Title #2: maybe the founding fathers weren't so special after all As the initial reports of the Broadway Musical Hamilton began to appear on my computer screen a few years back, I found my worst-self getting confused about whether to like it or hate it. Was it the shows immediate success that drove me to …
Party Here, Faction There
Van Buren will be nominated and he will defeat Clay or any other National Republican--no, no, Whig, I must get used to calling them that. How topsy-turvy it is! Those of us who were for the Revolution were Whigs. Those for Britain were Tories. Then there was the fight over the federal Constitution. In our …
She’s A Man, Baby
Pseudo-review: Mrya Breckenridge, the novel--not the movie! I saw the movie thirty-five (or so) years ago1. Somehow the movie stayed with me--and not only because of Raquel Welch who is, other than Rita Hayworth, the only Hollywood bombshell worth gawking at like a fifteen year old man-boy run amok with girly magazines. At the …
Hollywood vs Wash DC
Hollywood, a novel by Gore Vidal. Did it take me too long to get through this, dear worst-reader? Maybe it didn't take long enough. Or, perhaps, is this piece of work enough to make me stop in my quest to read (all of) Vidal's "Narratives of Empire"? Indeed. Four of the seven books are left. …
Suicide Eyes
"'The only freedom that an American has is to conform, as you've already discovered.' Caroline did not in the least mind the disparity between the country's shining image of itself and the crude reality. She was entirely on the side of the rulers, ridiculous and unpleasant as so many of them were. She felt a …
Not Ending A War
"Without the League (of Nations), there would be another war with Germany within thirty years because of the Carthaginian peace being imposed by the Allies." / "Europe had a murderous tendency to sink into barbarism, the United States had not yet achieved a civilization from which to fall." -Gore Vidal, Hollywood
Possessed
"Human beings to flourish must be possessed by one idea, a central meaning to which all experience can be related." -Gore Vidal (Essay: Contemporaries: The Norman Mailer Syndrome, 1960)
Puzzled By Creation
"I think that I might have done well at banking had I not been so carefully trained to be either a priest nor a warrior. Although I have the Persian noble's contempt for trade, I lack his passion for war and hunting and drinking to excess. Although I have a priest's deep knowledge of religion, …
Jacob Obians
Will our Jacobians ever be defeated as the French ones were? -Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Perpetual Sex Disorder
Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace, How We Got to Be So Hated by Gore Vidal Americans morality has nothing to do with ethics or right action or who ever is stealing what money--and liberties--from whom. Morality is SEX. SEX. SEX. -Gore Vidal in the book mentioned here The island of Mauritius is cool. It's also …
Soap & Presidents
Still waiting. But. Will someone come along and replace him? Can't wait. Waiting is futile. Move on. I guess. http://youtu.be/z2hEMggPBmo
Alternate History
Burr by Gore Vidal From the afterword: "Why a historical novel and not a history? To me, the attraction of the historical novel is that one can be as meticulous (or as careless!) as the historian and yet reserve the right not only to rearrange events but, most important, to attribute motive--something the conscientious historian …
Creation vs Creation
Creation by Gore Vidal z'Germanland has a lot of religious holidays. That means they have a lot of extra days-off that coincide with their guaranteed government sponsored vacation days. A lot of these religious days are either on a Thursday or Monday. That means, Das Volk have long since figured out the use of "bridge …
Lincoln In Tuscany
Lincoln by Gore Vidal Subtitle: Cute Elitist Disguised As Former Teacher, Red States vs. Help, And A Few Thoughts on Gore Vidal's "Lincoln". But first some nonsense. Character X: The world is starving for variety and things dynamic. The world requires nothing from humanity and yet things static and universal seem to rule all - …
