LGBTQ+ LITERATURE

How Gore Vidal Queered Himself

His “inventions” are his queerest, most creative, and most personal novels — but did they sabotage his career?

Gore Vidal, Queer Literary Subversive

Gore Vidal often referred to his homeland as “the United States of Amnesia,” because we Americans tended to forget our past and repeat our mistakes. Ironically, after his death, much of his own work is being forgotten, as perhaps he himself is— the jury is still out. Some would say that in certain of his novels, he kept repeating his own mistakes. Was this stubborn self-delusion, or persistence of vision?

What some see as mistakes, I see as queer literary subversion.

Vidal’s core reading audience came from his own WWII generation and the Baby Boomers, whose numbers are dwindling, as nature dictates. Vidal considered it a mystery as to who out there was actually buying his novels. He seemed to consider them too clever and erudite to hobnob on the bestseller lists with Jacqueline Susann, Harold Robbins, and Jackie Collins.

In the LGBTQ+ community, Vidal will always be remembered for his pioneering gay novel The City and the Pillar, published in 1948 when he was 23. It is always in print…