Gore Vidal | Academy of Achievement

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age 19, while serving in the United States Army, and was acclaimed as one of the most promising young writers to emerge from World War II. He created an international sensation in the late '40s with The City and the Pillar, a novel that shattered the taboo barring frank portrayal of sexuality in American literature. In the 1950s, Vidal pioneered original drama on television, and enjoyed smash hits on Broadway with Visit to a Small Planet and the political drama The Best Man. Vidal's essays and television appearances established him as a formidable political commentator and social critic. He was in constant demand as a public speaker, renowned for his wicked wit, dazzling erudition and sincere outrage at the corruption of the political process. Over the decades, he thrilled readers with international best-sellers in an astounding variety of styles, from philosophical dramas of classical antiquity like Julian and Creation, to hallucinatory satires like Myra Breckinridge and Duluth. His crowning achievement may have been his masterful recreation of American history in a series of novels including Burr, 1876 and Lincoln. His collected essays, United States, won the National Book Award in 1993. Critics debate which of these works is his finest, but his cumulative achievement made Gore Vidal the greatest American man of letters of his era."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Gore Vidal | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Gore Vidal wrote his first novel at age 19, while serving in the United States Army, and was acclaimed as one of the most promising young writers to emerge from World War II. He created an international sensation in the late '40s with <i>The City and the Pillar</i>, a novel that shattered the taboo barring frank portrayal of sexuality in American literature. In the 1950s, Vidal pioneered original drama on television, and enjoyed smash hits on Broadway with <i>Visit to a Small Planet</i> and the political drama <i>The Best Man</i>.</p> <p class="inputText">Vidal's essays and television appearances established him as a formidable political commentator and social critic. He was in constant demand as a public speaker, renowned for his wicked wit, dazzling erudition and sincere outrage at the corruption of the political process.</p> <p class="inputText">Over the decades, he thrilled readers with international best-sellers in an astounding variety of styles, from philosophical dramas of classical antiquity like <i>Julian</i> and <i>Creation</i>, to hallucinatory satires like <i>Myra Breckinridge</i> and <i>Duluth</i>. His crowning achievement may have been his masterful recreation of American history in a series of novels including <i>Burr</i>, <i>1876</i> and <i>Lincoln</i>. His collected essays, <i>United States</i>, won the National Book Award in 1993. Critics debate which of these works is his finest, but his cumulative achievement made Gore Vidal the greatest American man of letters of his era.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2021-02-08T20:21:34+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/","name":"Gore Vidal | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2016-08-28T02:37:48+00:00","dateModified":"2021-02-08T20:21:34+00:00","description":"Gore Vidal wrote his first novel at age 19, while serving in the United States Army, and was acclaimed as one of the most promising young writers to emerge from World War II. 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data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/vidal-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Gore Vidal</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">National Book Award</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" 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class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WhatItTakes_256_vidal-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I was born a writer. When that happens, you have no choice in the matter.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Novelist and Social Critic</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> October 3, 1925 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 31, 2012 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_19323" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19323" style="width: 1742px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19323 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19323 size-full lazyload" alt="1933 TIME magazine cover featuring Gore Vidal's father, Eugene Vidal, Director of Air Commerce in the Roosevelt administration. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" width="1742" height="2486" data-sizes="(max-width: 1742px) 100vw, 1742px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10.jpg 1742w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10-266x380.jpg 266w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10-533x760.jpg 533w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19323" class="wp-caption-text">1933: <em>TIME</em> magazine cover featuring Gore Vidal’s father, Eugene Vidal, Director of Air Commerce in the Roosevelt administration. (Credit: <em>Time Life</em> Pictures/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was born at West Point, New York. In his teens, he shortened his name to its more familiar form, Gore Vidal. At the time of his birth, his father, Eugene Luther Vidal, an officer in the United States Army, was serving as an aeronautics instructor at the United States Military Academy. As a cadet, the elder Vidal had been a star of the Army football team; he later competed in the decathlon at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. After leaving the Army, Vidal senior became one of the pioneers of commercial aviation in the United States, involved in the founding of TWA, Eastern and Northeastern Airlines. He would also serve as Director of Air Commerce in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.</p> <p>Gore Vidal’s mother, Nina, was the daughter of Senator Thomas Pryor Gore. A Mississippian by birth, Senator Gore had traveled west as a young man and helped found the State of Oklahoma. He was one of the State’s first two Senators, serving from 1907 to 1921. He won re-election to his final term in 1930. Senator Gore had been blinded in a childhood accident and prevailed upon his wife and grandson to read to him from his large library. The young Gore Vidal read widely from this collection, feeding a love of history, politics, and the joys of language and narrative.</p> <p>After her divorce from Eugene Vidal, Nina Gore married financier Hugh D. Auchincloss, and young Gore Vidal went to live with them at Merrywood, Auchincloss’s vast estate in Northern Virginia. Vidal’s relationship with his volatile mother was often strained, and she sent him to a succession of boarding schools: St. Albans School in Washington, D.C.; the Los Alamos Ranch School (later the home of the Manhattan Project) in New Mexico; and finally Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.</p> <figure id="attachment_19327" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19327" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19327 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19327 size-full lazyload" alt="Eugene Luther "Gore" Vidal, Jr." width="2280" height="3208" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-270x380.jpg 270w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-540x760.jpg 540w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19327" class="wp-caption-text">Eugene Luther “Gore” Vidal, Jr. was born in 1925 at West Point, NY. In 1943, after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he entered the Reserve Corps of the U.S. Army. He later joined the Army Transportation Corps as an officer and was sent to the Aleutian Islands. At age 19, Vidal began his first novel, <em>Williwaw</em>, during a run between Chernowski Bay and Dutch Harbor. Suffering from frostbite and arthritis, he was sent back to the States, and finished the novel while recuperating in a military hospital. The book put Vidal on the map of young postwar novelists that included Norman Mailer, John Horne Burns, and Truman Capote.</figcaption></figure> <p>Strongly influenced by the isolationism of his grandfather, the Senator, young Gore Vidal led his school’s chapter of the America First Committee, a national group opposed to America’s entry into the Second World War. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, opposition to American involvement in the war vanished, and immediately after graduation, the 17-year-old Gore Vidal enlisted in the United States Army. Vidal was assigned to duty as a warrant officer on a transport ship in the Aleutian Islands, where his ship encountered the fierce arctic storm known to the native Aleuts as a williwaw. Vidal suffered hypothermia, which severely damaged his knee. While recuperating in military hospitals he wrote his first novel, <em>Williwaw</em>. The book was completed when he was 19 and was published by E.P. Dutton when he was 20. Along with his contemporary, Norman Mailer, he was one of the first of the returning World War II veterans to be published. After his discharge from the army in 1946, Vidal joined E.P. Dutton as an editor and plunged into the literary life of New York City. His first novel had attracted attention; his second novel, <em>In a Yellow Wood</em>, about the dilemmas of a returning veteran, was also well-received, but Vidal soon chafed at the routine of the publisher’s office and felt suffocated by the ingrown literary set of New York. He had begun work on a third novel and wanted solitude to finish it. He decamped to Guatemala, where he believed his small savings would stretch farther and where he could write in peace. He bought a house in the old colonial town of Antigua and settled down to complete his novel.</p> <figure id="attachment_19322" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19322" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19322 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19322 size-full lazyload" alt="Gore Vidal in the 1940s. (© Corbis)" width="2280" height="3581" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462-242x380.jpg 242w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462-484x760.jpg 484w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19322" class="wp-caption-text">Gore Vidal in the 1940s. After the war, young Vidal, published eight novels in succession between 1946 and 1954, including <i>The City and the Pillar</i> (1948), T<em>he Judgment of Paris</em> (1952), and <em>Messiah</em> (1954). Critics railed against Vidal’s presentation of homosexuality in <i>The City and the Pillar, </i>among the first explicitly gay novels in the history of American fiction, forcing him to earn a living writing mystery novels with the pseudonym Edgar Box. (Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p>Since adolescence, Vidal had weighed the choice of a career in literature or in politics. With his third novel, <em>The City and the Pillar</em>, the die would be cast in favor of a literary career. The book portrayed homosexual relationships in a nonjudgmental way, as a fact of nature. This broke an enormous taboo in American literature, where the topic had only been treated as a subject of shame and remorse. While a few fellow authors praised the book and it sold well, many critics loudly condemned what they regarded as the book’s immorality. <em>The New York Times</em> refused to review Vidal’s subsequent books for almost a decade; some publications even refused to print his name, much less review his books. Another novel completed in Guatemala, <em>A Season of Comfort</em>, disappeared in the face of a virtual blackout by the mainstream press.</p> <p>Over the next few years, Vidal traveled between New York and Europe. Although his name was anathema to many in the press, his work was well-received abroad, and he continued to write novels on a variety of subjects. <em>A Search for the King</em> revisited a medieval legend; <em>Dark Green, Bright Red</em> portrayed an American-led coup in Central America. In 1953 he achieved an artistic breakthrough with <em>The Judgment of Paris</em>, setting a contemporary story against a background rich with themes from classical antiquity. In this book he truly found his own distinctive voice as a writer for the first time. His 1955 novel <em>Messiah</em> was a futuristic fantasy of a dictator who rises to power in the United States by exploiting the new medium of television. Despite Vidal’s great productivity and growing power as an artist, his work was studiously ignored by the American press.</p> <figure id="attachment_19328" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19328" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19328 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19328 size-full lazyload" alt="American writer Gore Vidal as a young man, 1955. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2962" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young-293x380.jpg 293w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young-585x760.jpg 585w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19328" class="wp-caption-text">In the mid-1950s, Gore Vidal began writing screenplays, including <em>The Catered Affair</em> (1956), <em>I Accuse! </em>(1958), <em>The Scapegoat </em>(1959), <em>Ben Hur</em> (1959) (uncredited), and <em>Suddenly, Last Summer</em> (1959), <em>The Best Man</em> (1964), <em>Is Paris Burning? </em>(1966), <em>Last of the Mobile Hot Shots</em> (1970), <em>Caligula</em> (1979), and <em>Billy the Kid</em> (1989). (Hulton Archive/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>In the mid-1950s, Vidal bought a large house on the Hudson River in Dutchess County, New York. Needing money to support this expensive establishment, he took on a variety of commercial ventures, writing a series of mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box. Unlike his serious fiction, these potboilers were very well-received in the press. He made a more unusual move by entering the new medium of original drama for television. At the time, many of the most popular programs were anthology shows, such as Studio One and Playhouse 90, broadcast live. Most serious writers in the ’50s shunned the medium, as their predecessors had shunned the movies, but Vidal seized the opportunity. In a few years, he was to write 20 of these dramas. Many were adaptations of literary works by others, but he scored his greatest success in the medium with an original fantasy, <em>Visit to a Small Planet</em>. He adapted <em>Visit to a Small Planet</em> for the Broadway stage, where it was an immediate hit. Touring companies crisscrossed the country for many years.</p> <p>Television dramatists like Vidal, Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling were public figures in the 1950s, and Vidal was asked to appear on the new talk programs like <em>Today</em> and <em>The Tonight Show</em>. His mellifluous voice, ready wit, gift for mimicry, and unexpected candor about sex, politics and every other subject made him a sought-after guest. He was also called on to edit anthologies of television drama and to lecture on the new medium.</p> <figure id="attachment_19321" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19321" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19321 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19321 size-full lazyload" alt="Gore Vidal greets President-elect John F. Kennedy at the Morosco Theater in New York City. JFK has come to see Vidal's political drama "The Best Man." (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="2239" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780-380x373.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780-760x746.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19321" class="wp-caption-text">1960: Gore Vidal greets President-elect John F. Kennedy at the Morosco Theater in New York City. JFK has come to see Vidal’s political drama <em>The Best Man</em>. The play was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Play. (Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p>Film adaptations of <em>Visit to a Small Planet</em>, and Vidal’s Billy the Kid drama, <em>Left-Handed Gun</em>, were disappointments to him. He accepted an offer from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, eager to see firsthand how films were made, and to observe the last days of the old studio system. He was one of the last writers to be placed under long-term contract to any studio.</p> <p>Vidal prospered in Hollywood, writing acclaimed screenplays for <em>The Catered Affair</em> (based on a play by his television colleague Paddy Chayefsky), <em>Suddenly Last Summer</em> (based on a play by his friend Tennessee Williams) and <em>J’Accuse</em>, based on the famous Dreyfus case of official anti-Semitism in France at the beginning of the 20th century. He also worked as an uncredited script doctor on the epic film <em>Ben Hur</em>, in exchange for which he was released from his contract. His earnings from television, Broadway and Hollywood had now freed him to write what he pleased without taking on other work. But just as he was prepared to plunge full-time into literary labor, ghosts of his Washington past returned to draw him back into the world of electoral politics.</p> <figure id="attachment_19318" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19318" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19318 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968-.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-19318 lazyload" alt="Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal author Gore Vidal exploded onto the political scene during the presidential conventions of 1968, when they debated 11 times on ABC News as a part of the network’s “unconventional convention coverage.” The debates were fiery and combative and they infamously blew up at each other during their penultimate debate in Chicago, August 1968. (ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1516" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968-.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968--380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968--760x505.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968-.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19318" class="wp-caption-text">Conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal author Gore Vidal exploded onto the political scene during the presidential conventions of 1968, when they debated 11 times on <em>ABC News</em> as a part of the network’s “unconventional convention coverage.” The debates were fiery and combative and they infamously blew up at each other during their penultimate debate in Chicago on August 1968. (© ABC Photo Archives/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>When his mother divorced Hugh D. Auchincloss in the 1940s, Auchincloss married Janet Lee Bouvier, whose daughter Jacqueline moved into Gore Vidal’s old room at Merrywood. By 1960, Jacqueline Bouvier was married to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, then preparing a run for the presidency. Kennedy was eager to meet his wife’s famous literary connection, and Vidal became fascinated once again with the machinations of political life. He wrote a play, <em>The Best Man</em>, exposing the backstage intrigues at a presidential nominating convention. The play was a hit on Broadway, and was later made into a successful motion picture, the only film version of his work with which Vidal was entirely satisfied.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Vidal had become friends with a Dutchess County neighbor, Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the 32nd president. With the encouragement of the Kennedys and the Roosevelts, Vidal decided to challenge the incumbent congressman from Dutchess County, a strongly Republican area. One of the only Democrats ever to have won election in the area was Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, elected to the State Senate in 1910. The odds were formidable, but Vidal exceeded expectations. Although he lost the general election, he garnered more votes in the district than Kennedy, the party’s presidential candidate.</p> <figure id="attachment_19324" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19324" style="width: 1860px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19324 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19324 size-full lazyload" alt="This March 1, 1976 edition of TIME magazine saluted Gore Vidal on the publication of his novel, "1876." (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) " width="1860" height="2476" data-sizes="(max-width: 1860px) 100vw, 1860px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10.jpg 1860w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10-285x380.jpg 285w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10-571x760.jpg 571w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19324" class="wp-caption-text">This March 1, 1976 edition of TIME magazine saluted Gore Vidal on the publication of his novel, “1876.” (Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>For the first year of Kennedy’s presidency, Vidal enjoyed the role of intimate to the first family, but he soon felt confined by the atmosphere of official Washington and was eager to return to literary work. He moved to Italy and began work on the novel <em>Julian</em>, about the fourth century Roman Emperor who attempted to turn the Empire away from its official Christianity and back to the ancient traditions of Greek philosophy. The book was published to great acclaim and topped the bestseller lists in 1964. After <em>Julian</em>, Vidal made his living as a novelist, turning to the essay or the lecture stage only to express his passionately held opinions on literature and politics.</p> <p>In the 1967 novel<em> Washington, D.C.</em>, Vidal revisited his native city, following a set of invented characters through the changing political atmosphere of the city from the New Deal to the Cold War. The following year, Vidal outraged a few and amused many with an offbeat satirical novel, <em>Myra Breckenridge</em>. Written in a wildly original style, the book combined themes of the movie business, transsexuality, drugs and religion. It was later made into a film he described as the worst movie ever made.</p> <figure id="attachment_19325" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19325" style="width: 1995px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19325 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19325 size-full lazyload" alt="Gore Vidal at his Italian residence and studio, "Villa la Rondinaia," in Ravello on Amalfi's coast, August 2004. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)" width="1995" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 1995px) 100vw, 1995px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10.jpg 1995w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10-505x760.jpg 505w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19325" class="wp-caption-text">Gore Vidal at his Italian residence and studio, “Villa la Rondinaia,” in Ravello on Amalfi’s coast, August 2004.</figcaption></figure> <p>Gore Vidal enjoyed shifting back and forth among a number of favorite genres of fiction. He returned to his fictional chronicle of American history with the 1973 novel <em>Burr</em>, which many consider his masterpiece. He tells his story from the point of view of a young journalist in 1830s New York who makes the acquaintance of the elderly Aaron Burr, last surviving member of the Revolutionary generation of 1776. The real-life Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel while serving as Vice President, and was later tried for treason after being accused of a plot to break up the United States. In the novel, Vidal fabricates a memoir by Burr himself, transmitted to the young journalist. Vidal’s journalist hero reappears in a subsequent novel, <em>1876</em>, set against the backdrop of the disputed presidential election of the nation’s centennial year. Vidal continued this “American Chronicle” with <em>Lincoln</em>, <em>Empire</em>, <em>Hollywood</em> and <em>The Golden Age</em>, following several generations of related families through nearly two centuries of American history.</p> <p>Between these massive works, he continued to explore his original brand of satire with works like <em>Duluth</em>, <em>The Smithsonian Institution</em> and <em>Live from Golgotha</em>. He explored the world of the fifth century, BC, with <em>Creation</em>, a tale that follows its protagonist from Persia to Athens to India and China, and touches on the origins of some of the world’s major religions.</p> <figure id="attachment_19313" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19313" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19313 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19313 size-full lazyload" alt="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19313" class="wp-caption-text">Gore Vidal addresses Academy delegates and members at 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles.</figcaption></figure> <p>Beginning in the 1950s, Vidal published occasional essays on politics and literature. In later years, these most often appeared in <em>The New York Review of Books</em>. These essays were gathered each decade in bestselling collections like <em>Rocking the Boat</em>, <em>Sex Death and Money</em>, <em>Homage to Daniel Shays</em>, <em>Matters of Fact and Fiction</em> and <em>At Home</em>. A collection of 40 years of his work in the essay medium, <em>United States: Collected Essays 1952-1992</em>, won the National Book Award in 1993. The award confirmed Vidal’s status as the greatest English language essayist of the 20th century.</p> <p>From his opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s to his opposition to the Iraq war in the 21st century, Vidal was one of his country’s most outspoken social critics. During the Vietnam War, he helped found the short-lived People’s Party, a revival of the 19th century Populist movement in which his grandfather had been a young leader. In 1972, the People’s Party nominated Dr. Benjamin Spock for President. Spock promised that, if elected, he would appoint Vidal Secretary of State. Vidal made a more serious foray into electoral politics in 1982, when he ran for the United States Senate in California, where he had long maintained a home. He was defeated in the Democratic primary by then-Governor Jerry Brown, who lost to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson in the general election.</p> <figure id="attachment_19316" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19316" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19316 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19316 size-full lazyload" alt="Biographer A. Scott Berg presents the Golden Plate Award to novelist Gore Vidal during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1836" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226-380x306.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226-760x612.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19316" class="wp-caption-text">A. Scott Berg presents the Golden Plate Award to Gore Vidal during the 2006 International Achievement Summit.</figcaption></figure> <p>From the 1960s, Vidal kept an apartment in Rome and a villa in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. At the same time, he maintained a home in the Hollywood Hills and made occasional appearances as an actor in films such as <em>Bob Roberts</em>, <em>With Honors</em> and the television movie <em>Billy the Kid</em>. When his longtime companion Howard Austen fell ill in 2003, he gave up the home in Italy and returned to Los Angeles for good. Austen subsequently died that year.</p> <p>In his later years, Vidal gave up writing longer novels, and published two volumes of memoirs, <em>Palimpsest</em> (1995) and <em>Point to Point Navigation</em> (2006). He also published a thoughtful study of the Founding Fathers, <em>Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson</em> (2003). He continued to publish book-length essays on political topics, such as <em>Dreaming War</em> and <em>Imperial America</em>. Until his final illness, he continued to speak publicly against what he saw as the erosion of constitutional liberty in America. He died at home in Los Angeles at the age of 86.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2006 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.writer">Writer</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.author">Author</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.novelist">Novelist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> October 3, 1925 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 31, 2012 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">Gore Vidal wrote his first novel at age 19, while serving in the United States Army, and was acclaimed as one of the most promising young writers to emerge from World War II. He created an international sensation in the late ’40s with <i>The City and the Pillar</i>, a novel that shattered the taboo barring frank portrayal of sexuality in American literature. In the 1950s, Vidal pioneered original drama on television, and enjoyed smash hits on Broadway with <i>Visit to a Small Planet</i> and the political drama <i>The Best Man</i>.</p> <p class="inputText">Vidal’s essays and television appearances established him as a formidable political commentator and social critic. He was in constant demand as a public speaker, renowned for his wicked wit, dazzling erudition and sincere outrage at the corruption of the political process.</p> <p class="inputText">Over the decades, he thrilled readers with international best-sellers in an astounding variety of styles, from philosophical dramas of classical antiquity like <i>Julian</i> and <i>Creation</i>, to hallucinatory satires like <i>Myra Breckinridge</i> and <i>Duluth</i>. His crowning achievement may have been his masterful recreation of American history in a series of novels including <i>Burr</i>, <i>1876</i> and <i>Lincoln</i>. His collected essays, <i>United States</i>, won the National Book Award in 1993. Critics debate which of these works is his finest, but his cumulative achievement made Gore Vidal the greatest American man of letters of his era.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/xcm3DiNo86I?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=2670&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_21_30_19.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_21_30_19.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Novelist and Social Critic</h2> <div class="sans-2">Los Angeles, California</div> <div class="sans-2">June 3, 2006</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>When did you start writing? When did you discover you had an aptitude or a desire to write?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: The first time I read my first book all by myself without my grandmother helping me. She was my reader for a while. As soon as I started to read and understand it easily, I started to write a book. I thought, “This is not only easy to do, but I think I could probably do it better than they’re doing it.” At least I would write something more to my own interests.</p> <p><strong>How old were you?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Nine.</p> <p><strong>What is the first thing you wrote about?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/IGGWrTzBcZg?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=77&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_27_20_20.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_27_20_20.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Gore Vidal: I had seen a movie called <i>The Mystery of the Blue Room</i>, I think it was called. I can’t find it in any of the encyclopedias, but I remember liking it very much, and so I wrote “The Mystery of the Blue Room.” Yes, I was a plagiarist very early, just borrowed it from the movie. Nobody noticed. Nobody had seen it in my family. There I was, retelling the story, but I was using family characters, my grandmother, who was a wonderful woman, very, very intelligent, but she never listened to anybody. She wasn’t deaf, she just didn’t like listening to people. She didn’t like talking that much either. She would occasionally say something intelligent, but she would miss an entire conversation because she’d be thinking about other things. And then she would ask the subject of what we were talking about. We said, “But we told you a few minutes ago.” “Oh, is that what it’s about?” And she would just drift off. So I was already using other people’s characteristics to decorate my tales.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>We’ve read that when you were at Phillips Exeter, you joined America First.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I was the head of it.</p> <p><strong>Isolationist that you were, you went off and enlisted in the United States Army.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: That’s what we did in those days.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/PCPfIIzoDvE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=40&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_10_31_07.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_10_31_07.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">At 17, I enlisted in the Army, and I served three years in the Pacific. I was the First Mate of an Army ship in the Aleutians, which is why I am in a wheelchair. Due to hypothermia, I had a frozen knee, which developed rheumatoid arthritis. Misdiagnosis naturally, by the Army. It turned out to be osteoarthrosis, and I now have an artificial knee. But the knees are the only part of the anatomy I have never had to use in life.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>So you were still in the Army when you wrote your first novel?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I wrote my first novel while in the Army Hospital at Anchorage, Alaska, and then over here in Van Nuys at Birmingham General Hospital.</p> <p><strong>What inspired that?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, it was about a first mate on an Army ship in the Aleutian Islands. I think I was already working pretty close to home. I didn’t have anything else to write about.</p> <p><strong>Had you already decided that this was your life’s calling?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I think pretty much, although I decided I wanted to go into politics, but I didn’t know to what extent I would be able to get around physically, and you sit still when you write a novel, so I wrote my first novel there, sent it to a publisher. I wrote it at 19; it was published when I was 20.</p> <figure id="attachment_19319" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19319" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19319 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19319 size-full lazyload" alt="His second novel, "The City and the Pillar," in 1948, caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality and a male homosexual relationship. The novel was dedicated to "J.T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945; and that Jimmie Trimble was the only person Gore Vidal had ever loved. (CORBIS)" width="2280" height="3076" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1-282x380.jpg 282w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1-563x760.jpg 563w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19319" class="wp-caption-text">His second novel, “The City and the Pillar,” in 1948, caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality and a male homosexual relationship. The novel was dedicated to “J.T.”; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945; and that Jimmie Trimble was the only person Gore Vidal had ever loved.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>It got good reviews, didn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Yes indeed, followed by very bad reviews for <em>The City and the Pillar</em>, my third book.</p> <p><strong>You got bad reviews for <em>The City and the Pillar</em> after the good reviews for your first book. Why was that?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/eUKiDDVPUAk?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=35&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_13_38_20.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_13_38_20.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Gore Vidal: It was a book about the absolute normality of “same-sexuality,” as it was sometimes called. Remember, I spent all my life not only in boys’ schools, but here I am stuck in three years of the Army. I knew exactly what went on in the real world. It was Walt Whitman who said, “No one will ever know what goes on in armies.” Everybody thought it was the bloodshed and so on. Whitman was after different game. I knew what went on in the real world, and I thought, well, nobody would write about it.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_19317" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19317" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19317 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19317 size-full lazyload" alt="Two Democrats hand out autographs for voters on thier campaign rounds, August 18, 1960. In the dark suit is presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy. In the light suit is congressional candidate Gore Vidal, successful playwright who ran for office in an area of New York State that hadn't voted for a Democrat in 100 years. But Vidal said the Republican habit "could be broken." (AP Photo)" width="2280" height="1665" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1-380x278.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1-760x555.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19317" class="wp-caption-text">Two Democrats hand out autographs for voters on their campaign rounds, August 18, 1960. In the dark suit is presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy. In the light suit is congressional candidate Gore Vidal, successful playwright who ran for office in an area of New York State that hadn’t voted for a Democrat in 100 years. But Vidal said the Republican habit “could be broken.” John F. Kennedy was elected President later that year and Vidal lost his race.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Certainly not in America, up to that point.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No, certainly not in a favorable way, although I am pretty nonjudicial.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/AvpehEnEW04?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_06_50_22.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_06_50_22.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">All the people who had praised my war novel were suddenly hysterical over this book, and I responded in kind, being brought up by the Gores, sharp-tongued and quite mean-minded as I get angry, and I am quite for fighting back. I have conducted an absolute feud with <i>The New York Times</i> for 50 years, because of what they did to that book and to me. They’re not doing very well these days, I’m happy to report from the front.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>You must have known that you were inviting controversy, if not worse.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well no, I’m not exactly stupid, but at the same time, I didn’t realize how stupid they were.</p> <figure id="attachment_19315" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19315" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19315 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19315 size-full lazyload" alt="Robin Williams with Gore Vidal at a reception before the 2006 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19315" class="wp-caption-text">Awards Council member and Robin Williams with Gore Vidal at a reception prior to 2006 Banquet of the Golden Plate in Los Angeles. Gore Vidal died six years later and Robin Williams tragically committed suicide in 2014.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>You were writing a serious literary work on a subject that hadn’t been touched on before.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, it had been touched on before. After all, there was Proust. All sorts of great writers had dealt with it, but always in a peripheral way. All you have to do is spend three years in the Army. There is nothing you don’t learn about that subject, among other things. It seemed to me something that needed doing.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/sSThV1S-rNI?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=32&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_05_02_20.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_05_02_20.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I suspect at a very early age that one of the things I most disliked in the world was: a) dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Since the United States is firmly based on both, I had a rich subject, my native land, and certain taboo subjects were obviously going to interest me. Why, of all the founding fathers, did I pick Aaron Burr to write a book about? Well, I thought it was time that his point of view was expressed, because he is very interesting about the founding of the country.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>How did that affect your career as a young novelist?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: It was not a brilliant move, no, but I attracted a large audience in many countries aside from the U.S., and then I went to television to make a living. <em>The New York Times</em> didn’t care what was on television. I finally came back to the novel, with <em>Julian</em>, and I have been a novelist ever since.</p> <figure id="attachment_19310" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19310" style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19310 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-19310 size-full lazyload" alt="Author Gore Vidal speaks at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2000" height="3008" data-sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819.jpg 2000w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819-505x760.jpg 505w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-19310" class="wp-caption-text">Gore Vidal addresses the Academy delegates at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>You mentioned going into television to make a living, which raises a point. What does a novelist have to do to survive in this world?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: You write plays for live television, if there is such a thing. It had just come into being in the early ’50s.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/B_EjpyTuHXU?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=46&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_08_34_09.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-2006-MasterEdit.00_08_34_09.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I wrote a play for something called <i>Studio One</i>, which was CBS. That did well, and then, I wrote 20 more plays. Hollywood beckoned. I was the last contract writer at MGM. I didn’t need the money by then, I was just doing it to see what a great studio was like, because I knew the studio system was about to vanish from the earth. It’s like observing the troglodytes at home, and it was fascinating. By then I was on Broadway with plays. I’ve supported myself by writing all my life.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You left out the mystery books.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No, you left them out.</p> <p><strong>You did not exactly have a conventional childhood. What would you call it?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, it was conventional in the sense that I was at the Republican Convention that nominated Wendell Wilkie in 1940. I was at two other conventions, Democratic, since my family was Democrat. It was very conventional in that sense. If you mean it was like the boy next door, no.</p> <p><strong>How would you describe your childhood? What was it like growing up in Washington?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: It was wonderful. Family life was fraught. It’s never pleasant to have an alcoholic mother. I don’t think many children enjoy that, but you survive it somehow. I lived mostly with my grandparents, Senator and Mrs. Gore. He was blind from the age of ten, and I was precocious at reading, thanks to his brandishing his cane at me. So I would read to him. I was the only nine-year-old probably in the United States who understood bimetallism; he was on the Finance Committee of the Senate. I would often act as his page, take him onto the floor of the Senate, and they were giants in those days. Everybody thinks that about their childhood, but they really were. There was Huey Long, who was the funniest man that ever lived, and Borah of Idaho — “the Lion of Idaho” — they were all such performers! They were great actors. If you just studied them, it was like studying at the Old Vic or something. I really wanted to be a politician, but unfortunately, I was born a writer. When that happens, you have no choice in the matter.</p> <p><strong>That’s a rarefied atmosphere for a ten-year-old.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Yes, it was, but there was one ten-year-old who certainly appreciated it. I was fascinated by politics, and the Senate was the engine room of the country. Roosevelt was President during most of my childhood, still President when I went in the Army at 17, and he was the main political fact of the country, but the Senate, full of prima donnas, and each one saw himself as very much the equal of the President, if not his superior. So there was this tug of war going on between the executive and the legislative. We are getting a small, corrupt version of it (now), as everything we have today is small and corrupt, but we are seeing a bit of that, where the House of Representatives is telling the executive, “Go get lost. We are an equal power here, and you don’t just break into one of our offices.” Let’s say I never had to take a civics course.</p> <p><strong>What were you like as a kid?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Mean. I was brought up by Senator Gore. I was more of a Gore, which was my mother’s side, than a Vidal, who were rather pleasanter people from the Italian Alps. My father was a great athlete and a great designer of airlines. He started three airlines and Roosevelt made him Director of Air Commerce, and while he was Director of Air Commerce, he got me to fly when I was ten years old. You can get the Pathé newsreel footage to add to this portrait of me at ten, getting into a plane and taking off at Bolling Field in Washington in 1936.</p> <p>The Gores were Anglo-Irish and there was one point, back in the early 1700s, when there was something like eight Gores sitting in the rump parliament in Dublin, all in the British interests, of course. They were Protestant. Then they immigrated here, and there was one point I remember — I was very young, but I remember it — it was a big story in the papers. The Gores were in charge of every legislature in the South. The Gores were running Alabama, they were running Georgia, they were running this, they were running that. If you look at the career of cousin Albert Gore, you can see how he got to be Vice President really rather quickly. He is related to everybody down there, as I am, although I don’t seem to be able to collect the votes that he does.</p> <p><strong>Were you a good student?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No. The schools hadn’t learned then, and they still haven’t learned. If I could have a second career, I would go into education. They teach nothing of interest to anybody. Talking of L.A., all these problems over in Van Nuys. That was Birmingham General Hospital where they have now got a high school, and the kids are not graduating, and they can’t pass algebra, they can’t do this, they can’t do that.</p> <p>Well, it’s partly the teachers are not much good, but it’s partly there’s no tradition of reading, there’s no tradition of intelligence in the country. Everybody is pleased to be sort of dumb, and it is considered cheating if you learn anything. Well, this is a very bad atmosphere for the 21st Century. The United States is already on the ropes. We are behind in everything, including the skills of our schoolchildren. You have got to learn how to make it interesting.</p> <p>I hated mathematics. My grandfather was a genius at math, even though he was a blind man. Every now and then he would think of my education, while I’m reading him <em>The Congressional Record</em>. “Trigonometry,” he said, “is the study of triangles.” And with that, my brain just turned off. I didn’t care what it was the study of, just keep it away from me. I must say, in the course of a long life, I have never had an occasion to do any trigonometry at all outside of the classroom. So it didn’t prove to be terribly useful. Why not go to useful subjects?</p> <p>Two great subjects that are never taught, one is your body, general health. There are many old gentlemen who go to their grave not knowing where the liver is. They just don’t know. They don’t know what the heart really does, they can’t figure it, it’s all too complicated. Nobody will tell them. The other thing is money. They never tell you how to get a mortgage. At 12, I was perfectly willing to move out, several times — from my mother’s house, not my grandfather’s. I would have moved out if I could have got a second mortgage or even a first mortgage, but I was not allowed that luxury, because I didn’t know how to do it.</p> <p>Start with things people are going to need, and then remember that the only thing interesting about the United States is our history, and start right off from the Revolution on, or even the Indian Wars. Do all that. It is wildly interesting, and it’s the most unpopular subject among children. I think it’s Purdue, once a year asks the graduating seniors all over the country in high schools, “Which subjects do you like the most?” And it is always packing or lunch. “And which do you most hate?” And it’s always American history. Now you have to be a genius to make that uninteresting. You have to really have great gifts of boredom, beyond the norm available to most people. I have spent my life writing American history, feeling a bit guilty, because I often think, “It’s hard work. Why am I doing this? The schools should have done it.” Why am I telling the country about Lincoln and Aaron Burr? It’s sad, because if ever a country was off on two or three wrong courses, it’s this one.</p> <p><strong>What motivated you when you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, I wanted to go to the Senate like my grandfather. He was the major figure in my childhood. So politics. I might have gone by way of the law. The law fascinates me, and I have written quite a bit about the Constitution and constitutional law. It is endlessly interesting, particularly as it is being carefully screwed up now by “interested corporate parties.” Try to get every syllable out clearly. That was my major motivation.</p> <p><strong>Besides Senator Gore, were there other people or events that influenced you growing up?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: My father was a great influence. He was a real jock. He was an all-American football player, a quarterback at West Point, part of the great winning team of 1917. He was captain of the team. I was the mascot. They lost the game to Navy. Nobody’s perfect. But his character was a great stimulus to me. Athletes who do everything easily — and he got a silver medal for the decathlon at the Olympic games in Antwerp in 1924 — great athletes are very serene. They have to be. I remember he said — he wasn’t talking to me because I was not interested in athletics — but he was talking to somebody, and he said, “Well, never look back.” In other words, if you’ve missed a shot at tennis, never think about it again, go right on to the next one. And this was terribly good advice about life’s hazardous ways, so I took that seriously.</p> <p><strong>What about books and films? What books or films influenced you, growing up?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I wrote a little book called <em>Screening History</em>, in which I go in great detail into the movies that affected me growing up. This was in the years of puberty, and so on. <em>The Prince and the Pauper</em>, based on Mark Twain’s novel with the Mauch twins in it. All of the propaganda films I loved, because they were political. There were something like 8,000 British secret agents in Washington, all trying to get to know my grandfather; the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn; even my mother, who had a great sort of salon in Washington. So all of these rather brilliant Brits were there to try to get us into the war on their side, because the Luftwaffe was bombing them to pieces, and France had surrendered.</p> <p>I was living in the middle of history. The summer of ’39, obviously before 1940, with a group of boys from St. Alban’s, where I was in school — one of them being the son of Hamilton Fish, who was the great leading isolationist in the country — and we were first in France, and then we were in Mussolini’s Rome, and then we were up in Chamberlain’s England. I remember standing outside No. 10 Downing Street on the day that Chamberlain went to tell the House, “We shall be at war with Hitler.” If you are in the middle of history — and then we were on the last ship, the <em>Athenia</em> out of Liverpool — there was a 50-50 chance that we would not make it safely to the other shore. So all of that wakes you up to the real world.</p> <p><strong>It seems rather precocious that you were so involved politically at that young an age.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, I was what? Fourteen? Fifteen? The Gore family were the founders of the Party of the People, which was first organized up in Northern Mississippi, but it leaked over into Georgia, Alabama. The Party of the People — that’s where the word “populist” comes from, we are the original populists — we represented the farmers who had been destroyed by the Civil War, other people who were not doing terribly well in our society, particularly what we called Indians, but now are called Native Americans. It was a party for the turbulent poor who didn’t like their situation, and we promised, with great sincerity. It was an interesting party, it was also quite racist, but then the whole South was racist. My grandfather was not racist, and he lost his first race in Mississippi for Congress, because he was thought to be in too close with African Americans who lived in the southern part of the state, which was governed by the Bourbons, as we called the rich white people. We hated them just as much as the black folk did. So the Gores and the African Americans were always allies. So… comes also isolationists. We believed what George Washington said. When he left office, he addressed the nation, and he advised us to mind our own business. He said, “Nations, like individuals, ought not to have enemies, and they ought not to have special friends. Nations only have interests.” Very good advice, which I always took seriously, and still do.</p> <p><strong>The question that could arise in the minds of some aspiring writers is, “How do you get started? How do you go about writing?”</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I remember being present when a Jesuit priest in Rome asked Tennessee Williams, “How do you write a play?” and Tennessee said, “Well, I start with a sentence.” Well, I start with a sentence, and that’s how you write a book.</p> <p><strong>Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No. I always tell people who say they are suffering from it, “Be grateful. You are lucky. You don’t have to do it, because you’re not a writer.” Writers don’t get this unless their brains go or they’re very ill or something. I think circumstances can drive them to being dried up, but no real writer ever gets that way. There are just some of them that have been kind enough not to go on writing all the time. Those, I honor beyond belief!</p> <p><strong>No self-doubt, no fear of failure?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: All life is a failure since you are going to die. Why be afraid of it? That’s part of the contract.</p> <p><strong>Writers, among others, are subject to criticism. How do you handle that criticism?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I became a critic. Attack me and I will have your head. You must defend yourself. By and large, it isn’t worth it most of the time, when you think about who the critic is. If somebody I respected were to attack me, yes, I would be upset, somebody whose opinion I valued. But if you don’t value the opinion of some unknown journalist, why should it bother you? It’s like being bothered by the daily astrological signs.</p> <p><strong>You have never been shy about offering your own opinions and your own points of view, and often that leads to controversy. How do you handle controversy in your life and career?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Obviously I love it. I would not evoke it if I didn’t. The unexamined life is not worth living said Socrates, allegedly. One’s job as a writer is to examine the world around him. If that causes distress, so much the worse for those distressed.</p> <p><strong>Does a day go by when you are not writing? Is it something you have to do every day?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No, I don’t have to do it. I have slowed down with age, and I don’t think I can ever go back to those long novels that I wrote, all that history.</p> <p><strong>When you were writing those novels, or working in television or when you’re writing essays or commentaries, when all of this stuff is coming out of you, did you have a routine? Is it important to stick to one?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: It’s best to start writing when you wake up in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever it is you wake up. Just start then, because you are closer to the dream state than at any other time in the day, which means the imagination is really working on all cylinders, and it means that whatever it is that manufactures sentences in your head is very fresh, and you have all kinds of slants on things that by the end of the day you won’t have, or you will just lose along the way. Further advice I have not.</p> <p><strong>How would you describe the writer’s life?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Mine has been very interesting. I have lived in the world and taken part in many things outside myself. The problem with most American writers is they only write about themselves, and they’re not very interesting. I don’t care about why the marriage went wrong and why the author left his wife for the <em>au pair</em> girl when he did not get tenure at Ann Arbor, which really broke his heart. I mean these books should be written on Kleenex and disposed of. But everybody’s been told in the United States that he is interesting. “You are a very interesting person. I can just tell!” or “My feelings are just as good as your feelings.” Well, that is a fairly true statement, but what’s a feeling? We all have feelings and most of them are not worth dealing with. It’s what you know, it’s what you think, and if you have the gift of invention, very rare may I say, it’s what you make up.</p> <p><strong>What is a novelist’s role in society, relationship to society?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: It changes. I would say it’s almost nonexistent now. People have stopped reading novels. TV and video games have taken the place where novels were once. When I was young, everybody read them. Now it seems hardly anybody does. Publishers are screaming, but they’ve contributed a great deal to the collapse of the novel as a popular art form. They publish too many bad books. They’ve overpublished all sorts of things, and then they’re surprised when nobody wants their wares, but that’s a business decision, which has nothing to do with a creative one.</p> <p><strong>What was your purpose in writing?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: You try to get it down, what it is you see, what it is you think. When I was writing my first play, my producer was a very popular playwright called George Axelrod, a very bright guy. I was changing a TV play into a Broadway play, <em>Visit to a Small Planet</em>, and I would just knock out a couple of scenes in 20, 30 minutes. He said, “Think. Don’t write.” I said, “George, I only think when I write. I have no idea what I think about anything until I have written it,” and then sometimes I am quite surprised and sometimes I am quite appalled, but anyway, this is how you get it done.</p> <p><strong>As a writer, you have also been an advocate. Is a novelist, per force, a political player, a provocateur?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Some are, some are not, it depends on the novelist. I am pretty much engaged, as they say, in politics, a view of the world, which I like to express. That’s all temperament. I would have been that if I had been a baker.</p> <p><strong>If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you have become? Where would you be?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Pennsylvania Avenue probably.</p> <p><strong>You did try politics. You ran for Congress in 1960, and you ran for the Senate in 1982. So you never really abandoned that idea.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, it depends on how seriously you run.</p> <p><strong>Why did you run for Congress in 1960, and in Upstate New York at that?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I wanted to be elected, and a friend of mine, Jack Kennedy, was running for President. It seemed like the thing to do that year, and I had a play on Broadway. It was a political play called <em>The Best Man</em>. Where it’s fascinating for a political activist, like myself — forget a novelist, I don’t think in terms of people’s occupations — I wanted to see how much strength my ideas had out there. You can only do that if you run. You can’t do it by reading newspapers and listening to journalists. So I introduced all sorts of things in 1960 that shocked even my friend Eleanor Roosevelt, who was very much behind my race, and I came out openly, in Dutchess County of all places, which is very right wing, for the recognition of Red China at the United Nations. “Oh. Well, they must first agree.” Even she was getting nervous at what I was doing. I said, “Look, I have been talking to these people for nearly two years.” It was five counties. It’s the biggest district in New York. I said, “I have been talking for years with all sorts of different people. None of them can understand why Red China has been excluded from the United Nations since they have got a billion people,” or whatever it was then. It did me no harm, and of course, you learned a lot from them, because they do know their own interests.</p> <p>I remember in the ’70s, the first oil crisis, we were just talking to businessmen up in San José, up in the northern part of the state, explaining to me how oil worked. I even got some early word, I think, on Enron. You learn a lot.</p> <p><strong>Did you expect to win that election?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: In ’82, no. In ’60, yes, I was winning as of August according to the polls.</p> <p><strong>Were you surprised at how well you did in a Republican area? You got more votes that JFK did, and you got more votes than any Democrat had gotten there in 50 years.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Since 1910, yeah. Well, I wasn’t surprised, because of television. Everybody knew me. I probably was the guest most seen on Johnny Carson’s <em>Tonight</em> show. All of that can add up, you know, building an audience for yourself. I think that played a part in it, but also, I found that if you speak in a candid way to people, they quite like it. Most politicians are dreadfully boring because they don’t dare tell the truth. Telling lies, which is my little sermon this morning, is not good for character, and in the end, they catch you.</p> <p><strong>What would have become of you if you had won that election?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Oh, another old boring drunk senator from New York State, like Pat Moynihan. Plenty more where that one came from.</p> <p><strong>Why did you run in California against Jerry Brown? Why did you want to be a senator?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Well, he could be beat. He was easy to beat as it proved in the general election, and it was a good year in theory, at least when I started into it.</p> <p><strong>But this was not a lark. You were a serious candidate.</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I don’t go in for larks. It is too much work. No, I was quite serious about it. The press is only interested in how much money you have raised. I would say, “Practically nothing,” which was true. I couldn’t tell them I had quite enough to pay for the election myself. For a Party of the People man, this didn’t sound quite right, so I could never say that.</p> <p>Jerry was very weak, as he proved to be in the general, which he lost. He beat me in the primary. There were nine candidates. I came in number two with half a million votes. The understanding at that time was that Barry Goldwater, Jr. would be the Republican candidate for the Senate. Well, he would be easily taken care of. So I said, “Oh well, Jerry is weak, Barry Goldwater Jr. isn’t ever going to get elected. Then Barry dropped out! Meanwhile…</p> <p>I was told the facts of life by Senator Cranston, a very nice guy. He said, “Do you know what you are getting in for?” I said, “Of course I do. ” He said, “Okay. Say by some miracle you get elected to a first term in the Senate and you want a second term. Most of us do.” He said, “You have to raise $10,000 a week for your entire first term of six years.” You can do the math, six times 52 is a lot of money. It means you are on the phone every day begging people for money, and I have never asked anybody for any money that I can think of in my life. I have never had a bank loan or a mortgage. Well, I did have one mortgage, which I paid off as quickly as I could.</p> <p><strong>Is it true that you never went to college?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No, I didn’t. When I graduated from Exeter, I went straight into the Army. That was 1943, but I had already passed the college board to go to Harvard. So I had a choice when my first book was coming out. I was getting out of the Army in ’46. Would I go to Harvard, where most of my classmates who had survived the war were going? And I said, “No. I have been in institutions all my life. Why go to another one, having just got rid of the Army?” I’ve always had nice relations with Harvard, and all of my archives are there, manuscripts, and so forth. So as I always say, “I myself did not go to Harvard, but I sent my work there,” where they have been very good about cataloguing.</p> <p><strong>You have a long list of published works in many genres. Of your own work, what do you value most?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I like the inventions, as I call them, like <em>Myra Breckinridge</em>, <em>Duluth</em>. These are totally invented universes. Anybody can describe Abraham Lincoln’s life, but not many people can invent my Duluth, which I had to move, you know, from the northern part of the country. I put it a little too close to New Orleans. I don’t know what shape my Duluth is in now. It may be a bit wet, but I moved it down there. I have a group of enraged Hispanics, called the Aztec Terrorists, that were trying to take over the town, and I have got two lady writers. One of them cannot spell, and reads with great difficulty, but she is very, very famous. She has won the Wurlitzer prize. There was a rather good young novelist, or he used to be young, when I knew of him, Wurlitzer. She keeps repeating it, because it sounds like Pulitzer, which didn’t come her way. It’s about irreality. Everything changes. Once you think you understand what a situation is, it proves not to be the case, it’s something else. There is a spaceship in it, filled with giant cockroaches, and everybody is bored by it. Nobody wants to even open the thing. They just say it is going to be boring, so the spaceship sits there through most of the book, and it plays a part at the end. Not living up to expectations is a nice thing to do in prose.</p> <p><strong>How do you measure achievement?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Never bother.</p> <p><strong>Let me put it another way. What gives you your greatest sense of satisfaction?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I think live audiences. I might have been an actor at one point, except I couldn’t learn lines. I did a play on Broadway, <em>Trumbo</em>, which was reading letters basically. It’s a two character piece. It’s live audiences that turn me on. I was discussing it with Senator Wheeldon. He was an Australian politician who’s just died. He was a leading labor politician in Australia, he was in Whitlam’s cabinet, and he had been a great criminal lawyer. We were talking about the greatest moments in our lives. They did not include romance, sex, beauty, art, truth or wisdom. It was interacting with an audience. He said he had a definite murderer that he got off. An entire jury voted the way he wanted them to, and this terrible villain was freed. I said, “You mustn’t be too proud of that.” He said, “It’s art. It was the art of defense. I am a criminal lawyer.” He asked me what was my greatest moment. I said…</p> <p>It was ’72, and Nixon had just beaten McGovern, and I was lecturing at this big, old 19th century building in Boston. Something Hall, not Faneuil. It’s a big red brick 19th century building. Jordan Hall! I was opening a season. There were about four galleries, it was packed. I had a new speech, which is always awful to give and I ended up having to read it, which is even worse. So it was getting pretty depressing, but when I came to questions and answers, it got very lively. Elaine Nobel, who later became the first lesbian assembly woman in Massachusetts, she was in the gallery. I didn’t know who she was. She was just in the gallery, we met later. She asked me, “How do you explain that Massachusetts is the only state that voted against Nixon in the last election?” I said, “Well, I can flatter you by saying this is the Athens of America.” Dutiful applause. I said, “I am not going to do that. I think I should remind you that since the beginning of the Republic, Massachusetts has been the most corrupt state in the Union, and you know a crook when you see one.” Well, the eruption of applause, it was like a tsunami hitting you. It pushed me about two feet back of the lectern. I have never felt anything quite like that. Anyway, that’s how I one-upped Senator Wheeldon, savior of murderers.</p> <p><strong>Do you have an audience in mind when you are writing?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: No. How could you if you don’t know who anybody is or where they are?</p> <p><strong>What prepares someone to be a novelist, if that is the life they are interested in?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Reflectiveness about the world they are living in, trying to make sense of it. A lot of novels, I suspect, come out of people who have been severely shocked at some point in their lives, and never quite knew how to live with the shock, so they want to reconstruct it by writing about it. It’s just kind of obvious therapy. The art novel is something more special, and that comes out of a deep knowledge of the art, such as you get in Henry James, who really was our greatest novelist. He never thought of anything else but fiction itself, the perfect phrase, the perfect encounter, the perfect clash. <em>The Golden Bowl</em> is full of the most astonishing scenes. His imagination just was so driven in that book that it is like nothing else.</p> <p><strong>If an aspiring writer came to you for advice, what would you say to them?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: If you need my advice, don’t do it. You won’t be happy doing it. It’s not easy, but if you are a natural at it — as you are bound to be if you keep at it — then it’s certainly not onerous, and it has all sorts of satisfactions along the way.</p> <p><strong>Looking back, do you have any regrets, things you wish you could do over again or would do differently?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I don’t think so, no. Whatever I did was obviously what I should have done at the time, or so I thought.</p> <p><strong>As we head into the 21st century, what do you see as the biggest challenges that we have in America? What concerns you most?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Survival. I think there is a very good chance that we won’t get through the 21st century due to all the usual reasons, you know, environment gone wrong, the end of fossil fuels, inability to replace them with ethanol or whatever. I think going broke. We have already lost the Constitution of the United States. That is gone, and that is not going to return ever. Maybe in the lifetime of somebody one year old, it might come back, but I will never see it. You will never see it. The young people watching this might never see it either.</p> <p>Everything is smashed. We had a wrecker’s crew got in office, and they set out to do everything that you ought not to do: first, to the economy; second, waging preemptive wars against non-enemies, people in no position to do us any harm even though they wanted to. At the time of the attack on Iraq, I said, “Why don’t you hit Denmark? It makes much better ruins and it would be more satisfactory, because it’s a beautiful place. Iraq is kind of a mess.” Every move that you make that could be wrong has been made, but terminally made. You don’t get Constitutions back all that easily. You don’t get the Fourth Amendment back once you have people taking off their shoes at the airport and you go through all the luggage, and you listen to their conversations. And there’s no objection to it. It’s as if Americans had never experienced freedom of any kind. It’s is if we were living in Paraguay all these years.</p> <p>In one way, I think we have it coming to us. I am not in a kindly mood about my countrymen. On the other hand, I am in a kindly mood in the sense that they never voted for these people. They had no idea what they were voting for. Even 2004, when it was quite apparent about the war, and so on, they could have voted against that anyway, but we will never know because the voting machinery, Diebold, Triad, ESS, these all have been corrupted. We don’t even know what the votes were in Ohio in 2004, and Florida in 2000. We will never know. Once a so-called democracy gives up its elections for the leader of the country, it is not a democracy. It isn’t anything. It is a sort of Romanesque hull, full of corrupt people who tell lies. This is not good.</p> <p><strong>Why do you think this has happened in America? How do you think we have come to this?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: Vanity! It’s the only explanation I could ever come up with about Vietnam. “How dare this inferior little people…” we thought, although basically their civilization is much older than ours. “How dare they defy us?” “How dare Panama? We are going to go down there and seize their leader and throw him into prison.” Even though we have no legal rights over him at all. That was Noriega. Then we get a narrative together. “Oh, he is in charge of all the drugs on earth and he is a great admirer of Adolf Hitler, did you know that? He has got a copy of <em>Mein Kampf</em>!” “Oh no!” “Yes!” “God, he must be evil.” “Yes, he is.” All these evil people they find everywhere on earth. They could look in the mirror occasionally, if they wanted to see something really evil.</p> <p><strong>How would you like to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: I don’t know. Anyone who worries about being remembered ought not to be born.</p> <p><strong>Is there anything you have not had a chance to say that you would like to say?</strong></p> <p>Gore Vidal: If you have another two or three hours, I will start in at the basement, and we will work our way to the roof.</p> <p><strong>Thank you. That was fascinating.</strong></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Gore Vidal Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>20 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2991452991453" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young.jpg" data-image-caption="American writer Gore Vidal as a young man, 1955. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Gore Vidal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young-293x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/vidal-bw-young-585x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4074074074074" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal.jpg" data-image-caption="Eugene Luther "Gore" Vidal, Jr." data-image-copyright="Eugene Luther "Gore" Vidal Jr." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-270x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-540x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67105263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-56582153_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal in his Roman apartment, 1993. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Gore Vidal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-56582153_10-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-56582153_10-760x510.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal at his Italian residence and studio, "Villa la Rondinaia," in Ravello on Amalfi's coast, August 2004. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Gore Vidal Selling his Italian Estate" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-51247107_10-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3309982486865" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10.jpg" data-image-caption="This March 1, 1976 edition of TIME magazine saluted Gore Vidal on the publication of his novel, "1876." (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) " data-image-copyright="Gore Vidal [Misc.]" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10-285x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50647466_10-571x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4258911819887" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10.jpg" data-image-caption="1933 TIME magazine cover featuring Gore Vidal's father, Eugene Vidal, Director of Air Commerce in the Roosevelt administration. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Eugene Vidal [Misc.]" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10-266x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Getty-50640478_10-533x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5702479338843" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal in the 1940s. (© Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Gore Vidal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462-242x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-IH184462-484x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.98157894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal greets President-elect John F. Kennedy at the Morosco Theater in New York City. JFK has come to see Vidal's political drama "The Best Man." (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="President-Elect Kennedy and Gore Vidal Shaking Hands" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780-380x373.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-BE029780-760x746.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.447619047619" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-0000227699-001.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal at home in Ravello, Italy in 1987. (© Sophie Bassouls/CORBIS SYGMA)" data-image-copyright="American Writer Gore Vidal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-0000227699-001-262x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vidal-Gore-Corbis-0000227699-001-525x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3499111900533" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1.jpg" data-image-caption="His second novel, "The City and the Pillar," in 1948, caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality and a male homosexual relationship. The novel was dedicated to "J.T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945; and that Jimmie Trimble was the only person Gore Vidal had ever loved. (CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="GoreVidalVanVechten1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1-282x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GoreVidalVanVechten1-563x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968-.jpg" data-image-caption="Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal author Gore Vidal exploded onto the political scene during the presidential conventions of 1968, when they debated 11 times on ABC News as a part of the network’s “unconventional convention coverage.” The debates were fiery and combative and they infamously blew up at each other during their penultimate debate in Chicago, August 1968. (ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="WILLIAM BUCKLEY;GORE VIDAL" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968--380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ELECTION-COVERAGE-1968--760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.73026315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1.jpg" data-image-caption="Two Democrats hand out autographs for voters on thier campaign rounds, August 18, 1960. In the dark suit is presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy. In the light suit is congressional candidate Gore Vidal, successful playwright who ran for office in an area of New York State that hadn't voted for a Democrat in 100 years. But Vidal said the Republican habit "could be broken." (AP Photo)" data-image-copyright="Campaign Rounds" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1-380x278.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/arts_vidal1-760x555.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.80526315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226.jpg" data-image-caption="Biographer A. Scott Berg presents the Golden Plate Award to novelist Gore Vidal during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_1226" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226-380x306.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1226-760x612.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111.jpg" data-image-caption="Robin Williams with Gore Vidal at a reception before the 2006 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_1111" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_1111-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_824.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_824" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_824-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_824-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_823" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_823-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_821.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_821" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_821-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_821-760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_820.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_820" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_820-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_820-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819.jpg" data-image-caption="Author Gore Vidal speaks at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_819" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_819-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4285714285714" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_814.jpg" data-image-caption="Gore Vidal speaks to the Academy student delegates and members at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="06Academy_814" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_814-266x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/06Academy_814-532x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on February 8, 2021</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container"> <div class="col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <iframe src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051939if_/https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joyce-carol-oates-and-gore-vidal-words-become-me/id1025864075?i=1000489608035&itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200" height="175px" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" allow="autoplay *; 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S. Merwin</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Former Poet Laureate of the United States</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2008</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts the-arts experienced-war-firsthand poverty small-town-rural-upbringing ambitious athletic curious resourceful write pursue-public-office teach-others " data-year-inducted="1971" data-achiever-name="Michener"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mic0-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mic0-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">James A. Michener</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1971</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts the-arts ambitious spiritual-religious " data-year-inducted="2004" data-achiever-name="Updike"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/upd0-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/07/upd0-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">John Updike</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2004</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20210905051939im_/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frances-h-arnold-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frances H. 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Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynn-nottage/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynn Nottage</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/cal-ripken-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Cal Ripken Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/martine-rothblatt-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Alice Waters</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051939/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. 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