Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

October 3rd, 2002

In 1925, American novelist Gore Vidal (Burr, 1973) is born in West Point, N.Y.

Gore Vidal, b. October 3, 1925

In his twenty-nine novels, six plays, many screenplays, and innumerable essays and non-fiction works, Vidal has made himself witness not only to his own times, but to the whole of American history. Immensely learned, witty, and trenchant, he emerges as the widest ranging American writer of the second half of the twentieth century, and perhaps the most important.

Suggested Reading Novels Willilaw, 1946. The City and the Pillar, 1948. The Judgment of Paris, 1952. Messiah, 1954. Julian, 1964. Myra Breckinridge, 1968. Myron, 1975. Kalki, 1978. Creation, 1981. Duluth, 1983. Live from Golgotha, 1992. The Chronicles of Empire novels Washington, D.C., 1967. Burr, 1973. 1876, 1976. Lincoln, 1984. Empire, 1987. Hollywood, 1990. The Golden Age, 2000. Essays Rocking the Boat, 1962. Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, 1969. Sex, Death and Money, 1969. Matters of Fact and of Fiction, 1977. Vidal in Venice, 1985. A View from the Diners Club, 1991. Screening History, 1992. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992. The American Presidency, 1998. Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings, 1999. The Last Empire, 2001. Memoir Palimpsest: A Memoir, 1995. Drama Visit to a Small Planet, 1957. The Best Man, 1960.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, A Week in Literary History | Link to this Entry