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Gore Vidal (; b. Eugene Louis Vidal; 3 October 1925 – 31 July 2012) was an American writer (of novels, essays, screenplays, and stage plays) and a public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing. As Eugene Louis Vidal, he was born to a political family; his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, served as United States senator from Oklahoma (1907–21 and 1931–37). As Gore Vidal, he was a Democratic Party politician who twice sought elected office; first to the United States House of Representatives (New York State, 1960), then to the U.S. Senate (California, 1982).〔Vidal, Gore. ''Palimpsest: A Memoir'' Random House, New York (1995) p. 439.〕 As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy of the National Security State reduced the country to decadent empire.〔Wiener, Jon. ''I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics'' Counter Point Press; Berkeley (2012) pp. 54–55〕 His political and cultural essays were published in ''The Nation'', the ''New Statesman'', the ''New York Review of Books'', and ''Esquire'' magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other public intellectuals and writers, occasionally became continual quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. As such, and because he thought that men and women potentially are pansexual, Vidal rejected the adjectives "homosexual" and "heterosexual" when used as nouns, as inherently false terms used to classify and control people in society.〔Wieder, Judy. ''Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews'' Advocate Books (2001) p. 127.〕 As a novelist Gore Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life; the polished, erudite style of narration readily evokes the time and place of the story, and perceptively delineates the psychology of the characters.〔Murphy, Bruce. ''Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia'' (Fourth Edition) HarperCollins Publishers (1996) p. 1,080.〕 His third novel, ''The City and the Pillar'' (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, with a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship.〔Terry, C.V. ''New York Times Book Review'', "The City and the Pillar" 11 January 1948, p. 22.〕 In the historical novel genre, ''Julian'' (1964) Vidal re-creates the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–63), the Roman Emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism.〔Hornblower, Simon & Spawforth, Editors. ''The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization'' Oxford University Press. (1998) pp. 383–84.〕 In the genre of social satire, ''Myra Breckinridge'' (1968) he explores the mutability of gender-role and sexual-orientation as being social constructs established by social mores.〔Kiernan, Robert F. ''Gore Vidal'' Frederick Ungar Publishing, Inc. (1982) pp. 94–100.〕 In ''Burr'' (1973) and ''Lincoln'' (1984), the protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the U.S.〔〔Kiernan, Robert F. ''Gore Vidal'' Frederick Ungar Publishing, Inc. (1982) pp. 75–85.〕 == Early life == Gore Vidal was born Eugene Louis Vidal in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy, at West Point, New York, and was the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina Gore (1903–78).〔Vidal, Gore, "(West Point and the Third Loyalty )", ''The New York Review of Books'', Volume 20, Number 16, 18 October 1973.〕〔https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDXEn6uGD78〕 Vidal was born at the West Point cadet hospital because his first lieutenant father was the first aeronautics instructor of the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther." In the memoir ''Palimpsest'' (1995), Vidal said, "my birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening (1939 ); then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."〔Vidal, Gore. ''Palimpsest'' (1995), p. 401.〕 In the event, Eugene Louis Vidal was not baptized until January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of St. Albans school, where Vidal attended preparatory school. The baptismal ceremony was effected so that he "could be confirmed (the Episcopal faith )" at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal".〔Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, ''Conversations with Gore Vidal'', (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. xix.〕 He later said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him (grandfather Thomas Pryor Gore ), although he had a great influence on my life."〔Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, ''Conversations with Gore Vidal'', (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), page 4〕 In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader . . . I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. I didn't want to use the 'Jr.〔〔Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, and Lucinda Ebersole, ''Conversations with Gore Vidal'', (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p. xx.〕 Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. was director (1933–37) of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, one of the first Army Air Corps pilots, and also was the great love of the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.〔"Aeronatics: $8,073.61", ''Time'', 28 September 1931〕 At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team; and an all-American basketball player. Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon, and coach of the U.S. pentathlon).〔(South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame Profile: Gene Vidal ). 〕 In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. co-founded three airline companies and a railroad line; (i) the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines); (ii) Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines); (iii) Northeast Airlines; and the Boston and Maine Railroad.〔Vidal, Gore ''Palimpsest'' (1995) p. 12.〕 Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a high society woman who made her Broadway theatre debut as an extra actress in ''Sign of the Leopard'', in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr., and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. Nina Gore Vidal then was married two more times; to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor Clark Gable.〔Vidal, Gore. ''Point to Point Navigation'', New York: Doubleday, 2006, p. 135.〕 As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention. The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal – Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss – and four step-brothers from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina. The nephews of Gore Vidal include Burr Steers, a writer and film director, and Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–95), a figurative painter. Raised in Washington, D.C., the boy Vidal attended the Sidwell Friends School and the St. Albans School. Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, and was his Senate page, and his seeing-eye guide. The reading of history and literature, coupled to the senator's isolationism, formed the principles of Gore Vidal's "America First" political philosophy, which ran counter to the contemporary geopolitical adventurism of the American Empire.〔Rutten, Tim. "('The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal' )", ''Los Angeles Times'', 18 June 2008.〕 In 1939, during his summer holiday, Vidal went with some colleagues and professor from St. Albans School in his first European trip, to visit Italy and France. He visited for the first time Rome, the city which came "at the center of Gore's literary imagination", and Paris. When the Second World War began (1 September 1939), the group was forced to an early return home; on his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, and they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joe Kennedy (the father of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the would be President of the United States of America).〔 Jay Parini, ''Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies. The Life of Gore Vidal (London: Little, Brown, 2015), 27-28. )'' '' 〕 In 1940 he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School and later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire.〔''Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion'' Susan Baker, Curtis S. Gibson. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. ISBN 0-313-29579-4. p. 3.〕 In the article ''Gore Vidal: Sharpest Tongue in the West'', Roy Hattersley said that "for reasons he never explained, he () did not go on to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, with other members of his social class." Rather than attend university, the patriotic lad, Eugene Luther Vidal, enlisted in the U.S. Army. Having failed training as a military engineer, at the Virginia Military Institute, Vidal exercised his patrician privilege of nepotism, and asked an uncle, the commander of a fighter wing at Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, Colorado, to have him assigned to the USAAF, where he worked as an office clerk.〔Vidal, Gore. ''Palimpsest'' (1995) pp. 93–94.〕 In time, bored with rear-echelon clerical duties, Private Vidal memorized the elements of navigation, presented the examination to qualify as a first mate, and became a maritime warrant officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps, and served as first mate of the ''F.S. 35th'', berthed at Dutch Harbor. After three years in service, Warrant Officer Gene Vidal suffered hypothermia, developed rheumatoid arthritis and, consequently, was reassigned to duty as a mess officer.〔Vidal, Gore. ''Williwaw'', "Preface", p. 1.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gore Vidal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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