The portrait of Gore hanging in the Smithsonian was painted by Sacha Newley, Joan’s son with her second husband, the British actor Anthony Newley. When Gore first saw it, he told Sacha, “I look like God on the seventh day, having decided it was a terrible mistake.” https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/02/gore-vidal-beloved-women-susan-sarandon
Протеже Видала Кристофер Хитченс сломался на иракской войне.
A later feud involved Christopher Hitchens, the English journalist and flamethrower who, in his early days as a leftwing polemicist, modelled himself partly on Vidal. “He wants to be me,” Vidal would often say, once designating Hitchens, whom he affectionately called Hitchy-Poo or, more often, The Poo, as his successor. In a witty counter-move, Hitchens printed some words by Vidal on the cover of his memoir, Hitch-22: “I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.” The quotation is crossed out, with a handwritten note beside it: “No. CH.” As a young man, Hitchens seemed to relish the role of Vidal-come-lately, wasting no opportunity to appear on TV or comment on any political development. He drank booze in quantities even Vidal found excessive. From the outset, he had been suitably anti-establishment and anti-religious in ways that pleased Vidal, who spoke of him with admiration. When Hitchens attacked Henry Kissinger or Mother Teresa, Vidal applauded, although he told me “He will always be Vidal-minor”. Then Hitchens moved to Washington, DC, and - according to Vidal - he “fell among thieves”. That Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was, for Vidal, beyond the pale. Vidal had written several bestselling pamphlets against George W Bush and his gang in the years after 9/11, and had made himself vividly relevant in old age as a defiant critic of the White House and its brutal warmongering. Quite rightly, he predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would lead to chaos in the Middle East. “He’s gone mad, our Poo,” he said to me one evening in the winter of 2010, after Hitchens published a nasty piece about him in Vanity Fair called “Vidal Loco”. Hichens criticised Vidal’s three post-9/11 pamphlets, calling them “half-argued and half-written shock pieces”. He also attacked him for giving an interview in which he railed against George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying “the whole American experiment can now be regarded as a failure”. Hitchens seemed especially irritated when Vidal said of Britain: “This isn’t a country, it’s an American aircraft carrier.” On 2 October, 2010, not long after Hitchens was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, I spoke to him at a book festival in Pennsylvania. He was already fragile. We sat together in his hotel room and talked, and he asked me as I left if Vidal had spoken about him recently. I could not tell him the truth. “He wasn’t happy with your piece about him in Vanity Fair,” I said, “but he still thinks of you fondly.” Hitchens smiled, saying: “I looked to him as a model. We all did.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/14/gore-vidal-gripped-a-nation
The portrait of Gore hanging in the Smithsonian was painted by Sacha Newley, Joan’s son with her second husband, the British actor Anthony Newley. When Gore first saw it, he told Sacha, “I look like God on the seventh day, having decided it was a terrible mistake.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/02/gore-vidal-beloved-women-susan-sarandon
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Протеже Видала Кристофер Хитченс сломался на иракской войне.
A later feud involved Christopher Hitchens, the English journalist and flamethrower who, in his early days as a leftwing polemicist, modelled himself partly on Vidal. “He wants to be me,” Vidal would often say, once designating Hitchens, whom he affectionately called Hitchy-Poo or, more often, The Poo, as his successor. In a witty counter-move, Hitchens printed some words by Vidal on the cover of his memoir, Hitch-22: “I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.” The quotation is crossed out, with a handwritten note beside it: “No. CH.”
As a young man, Hitchens seemed to relish the role of Vidal-come-lately, wasting no opportunity to appear on TV or comment on any political development. He drank booze in quantities even Vidal found excessive. From the outset, he had been suitably anti-establishment and anti-religious in ways that pleased Vidal, who spoke of him with admiration. When Hitchens attacked Henry Kissinger or Mother Teresa, Vidal applauded, although he told me “He will always be Vidal-minor”.
Then Hitchens moved to Washington, DC, and - according to Vidal - he “fell among thieves”. That Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was, for Vidal, beyond the pale. Vidal had written several bestselling pamphlets against George W Bush and his gang in the years after 9/11, and had made himself vividly relevant in old age as a defiant critic of the White House and its brutal warmongering. Quite rightly, he predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would lead to chaos in the Middle East.
“He’s gone mad, our Poo,” he said to me one evening in the winter of 2010, after Hitchens published a nasty piece about him in Vanity Fair called “Vidal Loco”. Hichens criticised Vidal’s three post-9/11 pamphlets, calling them “half-argued and half-written shock pieces”. He also attacked him for giving an interview in which he railed against George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying “the whole American experiment can now be regarded as a failure”. Hitchens seemed especially irritated when Vidal said of Britain: “This isn’t a country, it’s an American aircraft carrier.”
On 2 October, 2010, not long after Hitchens was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, I spoke to him at a book festival in Pennsylvania. He was already fragile. We sat together in his hotel room and talked, and he asked me as I left if Vidal had spoken about him recently. I could not tell him the truth. “He wasn’t happy with your piece about him in Vanity Fair,” I said, “but he still thinks of you fondly.” Hitchens smiled, saying: “I looked to him as a model. We all did.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/14/gore-vidal-gripped-a-nation
Reply
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