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10 Questions For Gore Vidal
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 26, 2009 01:33am |
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| Category | Interview |
| Author | Richard Lacayo |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Sunday, November 12, 2006 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Novelist, essayist, polemicist, all-purpose gadfly and now lion in winter, Gore Vidal has just published a second volume of memoirs, Point to Point Navigation, in which he thinks back on his life in letters and politics. Vidal, 81, talked with TIME's Richard Lacayo about the marginalization of the novel, his love life, Johnny Carson, J.F.K.'s assassination and the last word in last words.
In your memoir you say that you're not a famous novelist--that no novelist is famous because novels are not discussed in public anymore. Has it got that bad?
There's no such thing anymore as a famous novelist. You can be a famous actor, a famous baseball player, a famous or an infamous politician. My point is not about me. My point is about the novel.
Writers were once a regular feature of late-night TV. Your memoir has an admiring chapter on Johnny Carson, whose show you appeared on frequently. What made Carson different?
He was very intelligent, very political and rather frustrated by the restrictions that had been placed on him [by the network]. So if he found somebody sympathetic politically, as he found me, you ended up helping him express what he meant--but which he could not say--because of NBC's all-sides-must-be-represented-at-all-times policy. |
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