-419: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Golden Bowl . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Golden_Bowl&oldid=1259915822 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
5644-581: The same year, the Man of Letters Gore Vidal was named honorary president of the American Humanist Association . In 1956, MGM hired Vidal as a screenwriter with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the director William Wyler required a script doctor to rewrite the screenplay for Ben-Hur (1959), originally written by Karl Tunberg . As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, Vidal rewrote significant portions of
5727-617: The script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewriting the Ben-Hur screenplay, on location in Italy, Vidal negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his four-year contract with MGM. 36 years later, in
5810-414: The sequel to Myra Breckinridge ; Kalki (1978), about the end of the world and the consequent ennui; Duluth (1983), an alternate universe story; Live from Golgotha (1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity; and The Smithsonian Institution (1998), a time-travel story. In the United States, Vidal is often considered an essayist rather than
5893-585: The shopkeeper offers them an antique gilded crystal bowl. Charlotte lacks the money to buy the bowl and the Prince declines to purchase it, as he suspects it contains a hidden flaw. After Maggie has married, afraid that her father has become lonely, as they had been close for years, she persuades him to propose to Charlotte, who accepts Adam's proposal. Soon after the wedding, Charlotte and Amerigo are thrown together, because their respective spouses seem more interested in their father-daughter relationship than in their marriages. Amerigo and Charlotte kiss and later spend
5976-453: The spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity." In 1972, the BBC produced a six-hour televised version that was highly praised, with a screenplay by Jack Pulman , Gayle Hunnicutt as Charlotte, Barry Morse as Adam Verver, Jill Townsend as Maggie, Daniel Massey as the Prince, and Cyril Cusack as Bob Assingham, ingeniously presented as
6059-520: The subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene. In turn, on learning of that explanation, Heston said that Vidal had contributed little to the script of Ben-Hur . Despite Vidal's resolution of the character's motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system , which favored the "original author" of
6142-503: The time and place of his stories, and delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–363) in Julian (1964). Julian
6225-441: The time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him [maternal grandfather Thomas Pryor Gore ], although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader ... I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. I didn't want to use the 'Jr. ' " His father, Eugene Luther Vidal Sr.,
6308-546: The very texture of conscious life." The author Rebecca West , on the other hand, said of it that "winter had fallen on [James'] genius in The Golden Bowl ." Critics have noted the overbearing symbolism of the golden bowl, which is eventually broken in a scene that may not be fully effective. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Golden Bowl 32nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of
6391-446: Was Huey Long (1893–1935), the populist Governor (1928–32) and Senator (1932–35) from Louisiana, who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics and who was assassinated by a lone gunman called Carl Weiss . Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards the United States. "My family helped start [this country] ... and we've been in political life ... since
6474-494: Was "endlessly complex, humorous, unexpected - euphemistic where most people are direct and suddenly precise where avoidance or ellipsis is usual..." Robert McCrum included the novel in The Guardian's list of 100 Best Novels, describing it as an "amazing, labyrinthine, terrifying and often claustrophobic narrative." Author Colm Toibin called The Golden Bowl Henry James's best work, in part because James "stripped down"
6557-528: Was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates, from either the Republican or the Democratic parties and that Kucinich was "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain". In a September 30, 2009, interview with The Times of London, Vidal said that there soon would be a dictatorship in the United States. The newspaper emphasized that Vidal, described as "the Grand Old Man of American belles-lettres ", claimed that America
6640-482: Was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit . His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Vidal was heavily involved in politics, and unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to
6723-564: Was director (1933–1937) of the Commerce Department 's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration , and was also the great love of the aviator Amelia Earhart . At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team; and an all-American basketball player. Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in
6806-416: Was the Roman emperor who attempted to re-establish Roman polytheism to counter Christianity . In social satire, Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability of gender roles and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores . In Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), both part of his Narratives of Empire series of novels, each protagonist is presented as "A Man of
6889-460: Was then serving as the first aeronautics instructor at the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening in 1939; then, at fourteen, I got rid of
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