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101-570: Rare Library described it as "one of the longest running and very significant paperback magazines in American literature. An institution that sprang up in the 1950s, showcasing original and first appearance of stories, poems, essays, etc. of leading writers from around the world. It has sometimes lapsed, but then returned to life, outlasting imitators in nearly every decade." The fourth issue had two contributions by Gore Vidal , who had helped found New World Writing . The seventh issue (1955) included

202-521: 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

303-671: 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

404-432: 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"

505-553: 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

606-770: A Riddle" and included Thomas Pynchon 's "Low-Lands"; New World Writing 17 (1960) included John Updike 's "The Sea's Green Sameness", James Purdy 's "Daddy Wolf", an essay by Otto Friedrich on Ezra Pound and Louise W. King's first published story, "The Day We Were Mostly Butterflies." Other contributors included W. H. Auden , Samuel Beckett , Saul Bellow , Jorge Luis Borges , E. E. Cummings , William Gaddis , Jean Genet , André Gide , Eugène Ionesco , Christopher Isherwood , Shirley Jackson , Norman Mailer , Pablo Picasso , Henry Miller , Robert Motherwell , Octavio Paz , Kenneth Rexroth , Upton Sinclair , Tennessee Williams and William Carlos Williams . The editors were Stewart Richardson and Corlies M. Smith. The cover design

707-412: A U.S. Army officer, 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

808-404: A biweekly format to a larger monthly publication. On September 23, 2024, The Nation endorsed Kamala Harris for the 2024 United States presidential election but with criticism on foreign politics, especially in regard to the 2023 Gaza war . On October 25, 2024, the magazine published an article, by the magazine's interns, criticizing this endorsement. Following Donald Trump 's victory in

909-554: A column criticizing Samuel Gompers and trade unions for being complicit in the war machine of the First World War , The Nation was briefly suspended from the US mail. The magazine's financial problems in the early 1940s prompted Kirchwey to sell her individual ownership of the magazine in 1943, creating a nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, out of the money generated from a recruiting drive of sponsors. This organization

1010-605: 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,

1111-467: 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

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1212-589: 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

1313-451: 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 ,

1414-480: 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

1515-493: 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

1616-765: 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 , 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

1717-679: 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

1818-559: A really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred." In the first year of publication, one of the magazine's regular features was The South as It Is , dispatches from a tour of the war-torn region by John Richard Dennett, a recent Harvard graduate and a veteran of the Port Royal Experiment . Dennett interviewed Confederate veterans, freed slaves, agents of

1919-430: 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

2020-472: 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 ,

2121-751: A weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the New York Evening Post . The offices of the magazine were moved to the Evening Post ' s headquarters at 210 Broadway. The New York Evening Post would later morph into a tabloid , the New York Post , a left-leaning afternoon tabloid, under owner Dorothy Schiff from 1939 to 1976. Since then, it has been a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch , while The Nation became known for its left-wing ideology. In 1900, Henry Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard , inherited

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2222-659: 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

2323-525: 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

2424-473: 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

2525-463: Is presented as "A Man of 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,

2626-455: 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,

2727-536: Is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors called Nation Associates, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees. This program accounts for 30% of the total revenue for the magazine. An annual cruise also generates $ 200,000 for the magazine. Since late 2012, the Nation Associates program has been called Nation Builders. In 2023, the magazine had approximately 91,000 subscribers, roughly 80% of whom pay for

2828-469: The 1920 Summer Olympics and in 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

2929-480: 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

3030-481: 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

3131-536: The American Civil War , arguing that a stable currency was necessary to restore the economic stability of the nation. Closely related to this was the publication's advocacy of the elimination of protective tariffs in favor of lower prices of consumer goods associated with a free trade system. The magazine would stay at Newspaper Row for 90 years. In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron Henry Villard acquired The Nation and converted it into

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3232-469: The Freedmen's Bureau , and ordinary people he met by the side of the road. Among the causes supported by the publication in its earliest days was civil service reform—moving the basis of government employment from a political patronage system to a professional bureaucracy based upon meritocracy . The Nation also was preoccupied with the reestablishment of a sound national currency in the years after

3333-754: 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

3434-787: 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

3535-858: The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution . Thereafter, the magazine proceeded to a broader topic, The Nation . An important collaborator of the new magazine was its Literary Editor Wendell Phillips Garrison , son of William. He had at his disposal his father's vast network of contacts. The Nation is published by its namesake owner, The Nation Company, L.P., at 520 8th Ave New York, NY 10018. It has news bureaus in Washington, D.C. , London , and South Africa , with departments covering architecture , art, corporations, defense , environment , films, legal affairs , music, peace and disarmament , poetry, and

3636-567: The United Nations . Circulation peaked at 187,000 in 2006 but dropped to 145,000 in print by 2010, although digital subscriptions had risen to over 15,000. By 2021, the total for both print and digital combined was 96,000. The Nation was established on July 6, 1865, at 130 Nassau Street (" Newspaper Row ") in Manhattan . Its founding coincided with the closure of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator , also in 1865, after slavery

3737-512: The right . In the 1950s, The Nation was attacked as "pro-communist" because of its advocacy of détente with the expansionist Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin , and its criticism of McCarthyism . One of the magazine's writers, Louis Fischer , resigned from the magazine afterwards, claiming The Nation ' s foreign coverage was too pro-Soviet. Despite this, Diana Trilling pointed out that Kirchwey did allow anti-Soviet writers, such as herself, to contribute material critical of Russia to

3838-571: 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 the United States Senate (for California). A grandson of U.S. Senator Thomas Gore , Vidal was born into an upper-class political family. As

3939-585: The 'Jr. ' " His father, Eugene Luther Vidal Sr., 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

4040-472: 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

4141-457: 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),

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4242-608: 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

4343-585: 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

4444-595: 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

4545-682: 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

4646-488: 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

4747-553: The United States to enter World War II to resist fascism , and after the US entered the war, the publication supported the American war effort. It also supported the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima . During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by Kirchwey (later Carey McWilliams ) and The New Republic ' s Michael Straight . The two magazines were very similar at that time—both were left of center, The Nation further left than TNR ; both had circulations around 100,000, although TNR ' s

4848-557: 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

4949-492: 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

5050-568: 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,

5151-618: The anniversary issue, President Barack Obama said: In an era of instant, 140-character news cycles and reflexive toeing of the party line, it's incredible to think of the 150-year history of The Nation . It's more than a magazine—it's a crucible of ideas forged in the time of Emancipation, tempered through depression and war and the civil-rights movement, and honed as sharp and relevant as ever in an age of breathtaking technological and economic change. Through it all, The Nation has exhibited that great American tradition of expanding our moral imaginations, stoking vigorous dissent, and simply taking

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5252-410: The archives, and new essays by frequent contributors like Eric Foner , Noam Chomsky , E. L. Doctorow , Toni Morrison , Rebecca Solnit , and Vivian Gornick ; a book-length history of the magazine by D. D. Guttenplan (which The Times Literary Supplement called "an affectionate and celebratory affair"); events across the country; and a relaunched website. In a tribute to The Nation , published in

5353-448: 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

5454-576: 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

5555-535: 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

5656-536: 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

5757-419: 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

5858-430: The editors of The Nation professed that "Bernie Sanders and his supporters are bending the arc of history toward justice. Theirs is an insurgency, a possibility, and a dream that we proudly endorse." On June 15, 2019, Heuvel stepped down as editor; D. D. Guttenplan , the editor-at-large, took her place. On March 2, 2020, The Nation again endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for President . In their reasoning,

5959-404: The editors of The Nation professed: "As we find ourselves on a hinge of history—a generation summoned to the task of redeeming our democracy and restoring our republic—no one ever has to wonder what Bernie Sanders stands for." On February 23, 2022, The Nation named Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara its new president. In December 2023, Sunkara announced the magazine would be switching from

6060-503: The election, The Nation ran an opinion piece attributing the result to widespread support for "anti-system politics" among American society, drawing parallels between Harris' campaign and that of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Print ad pages declined by 5% from 2009 to 2010, while digital advertising rose 32.8% from 2009 to 2010. Advertising accounts for 10% of total revenue for the magazine, while circulation totals 60%. The Nation has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and

6161-403: 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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6262-633: 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

6363-550: The first chapter of Catch-22 (named Catch-18 originally) and "Jazz of the Beat Generation" by "Jean-Louis" (actually an excerpt from Jack Kerouac 's On the Road ). That issue also included work by Heinrich Böll and Dylan Thomas . The eighth issue (1955) featured Flannery O'Connor , Federico García Lorca and Thomas Berger . The first Lippincott volume, 16, was led off by Tillie Olsen 's most famous story "Tell Me

6464-582: 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

6565-480: The founders of The Nation would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard sold the magazine in 1935. Maurice Wertheim , the new owner, sold it in 1937 to Freda Kirchwey , who served as editor from 1933 to 1955. Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When Albert Jay Nock published

6666-457: 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),

6767-483: 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

6868-403: 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 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,

6969-471: The magazine and the Evening Post , and sold off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade The Nation into a current affairs publication and gave it an anti- classical liberal orientation. As the 1932 U.S. presidential election approached, the Nation saw no real choice between Hoover and Roosevelt, and it urged readers to vote for Socialist Party candidate Norman Thomas. Oswald Villard wrote "So I insist,

7070-611: The magazine from Kirstein in 1965. During the 1950s, Paul Blanshard , a former associate editor, served as The Nation ' s special correspondent in Uzbekistan . His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the Catholic Church in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution. On the eve of the 1968 U.S. presidential election the magazine argued that the choice between Nixon and Humphrey

7171-586: The magazine from the Storrow family. In 1985, he sold it to Arthur L. Carter , who had made a fortune as a founding partner of Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill . In 1991, The Nation sued the Department of Defense for restricting free speech by limiting Gulf War coverage to press pools . However, the issue was found moot in Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense , because

7272-519: The magazine published a poem entitled "How-To" by Anders Carlson-Wee which was written in the voice of a homeless man and used black vernacular . This led to criticism from writers such as Roxane Gay because Carlson-Wee is white. The Nation ' s two poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith , issued an apology for publishing the poem, the first such action ever taken by the magazine. The apology itself became an object of criticism also. Poet and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt called

7373-447: The magazine wrote that the publication would have "seven main objects" with the first being "discussion of the topics of the day, and, above all, of legal, economical, and constitutional questions, with greater accuracy and moderation than are now to be found in the daily press." The Nation pledged to "not be the organ of any party, sect or body" but rather to "make an earnest effort to bring to discussion of political and social questions

7474-494: The magazine's arts section. During McCarthyism (the Second Red Scare), The Nation was banned from several school libraries in New York City and Newark, and a Bartlesville, Oklahoma , librarian, Ruth Brown , was fired from her job in 1950, after a citizens committee complained she had given shelf space to The Nation . In 1955, George C. Kirstein replaced Kirchway as magazine owner. James J. Storrow Jr. bought

7575-463: The man who votes for either Hoover or Roosevelt is the one who is throwing away his vote... He is again postponing the peaceful revolution which Woodrow Wilson said in 1912 was on the horizon." The magazine did, however, endorse Roosevelt in the next three elections. Oswald Villard welcomed the New Deal and supported the nationalization of industries—thus reversing the meaning of " liberalism " as

7676-459: 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

7777-772: 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 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

7878-405: 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

7979-468: 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

8080-431: 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

8181-499: The print magazine. Adding sales from newsstands, The Nation had a total circulation of 96,000 copies per issue in 2021, earning the majority of its revenue from subscriptions and donations, rather than print advertising. Since its creation, The Nation has published significant works of American poetry , including works by Hart Crane , Eli Siegel , Elizabeth Bishop , and Adrienne Rich , as well as W. S. Merwin , Pablo Neruda , Denise Levertov , and Derek Walcott . In 2018,

8282-522: 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

8383-582: 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

8484-581: 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

8585-565: 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

8686-414: 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

8787-520: 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

8888-431: The surname "Gore" was added to his names at 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

8989-564: The time to think through our country's challenges anew. If I agreed with everything written in any given issue of the magazine, it would only mean that you are not doing your jobs. But whether it is your commitment to a fair shot for working Americans, or equality for all Americans, it is heartening to know that an American institution dedicated to provocative, reasoned debate and reflection in pursuit of those ideals can continue to thrive. On January 14, 2016, The Nation endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for President . In their reasoning,

9090-423: The war ended before the case was heard. In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher. In 1995, Katrina vanden Heuvel succeeded Navasky as editor of The Nation , and in 2005, as publisher. In 2015, The Nation celebrated its 150th anniversary with a documentary film by Academy Award–winning director Barbara Kopple ; a 268-page special issue featuring pieces of art and writing from

9191-446: 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

9292-528: 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

9393-646: Was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906. Its founding publisher was Joseph H. Richards; the editor was Godkin, an immigrant from Ireland who had formerly worked as a correspondent of the London Daily News and The New York Times . Godkin sought to establish what one sympathetic commentator later characterized as "an organ of opinion characterized in its utterance by breadth and deliberation, an organ which should identify itself with causes, and which should give its support to parties primarily as representative of these causes." In its "founding prospectus"

9494-524: Was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ; a group of abolitionists, led by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted , desired to found a new weekly political magazine. Edwin Lawrence Godkin , who had been considering starting such a magazine for some time, agreed and so became the first editor of The Nation . Wendell Phillips Garrison , son of The Liberator ' s editor/publisher William Lloyd Garrison ,

9595-682: Was added at my christening in 1939; then, at fourteen, I got rid of 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

9696-423: Was also responsible for academic affairs, including conducting research and organizing conferences, that had been a part of the early history of the magazine. Nation Associates became responsible for the operation and publication of the magazine on a nonprofit basis, with Kirchwey as both president of Nation Associates and editor of The Nation . Before the attack on Pearl Harbor , The Nation repeatedly called on

9797-671: Was born in Feldkirch , Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to 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

9898-531: Was by Ernst Reichl. It was succeeded in 1967 by New American Review , edited by Ted Solotaroff . A purchase of the anthology was described in Frank O'Hara 's poem "The Day Lady Died": Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal ( / v ɪ ˈ d ɑː l / vih- DAHL ; born Eugene Louis Vidal , October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit . His novels and essays interrogated

9999-530: Was not "a 'disavowal' of Vidal's article. On the contrary, it clearly states that we published that article because we believed that Vidal had a right to assert his opinions, even though we did not share them." The Nation The Nation is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison 's The Liberator , an abolitionist newspaper that closed in 1865, after ratification of

10100-417: Was slightly higher; and both lost money. It was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion. The new publication would have been called The Nation and New Republic . Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths: The Nation achieved a higher circulation, and The New Republic moved more to

10201-501: Was such a bad one that voters should stay home. In June 1979, The Nation ' s publisher Hamilton Fish and then-editor Victor Navasky moved the magazine to 72 Fifth Avenue , in Manhattan . In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for condominium development. The offices of The Nation are now at 33 Irving Place, in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood. In 1977, a group organized by Hamilton Fish V bought

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