Gore and Me

Though he admired the magazine, it was clear from early on that his short stories did not meet the moral standards or fit the literary mold The New Yorker embodied. It “was a marvelous support group of middlebrow writers called John like Cheever and Updike,” Vidal observed. –Gore Vidal: A Biography – Fred Kaplan

Slogging through this biography, wishing I liked it more. Kaplan has done a tremendous amount of research, but could benefit from some judicious editing – the book is vastly overpopulated. Total indexing items under W: 52. Of these 50 are people, comprising 248 page references.

To be fair, all of Vidal’s literary works are indexed under “Vidal, Gore – writings of (fiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (nonfiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (plays, screenplays, and teleplays). Thus Julian would not be indexed under “J” (14 entries, Felix Jackson to Judith Jones, all people).

Though I do enjoy the references by Vidal and friends to Anais Nin as “stupid,”
55 pages (references to) are more than enough. I was sick of her after two.