As a writer, Vidal was best known for such bestselling novels as The City and the Pillar (1948), Julian (1964), Myra Breckingridge (1968), Burr (1973), Creation (1981) and Lincoln (1984). His last novel was The Golden Age (2000). In his later years he focused increasingly on memoirs and political essays. As a playwright, Vidal had great success with Visit to a Small Planet in 1957 and then The Best Man in 1960, which was made into a movie in 1964 and revived on Broadway in 2012. During the so-called "Golden Age of Television", in the years 1954-59, Vidal had an extremely productive and successful period, writing a large number of plays for live TV performances. He was less successful when writing screenplays for motion pictures: most famously, he felt cheated of the credit he thought he deserved as one of the (in the end uncredited) two authors of the shooting script of Ben-Hur (1959); and he later sued the producers of Caligula (1979) in order to not be given credit for the script of the released movie. His most successful efforts in writing for the screen were the movie version of The Best Man (1964), and the now little-known TV movie of 1989, Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid. In the 1990s Vidal also started to work occasionally in small parts as a movie actor, most notably in Bob Roberts (1992) and With Honors (1994).
Vidal was sort-of related to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: stockbroker Hugh D. Auchincloss was Vidal's, and then Jackie Kennedy's stepfather; they had half-siblings and/or stepsiblings in common. That gave Vidal access to the Kennedy White House for a couple of years. His peak as a television personality and political pundit was perhaps his series of debates on ABC with William F. Buckley (perhaps LSE) discussing the 1968 presidential primaries of both parties. Those debates have received renewed attention due to the 2015 documentary Best of Enemies, which has been recently adapted as a London play of the same name.
Gore Vidal also gained public notoriety, especially after The City and the Pillar, with his views on sexuality (his basic thesis was that everyone was actually bisexual, and that homosexual acts between supposedly straight people were far more common than generally assumed). That part of his reputation led to Netflix producing a biopic in 2017, Gore, focusing on his sexual lifestyle. That film has remained unreleased due to the legal and image problems of its star, Kevin Spacey; perhaps his recent acquittal will eventually lead to Netflix finally releasing it.
Life and work: Vidal was born in 1925 in West Point, the son of Olympic athlete and aviation pioneer Gene Vidal, who later became Franklin Roosevelt's director of air commerce, and Nina Gore, daughter of US Senator for Oklahoma Thomas Gore. As a child, Gore Vidal spent much time at his grandfather's mansion in Washington, DC; when he was 10, his mother Nina divorced Gene Vidal and married stockbroker Hugh D. Auchincloss, who likewise lived in a mansion just outside Washington. That second marriage lasted for some six years. He has said that he was in the situation of having grown up in very wealthy households, while not being wealthy himself. That did give him access to a good education in elite boarding schools, where in his early teens he met Jimmie Trimble, who would remain forever Vidal's ideal, or idealized, companion, mentioned very often in his writings (in fact, Vidal described his psychological connection to Trimble in a way that sounds pretty much like socionics duality. Trimble was later killed during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945).
After high school, Vidal had been accepted at Harvard but he chose to enlist in the army in 1943. He spent most of WWII in the Aleutian Islands as the first mate of a supply ship, but without seeing actual fighting. That experience led to two lifechanging events for him: the icy ocean water gave him hypothermia and rheumatoid arthritis in his left knee, which would eventually cripple him much later in life; and it gave him the material, and time, to write his first novel, Williwaw, published in 1946. That was among the first war novels set in WWII; it was successful commercially and critically and confirmed his career choice as a writer, at 20.
For the next eight years Vidal pursued that career, with varying success. His first two books after Williwaw were well received but not very successful commercially. Then The City and the Pillar (1948), written in Guatemala where he chose to live for a few years, was much more successful, remaining in print for decades, but its portrayal of homosexuality was controversial at the time and led the New York Times critic to refuse to review any further of his books for many years. Today it would be said that the NYT decided to "cancel" Vidal. That did damage the sales of his next few books and forced him to look for other means of making a living: at first he tried writing popular novels under pseudonyms, but except for the three mysteries that he wrote under the name of Edgar Box, those efforts were not very successful although they did keep him afloat financially for a while. Still exploring other means of increasing his income, he finally got his "big break" as a writer of live TV plays for CBS and NBC, broadcast from their New York studios. Such plays were a major part of network programming at the time. That kind of job was perfect for one of Gore Vidal's greatest strengths, the ability to write scripts or popular novels in just a few days. That period was extremely profitable and essentially removed Vidal from serious financial worries for the rest of his life.
That era of live TV plays did not survive the 1950s, and Vidal gradually shifted his activities towards writing, or "fixing", Hollywood movie scripts as a MGM contract writer. Paradoxically his best-known work for Hollywood remains one for which he received no credit: he was one of two writers who completed the final shooting script for Ben-Hur (1959) even as it was being shot, but the writer's guild decided to give sole credit to the author of a much earlier first draft. That experience made him fed up with Hollywood, and he turned his attention to two other activities in 1960: he wrote the political play The Best Man, which was very successful on Broadway, and he ran for Congress as a Democrat in upstate New York, where he had been living for some years. Although he lost, he did better than any Democrat for decades in what had been a solid Republican district. That, along with the success of The Best Man and his connection to John Kennedy's social circle via his relationship with Jackie Kennedy, made Gore a (peripheral) member of the social elite at the time, with some access to White House dinner parties and to the Kennedys' private homes.
That did not last long. First, Gore decided to use his hard-won financial independence to focus on his novel Julian, a work that required months of historical research which he preferred to conduct in Rome. Secondly, he had started yet another career as a writer of political and cultural essays, and in early 1963 he wrote one attacking Robert Kennedy as unfit temperamentally to ever be president. That not only burned his bridges with the Kennedy circle politically but also (apparently to his surprise) ended his personal relationship with Jackie Kennedy. Fortunately for Gore, Julian was a very successful bestseller in 1964, allowing to return to what had always been his preferred career as a writer: novels.
So for the next forty years, besides a vast number of literary and political essays, Gore wrote a succession of novels (especially in the seventies and eighties) which can be divided into two broad categories: historical novels, mostly dealing with the history of the US (Burr, 1876, Lincoln, Empire, etc) and Creation, set in classical antiquity; and quirky, fantastic, rather absurd novels where he seemed to be enjoying or indulging himself, and which he called his "inventions": Myra Breckinridge, Duluth, Kalki, Live from Golgotha, etc. His novels were written in partial social isolation, at his apartment in Rome or his villa in Ravello; largely a solitary life apart from a limited circle of close friends and intimates, and from his frequent appearances at TV chat shows, most famously debating William F. Buckley on ABC in 1968 in a series of programs on the presidential primaries of both parties. But Gore did not essentially change his lifestyle or approach to his career for decades, except for brief attempts at returning to politics: first in 1972 when he campaigned for the People's Party; then in 1982 when he ran for the Democratic primaries in California for the US Senate, losing to Jerry Brown.
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| Gore Vidal with John Kennedy in 1960 |
Throughout this period, Gore tried several times to repeat the success of his 1960 play The Best Man and of its 1964 movie version. However, the several plays that he did manage to get produced on stage during this period - among them Romulus (1962), Weekend (1968) , An Evening with Richard Nixon (1972) - were failures, shutting down after a couple of months at best. Likewise with his efforts with producing his own scripts for cinema or TV: the most infamous movie based on a script of his, the hardcore porn epic Caligula (1979), was originally developed on his initiative but as he lost control of the direction the movie was going, he actually sued to have his name removed from the credits, and later denied having anything to do with it (nevertheless, the dialogue in the released movie remained essentially that of Vidal's script). He had mixed results when simply selling the movie rights of his books with no further involvement: the 1970 movie version of Myra Breckinridge was a commercial and critical disaster which damaged the book's own sales; on the other hand, a TV mini-series adaptation of his book Lincoln was very well received. Gore's dream was to make another movie "his way" as he had with The Best Man; but his one modest success was the 1989 TV movie Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid with Val Kilmer. The following year Martin Scorsese hired Vidal to write the script for his planned movie Theodora on the Byzantine empress; that could have been Gore's most prestigious movie credit ever, but after a few years in "development hell" nothing came of it.
In the last decade or so of his life, Gore's chosen lifestyle gradually fizzled out. His literary output drastically diminished - his last novel, The Golden Age, was published twelve years before his death - and he turned his attention to essays and interviews denouncing the "national security state" which in his view actually ran the US. He also started a late career - apparently more as a hobby - as a character actor in small roles in little-known movies. The decline in health - first of his lifetime companion Howard Austen, then his own (above all the rheumatoid arthritis from his WWII service in the Aleutians) - made him abandon his Ravello villa and move definitely to his Hollywood house, where he died in 2012 at 86 after a few years of physical and mental decline. He had been a heavy drinker for decades, especially towards the end, which eventually caused a neurological disorder. To the bewilderment of his close relatives, like his nephew the actor/director Burr Steers, Vidal changed his will just before his death to make Harvard University the sole inheritor of his estate, as well as the custodian of his papers, even though he had had no prior personal connection to Harvard.
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| Gore in his villa in Ravello in the 1980s - life as he most enjoyed it |
Socionics analysis: throughout his life, Gore Vidal consistently showed the following traits in his personality and life choices: a strong preference for mental activity, professionally and in his private pursuits; an inclination to remain close to a small circle of friends over his entire life while on occasion capable of ruthlessly severing close personal relations abruptly and permanently (most obviously with his own mother Nina and Anaïs Nin) for his own reasons, as well as nurturing bitter resentment over some "enemies" for decades, even after their deaths (like William F. Buckley and Truman Capote). Gore also displayed a lifelong fascination and attraction for politically powerful individuals, and he remained torn on the choice between a political and a writing career, ultimately going for the latter but maintaining a lifelong sense of what-might-have-been over a political career. Also, Gore's lifestyle followed a consistent pattern over most of his life: he tended to live in fairly isolated properties in locations that struck his fancy some reason but with which he had had no previous personal connection, and which tended to be distant from whatever broader social circle he had when he selected those locations.
Going into more detail:
T: According to Gore Vidal himself, from an early age his mind was constantly active with imagining stories. If going (for instance) to watch a game of baseball or football etc, he would pay little attention to the game itself while focusing on stories created in his mind. That trait explained his remarkable ease in writing one teleplay a week for NYC tv in the fifties, as well as writing novels and essays in a matter of a few days. He took far more time when a historical novel required extensive research and fact-checking, but his detective novels written under the name of Edgar Box, as well as those that he called "inventions", he could write or dictate in a week or two. That skill was a consequence of his near-constant focus on his inner thoughts and imagination - he said that he had never suffered from writer's block, on the contrary: his difficulty was with stopping himself from thinking of things to write.
Although Gore repeatedly stated, over decades, that he "was not his own subject" (at least until he wrote his first volume of memoirs, Palimpsest, in 1995), in reality not only his early fiction was full of disguised autobiographical reflections, but also his essays contained many descriptions and musings on episodes and individuals that had special meaning for him throughout his life, some of which he kept coming back to, giving the impression that for him his life was in a sort of "continuum" along which he could easily shift back-and-forth in his mind. This made him focus on past episodes according to their meaning to him, not so much according to their chronology. This is a characteristic of T as an ego function, and associated with valued R (in the Gamma quadra), it leads to the inclination in ILIs to long-term resentment and grudges as well as gratitude.
As a novelist, Vidal was not very interested in "naturalist" stories that merely described events and characters in a conventional, linear faction (although some of his early work, as well as some of his "hack" novels, fell in that category). He was more interested in either carefully-researched historical fiction that also included deep reflections on religion and philosophy (Julian and Creation) or on the forces and individuals shaping the political history of the US (Burr, 1876, Lincoln, Empire, etc), which reflect a focus on P as well as T. His more extreme or even self-indulgent novels, his "inventions" like Myra Breckinridge, Duluth, Kalki, Live from Golgotha etc, the result of ideas or inner thoughts that occurred to him but with little connection to the real world, are more clearly the result of "purer" T. He made this point explicit when he said that Myra Breckinridge - the character - suddenly "spoke" to him in his thoughts and he immediately started to write the novel, and only halfway into it did she reveal herself to him fully.
Interestingly, a focus on T can be spotted in his choices of locations and properties to live in and purchase. Basically, he would decide - for reasons difficult for others to discern - to move to a location and a specific property that had caught his interest, in a way not very connected to practicality or even comfort. So in 1946, at 21, he moved to an abandoned small convent in Antigua, Guatemala, a place to which he had had no previous connection, and where he stayed just for a few years. Then, in 1950, he acquired Edgewater, a grand 19th century neoclassical house in a small village in upstate New York, because he fancied it - even though, as he later put it, it became a "white elephant" needing constant and expensive maintenance while not even very convenient for commuting to NYC, where his work was concentrated at the time. In the early 1960s, he moved to Rome, at first to focus on writing Julian but generally because the historical surroundings appealed to him at the time. There he rented for many years a penthouse on top of a historical building, also acquiring in 1972 La Rondinaia, a large villa in Ravello, along the Amalfi Coast, the property that became most associated with Vidal in the 1980s and 1990s. His stated reason to live in that area of southern Italy was its connection to classical Greece and Rome - which is a T reason. All of those properties had major disadvantages from a S perspective: Edgewater required constant maintenance due to water infiltration; the Rome penthouse was plagued by the noise and pollution of the city centre's traffic below; and La Rondinaia, although glamorous and pleasant in summer, was unbearably cold in winter, and its access required climbing steps that eventually proved too much for Gore's Alaska-damaged knee. The common trend is a much greater focus on the inner T meaning of such places for Vidal, rather than their comfort, convenience, aesthetics or even as investments. As an unfulfilled example of this inclination, in 1970 he seriously considered moving to the Irish countryside, but his companion Howard Austen found the idea so absurd that Vidal dropped it.
Finally, despite maintaining throughout his life that he had no concern with his own death - and becoming offended when otherwise suggested - Gore gave much thought to his final resting place, choosing the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC, the city where he had spent his childhood but with which he had not had any connection in decades. In documentaries and his memoirs, he would point out the precise spot where he, and his companion Howard Austen, would be buried, which he chose due to its proximity to the graves of the writer Henry Adams and Gore's friend during his teens, Jimmie Trimble (on Trimble, more details in the R section below). All of this points to a focus on his own deep inner thoughts, finding meaning not easily conveyed to others, as well as indeed a focus on the abstract concept of his death.
T is very easy to spot in Gore Vidal's writing and life choices, which points to an ego function and probably T1.
P: Apart from his explicitly fantastic "inventions", Vidal was careful in conveying realistic information in his novels, most clearly in his historical fiction, and he was defensive and sensitive about suggestions that he had been less than accurate. Starting with Julian in 1964, he always described in an introduction or afterword not only his sources, but also what elements of fiction he had introduced on purpose. Gore faced the most controversy in that area with his most successful historical novel, Lincoln, in 1984: as he had portrayed a less than saintly Abraham Lincoln, he was bombarded by hostile reviews from some historians, which he vigorously refuted in articles and interviews, always listing his original sources. His concern with historical accuracy led him to spend years in research for each of such books; as from a creative point of view he was able to write very quickly, the years he spent on research for such books demonstrate the importance he gave to historical accuracy. He was deeply annoyed when a historically accurate script of his was distorted into inaccuracy by the studios, most notably the movie The Left Handed Gun in 1958 with Paul Newman as Billy the Kid. That led Vidal not to give up until he managed to have an accurate version of the story shown on screen, which he did in 1989 with the tv movie Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid. As a small example of this concern: during the shooting of Ben-Hur in 1958, he got the art director to remove tomatoes and peppers from a kitchen table in the set, as they had not yet been introduced in the Mediterranean world at the time of the story.
In fact, this focus on accuracy is shown even in his "hack" novels written under other names: Death in the Fifth Position describes in detail the world of ballet productions in NYC in the 1950s, which he was familiar with as he had moved in those circles a few years earlier. Even his trashier novels of the fifties - Cry Shame! by "Katherine Everard" and Thieves fall Out by "Cameron Kay" - are set in cities that he had spent some time in, like New Orleans and Cairo, and which he felt comfortable describing in detail even as the plot of the novels was entirely fictional. As he got older, he stopped writing historical novels - he had hoped to write one on the Mexican War - precisely because he now lacked the energy to devote many months to careful research, and he refused to write those kinds of novels without such research.
In his personal life, his focus on P can be observed in his confidence and mostly success in earning a living exclusively from literary work after his WWII service, as he did not have inherited wealth to rely on. When writing "serious" novels failed to produce sufficient income, he would diversify his efforts into writing essays, pulp novels, and finally teleplays and movie scripts. Throughout his life, Gore always managed to keep his lifestyle compatible with his income - as the latter grew, so his tastes became more expensive. Although arguably too extravagant sometimes, he always had a realistic grip on the state of his finances, and apart from his taste for "white elephant" properties, he never overstretched himself nor made risky investments like trying to finance his own plays or movies. He also knew when to forego short-term profit for the sake of his long-term reputation and marketability as a writer - hence he actually spent money in a legal suit to stay uncredited as the author of the first scripts of Caligula, which also meant giving up any share on its profits, as per the original contract. P was clearly a strong as well as a valued function.
In his personal life, his focus on P can be observed in his confidence and mostly success in earning a living exclusively from literary work after his WWII service, as he did not have inherited wealth to rely on. When writing "serious" novels failed to produce sufficient income, he would diversify his efforts into writing essays, pulp novels, and finally teleplays and movie scripts. Throughout his life, Gore always managed to keep his lifestyle compatible with his income - as the latter grew, so his tastes became more expensive. Although arguably too extravagant sometimes, he always had a realistic grip on the state of his finances, and apart from his taste for "white elephant" properties, he never overstretched himself nor made risky investments like trying to finance his own plays or movies. He also knew when to forego short-term profit for the sake of his long-term reputation and marketability as a writer - hence he actually spent money in a legal suit to stay uncredited as the author of the first scripts of Caligula, which also meant giving up any share on its profits, as per the original contract. P was clearly a strong as well as a valued function.
S: Gore Vidal's focus on S was quirky. He clearly gave a lot of value to eating and drinking well, and even to excess in his later years; on the other hand, as mentioned in the T section above, for the properties he chose to live in, his priority seemed to be how they connected to him in an inner way, rather than their comfort or external beauty. According to him, he decided to purchase his Ravello villa, La Rondinaia, when walking the rather long path towards it, even before seeing the house itself. When living on his own, his immediate surroundings tended to become unkempt and even squalid: to the extent that La Rondinaia remained comfortable and tidy over decades, that was due to Gore's long-term companion, Howard Austen (SEI), who looked after the daily aspects of their lives.
As a young man, Gore was tall, fit and widely regarded as very good-looking, which in those years seemed to require little effort on his part: there is no record of him being interested in any sport activity except for physical therapy. As he got older, he needed to invest more effort, which he did by weight lifting and avoiding excessive eating and drinking. He continued until sometime in his sixties; he then seemed to give up caring and let himself go, eventually becoming obese due to indulgence in overeating and drinking. All friends and acquaintances who left descriptions of his lifestyle describe his drinking habits as extreme, sometimes getting so drunk that he almost needed to be carried back home. That eventually caused his Wernicke-Korsakoff neurological disorder in his final years.
In summary, the only aspect of S that Vidal seemed to focus on visibly was his enjoyment of good food and drinks - as long as the food was prepared for him; there is no record of him enjoying cooking. Even his enjoyment of art owed more to T than to S or E: he prized his possession of a few ancient Roman and Greek artefacts - some partly damaged - but did not seem to appreciate works of art based on their beauty alone, but rather on their historical meaning. Also, there is no record of Vidal ever focusing on the practical, hands-on aspects of S: he was not a man to enjoy working with his hands, apart from writing, which he tended to do longhand.
Overall, between S and T and F, it is clear that he gave more focus to T, while not being insensitive to some S sensations. S seems to have been an unvalued function that always "lost" to T.
As a young man, Gore was tall, fit and widely regarded as very good-looking, which in those years seemed to require little effort on his part: there is no record of him being interested in any sport activity except for physical therapy. As he got older, he needed to invest more effort, which he did by weight lifting and avoiding excessive eating and drinking. He continued until sometime in his sixties; he then seemed to give up caring and let himself go, eventually becoming obese due to indulgence in overeating and drinking. All friends and acquaintances who left descriptions of his lifestyle describe his drinking habits as extreme, sometimes getting so drunk that he almost needed to be carried back home. That eventually caused his Wernicke-Korsakoff neurological disorder in his final years.
In summary, the only aspect of S that Vidal seemed to focus on visibly was his enjoyment of good food and drinks - as long as the food was prepared for him; there is no record of him enjoying cooking. Even his enjoyment of art owed more to T than to S or E: he prized his possession of a few ancient Roman and Greek artefacts - some partly damaged - but did not seem to appreciate works of art based on their beauty alone, but rather on their historical meaning. Also, there is no record of Vidal ever focusing on the practical, hands-on aspects of S: he was not a man to enjoy working with his hands, apart from writing, which he tended to do longhand.
Overall, between S and T and F, it is clear that he gave more focus to T, while not being insensitive to some S sensations. S seems to have been an unvalued function that always "lost" to T.
E: When replying to a comment on Gore's "courage" in writing the 1948 novel The City and the Pillar - perhaps the first American mainstream gay novel - his father, Gene Vidal, replied, what was so courageous about that, when you don't care at all what people think. Gore himself often stated that what people thought of him was of no importance compared to what he thought of them and advised others to adopt that stance. Although he did need to care what people thought of him sometimes - at the beginning of his career as an author, and when running for Congress - it does seem that he did so only to the extent that it was useful to his career, and did not reflect any deep psychological need for general acceptance. By all accounts, when at school, he did not care much about fitting in or being seen as successful; he was always a mediocre student who spent most of his time reading books unrelated to schoolwork. It is revealing that his professional success remained mostly limited to writing books and essays - essentially solitary work - while his efforts in more collaborative activities, like writing for movie productions, were much less successful: he often felt cheated or cast aside when working in a movie, either because his script would be changed too much, or because he remained uncredited, or both. His satisfaction with writing teleplays for NYC tv seemed to have been due to the fact that there was very little time between a script being written and the actual shooting, so there wasn't much time for modifications. His biggest fiasco in a movie project - Caligula - seems to have been due to a lack of understanding that he was dealing with, in effect, con men. The bottom line is that Vidal's occasional and limited success with movie writing may obscure the fact that he was ill-equipped, and unwilling, to devote himself to the politics and compromises required to thrive in that world.
As a politician running for Congress in upstate NY in 1960, Gore was perfectly able to run a conventional, nearly successful campaign consisting of making speeches in town halls, visiting local dairy farms, etc. It must be said, though, that the local Democrats offered him the nomination; that he was already a household name as the frequent author of teleplays and guest at talk shows, and his movie star friends Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward also campaigned a bit on his behalf. With his name recognition, good looks, and connection to the Kennedys and movie stars, Gore only needed to avoid crass missteps while on campaign, rather than needing to be a very charismatic and driven politician. On the other hand, when he ran in the California Democratic primaries for the Senate in 1982, he made a point of saying what he thought, with little concession to public opinion, and had only 10% of the vote.
When appearing in talk shows and interviews, Vidal maintained a more or less consistent posture: of ironic detachment combined with a somewhat patronising, condescending know-it-all attitude, avoiding displays of irritation or offense, as illustrated by his tv clashes with William F Buckley and Norman Mailer. However, as he got older - and apparently cared even less about his image - his know-it-all, patronising attitude also became increasingly impatient and hostile. When dealing with individuals privately, Gore was often unpredictable: he could be extremely welcoming to admirers approaching him, sometimes inviting them for a drink; or he could be curt and dismissive, apparently with little thought to maintaining a consistent public image.
Even when Vidal tried to take into account the effect of his actions and writings on his public image, reputation and relationships, he often miscalculated badly. When writing The City and the Pillar in 1948, he was totally unprepared for the backlash he would receive, despite being warned by his editor and close friends. Later, in 1961, in an infamous episode at a White House dinner party, he quarrelled with Robert Kennedy and later wrote an essay describing him as temperamentally unsuited to ever be president - and then seemed shocked at being banished from the Kennedy circle, also by his quasi-stepsister Jackie Kennedy.
The status that Gore later reached as a bestselling novelist freed him from having to worry too much about such backlashes; and he also gave up trying to belong to any exalted social circle, as he had in the 1940s with members of the NYC literary and artistic scene and in the 1960s with the Kennedys. He found his optimal social role as a political and literary gadfly, and his preferred lifestyle as living mostly in social isolation apart from long-term intimates - that is, free from having to focus on E. Interestingly, a lifestyle similar to that chosen by Tiberius (ILI) on Capri, not far from La Rondinaia, and Gore himself often noted the parallel and his identification with, if not admiration for, Tiberius.
The status that Gore later reached as a bestselling novelist freed him from having to worry too much about such backlashes; and he also gave up trying to belong to any exalted social circle, as he had in the 1940s with members of the NYC literary and artistic scene and in the 1960s with the Kennedys. He found his optimal social role as a political and literary gadfly, and his preferred lifestyle as living mostly in social isolation apart from long-term intimates - that is, free from having to focus on E. Interestingly, a lifestyle similar to that chosen by Tiberius (ILI) on Capri, not far from La Rondinaia, and Gore himself often noted the parallel and his identification with, if not admiration for, Tiberius.
Gore's low-focus and even bewilderment with E matters, ultimately avoiding it as much as humanly possible, strongly point to E4.
F: Gore Vidal was not prone to physical confrontations or attempts at intimidating others. When in actual confrontations with clearly F-strong individuals - like William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, during tv shows - Vidal would maintain his ironic, detached posture, without attempting to match the other's aggressive stance. In fact, on at least two occasions, Mailer actually hit Gore (once by headbutting, and then by punching him) - with Gore offering little physical reaction. Although he was presumably physically confident, at least in his younger years, having served in the army in WWII, Gore clearly lacked a natural impulse to engage in physical confrontation, even when attacked. Even his verbal confrontations consisted rather of him making points to refute someone else's, and although he responded ironically to direct insults, he became uncomfortable in such situations.
According to author Anaïs Nin, who met Gore immediately after the end of WWII, already at 20 he said that his ambition was to be president of the US. He was clearly fascinated by political power and was attracted to powerful people if he respected them - that is clear from his attitude to his grandfather, Senator Thomas Gore, to President Kennedy, and even to Hollywood producer Sam Zimbalist. He grew up in Washington DC, where he often guided his blind grandfather to the Senate chamber; his father was a senior official in FDR's administration, and he was used to being around powerful, famous and wealthy individuals as he grew up - even if, as he often mentioned, he could not look forward to inheriting much money himself. Senator Gore proposed to put him on a relatively easy track to a political career, either in Oklahoma or New Mexico, under the Senator's patronage, yet Gore showed no desire to follow that particular path. Later, in 1960, Gore did put some effort in running for Congress as a Democrat in New York, losing but doing very well in a strongly Republican district - but even then, the nomination was offered to him on a plate by the local Democratic Party. He was asked to run again in 1964, when almost certainly he would have won, but he declined. That was his last realistic chance of entering national politics: his 1982 primary run for the Senate in California was a quixotic attempt with no chance of succeeding. Gore remained wistful about his aborted political career for the rest of his life. Mostly he tried to dismiss it as if he had never been really interested, but occasionally admitting that it was an unfulfilled ambition. His own writings and memoirs give the strong impression that that was a very important and memorable period in his life, which he kept coming back to - even as he also dismissed it as a world that he "wanted to escape from". Overall it's hard to escape the conclusion that Gore had very much dreamed of a political career but lacked the single-minded drive and will necessary to succeed in it - which he seemed to recognise but never admit, so he adopted a "sour grapes" stance, of the "I never really wanted it anyway" sort. A desire for political F without having the personal F to really pursue it.
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| Running for Congress in 1960 |
As far as a focus on F regarding his efforts and achievements, Gore liked to portray himself as a self-made man who, although born surrounded by wealth, could not expect to inherit any significant amount of money and so had to succeed on his own. That was an exaggeration: he had received considerable financial help from his father to buy his house in Guatemala and, more significantly, from his mother to buy Edgewater. Likewise, the mere fact that he was Senator Gore's grandson and Gene Vidal's son opened doors for him in the publishing and then tv businesses - but this is precisely the kind of observation that Gore hated: he was sensitive about his "self-made man" status and was annoyed at any suggestion that he owed anything to his family and connections.
Interestingly, the actor Paul Newman (probably ESI), one of Vidal's closest friends over decades, had this to say about him in his memoirs:
He could write "Julian", a great, brilliant book, publish a terrific novel like "Washington, DC" - and then the next day he'll do something dumb. Gore had a rather inflated sense of where he stood in the literary world. He has a sense of being truly powerful, but while he is a power, he was never truly powerful.
He could write "Julian", a great, brilliant book, publish a terrific novel like "Washington, DC" - and then the next day he'll do something dumb. Gore had a rather inflated sense of where he stood in the literary world. He has a sense of being truly powerful, but while he is a power, he was never truly powerful.
F was an element that Gore Vidal clearly valued, in himself and others, but he seemed to lack confidence and focus on it, leaving him unable to correctly evaluate his strengths and weaknesses in that area, which points to a SuperId function, F5 or F6. He did not seem to be bothered at all by people with clearly stronger F than he, but rather he seemed to enjoy their company. That points most obviously to F5. Interestingly, after acting in a scene with Joe Pesci in With Honors, Vidal said that Pesci's energy and forcefulness had raised his own levels of energy, in a way that he had never achieved as an actor, on his own. A small bit of F5 description.
R: Gore Vidal's approach to R is best introduced by repeating what I described in the E section above: that what he thought of others was far more important than what they thought of him. Throughout his life, his personal relationships with individuals followed this pattern: he maintained a very limited and constant circle of intimate friends over decades: his companion Howard Austen, and the actors Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Claire Bloom and Susan Sarandon, as well as a less intimate circle of writers, like Jay Parini and Michael Mewshaw. He was very selective even with his own close family, having good but mostly distant relations with his father; keeping his sister and nephew at arm's length and, most notably, permanently breaking relations with his mother Nina at 33. He could also abruptly finish off friendships that he saw as having become bothersome (Anaïs Nin) or had betrayed him (Jackie Kennedy and Christopher Hitchens), and then not look back. In the 1970s, some ten years after his break with the Kennedys, Vidal happened to run into Jackie in the lift of the London hotel where by coincidence they were both staying: Vidal reacted by turning his back and ignoring her (to Howard's horror).
Once Vidal had a grudge against someone, or even regarded them as "enemies", he relentlessly maintained that enmity, showing no remorse about attacking them after their deaths: the best examples being his own mother, Robert Kennedy, William F. Buckley and Truman Capote. When Buckley died, four years before himself, Gore wrote an essay attacking him that concluded with, "RIP WFB - in Hell". As for Capote, he wanted to sue him into bankruptcy because in a 1975 interview with a fringe magazine Capote had told an unfavourable version of Vidal's confrontation with Robert Kennedy in 1961. That suit dragged on until just before Capote's death, which Gore described as a "wise career move". As common acquaintances pointed out, Vidal showed no mercy even though Capote was in deep decline physically and financially, while Vidal himself was at his peak. Decades later, he still referred to Capote as having no redeeming traits whatsoever and just a horrible human being: “Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.”
Once Vidal had a grudge against someone, or even regarded them as "enemies", he relentlessly maintained that enmity, showing no remorse about attacking them after their deaths: the best examples being his own mother, Robert Kennedy, William F. Buckley and Truman Capote. When Buckley died, four years before himself, Gore wrote an essay attacking him that concluded with, "RIP WFB - in Hell". As for Capote, he wanted to sue him into bankruptcy because in a 1975 interview with a fringe magazine Capote had told an unfavourable version of Vidal's confrontation with Robert Kennedy in 1961. That suit dragged on until just before Capote's death, which Gore described as a "wise career move". As common acquaintances pointed out, Vidal showed no mercy even though Capote was in deep decline physically and financially, while Vidal himself was at his peak. Decades later, he still referred to Capote as having no redeeming traits whatsoever and just a horrible human being: “Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.”
One peculiar manifestation of Gore's R was his life-long reverence, some might say obsession, for the memory of Jimmie Trimble, his classmate in a boarding school for a couple of years during adolescence. According to Vidal (Trimble did not live to tell his side of the story) they had some sort of youthful homosexual relationship, but then got separated by WWII and Jimmie, as a marine, was killed at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Throughout his life, Gore maintained a focus on the memory of Jimmie Trimble, at first covertly (dedicating The City and the Pillar to "J. T." in 1948), then explicitly in his 1995 memoir Palimpsest. Gore described how he and Jimmie complemented each other in ways that sound like socionics duality, and actually he made Jimmie seem like a SEE: the all-American boy who excelled at sports especially baseball, not very good academically but who nevertheless had his own literary dreams. Gore Vidal maintained and nurtured memories of Jimmie to the end of his life, inspiring some of his writing (The City and the Pillar in particular, and even his take on Ben-Hur) and actually chose his own grave at a spot within feet of Trimble's own.
Vidal's own friends and relatives were sceptical of how much of that relationship had been real from Trimble's point of view; Gore's sister Nina suspected that it had been mostly in his head. His lifelong companion, Howard Austen, got clearly fed up with the story and mocked Gore behind his back with obscene gestures when he mentioned Jimmie. Gore himself wrote that it had been the one perfect love of his life; yet much later, when asked about it in an interview, Gore replied, "that was a slight exaggeration. I said that because there was no other". Whether his "perfect relationship" with Jimmie was a real memory, or mostly wishful thinking, it indicated that Gore Vidal felt a strong psychological need to have had such a relationship, however briefly, even as a memory over seventy years - or a memory helped by fantasy and wishful thinking. This points not only to Gore's own need for self-fulfilment in R, but also how that was coupled with a strong focus on T.
Gore Vidal tended to have an intense approach to R, with little room for more nuanced relationships unless he did not care that much about the person in the first place. This points to a valued but not very confident element, where he tended to overcompensate, often in over-the-top ways, pointing to a SuperID function and more specifically to R6.
I: Gore found it very easy to diversify his writing into styles or areas that he had not explored before - either out of creative interest, or out of financial necessity. So he started out writing fairly conventional, even naturalist, novels; then he moved into historical fiction and, by financial necessity, into quickly-written pulp mysteries (the Edgar Box trilogy) and "trashy" novels under different pseudonyms, then easily moving into writing for the screen and stage. He then discovered a whole new branch of literature for himself: his "inventions", quirky absurdist satires - while at the same time maintaining a prolific non-fiction career as the writer of a vast number of essays. The essays themselves also covered a very wide range of subjects. While Vidal eventually lost interest in some of those branches - he mostly settled down on historical fiction, "inventions", and non-fiction essays - the way in which he went exploring new literary areas, and his confidence in doing so, suggest a fairly strong I, but more as a skill rather than as a natural impulse.
A contrast can be made with Christopher Hitchens (ESI), whom Gore considered for a time his literary "heir", until they fell out due to ideological/political disagreements. Hitchens was, like Vidal, a prolific writer of essays on literature, culture, politics and current events - however, Hitchens said that he felt completely unable to try his hand at writing fiction. His literary career was far more single-track than Vidal's, and I suggest that the key difference was in focus on I. Vidal's I came easily to him, but as a skill, suggesting an Id function, ie I7 or I8.
L: Gore Vidal easily adopted an analytical frame of mind when debating others and counter-arguing the premises of their arguments, not only "live" but also when writing reviews and essays. Actually, many critics and friends have commented that essay writing was his real strength rather than novels. His essays analyse and dissect many political and cultural issues of the time when they were written, which he was mostly able to do with a cold detachment. As for L in the sense of ideological premises and assumptions, Vidal's political positions over the decades can be described as being mostly centre-left in the context of the time. When running for Congress in 1960 in a strongly Republican district, though, he carefully moved to the centre and ran essentially as a Kennedy Democrat. However, apart from a suspicion of the US "establishment" - which he felt he knew better than most, due to his background - it's difficult to see coherent ideologies over the decades. Two consistent beliefs stand out: first, his position that since around the 1950s the US had been in decline, certainly in comparison to Western Europe, in terms of education, culture, general access to health care, etc (as his personal reference point was the post-WWII years, when the US was at is peak and Europe in ruins); and second, his often stated belief that there were no such things as heterosexual or homosexual individuals, only acts, and that everyone was, deep down, bisexual, even if most did not act on it. These two beliefs he tended rather to assert, rather than support with empirical information, unlike his approach in other matters.
As described in the P section, throughout most of life Gore Vidal was careful to base his arguments on factual information, even as in doing so he maintained a know-it-all attitude. As he got older, though, and his essays became more "conspiracy theorist" and more based on the assumption that he knew better, and less supported by factual information, Vidal seemed to be drifting to relying on his two strongest functions, T1 and L8. It was during this time that Christopher Hitchens triggered his break with Gore Vidal with his 2010 essay "Vidal Loco", essentially saying that his conspiracy theories, based on very little research, suggested that Vidal had gone nuts: the ESI noticing the decline of P in Vidal's later essays.
Gore Vidal's L was easily accessed throughout his life but not given priority, he clearly valued R and P over it, until he started to focus more on it, as if by default, in his old age. That points most obviously to L8.
Conclusion: Gore Vidal obviously had T, P, R and F as quadra values, so he was clearly a Gamma. More specifically, the function ordering that fits him best is that of the ILI, and that therefore was his socionics type.
Appendix: Howard Austen: Vidal had as constant companion, live-in secretary, best friend and life partner a man named Howard Austen, whom Vidal met in Manhattan in 1950. Although at first driven by sexual attraction, their relationship soon became non-physical according to both. Over 53 years - until Howard's death in 2003 - they lived together in Gore's several homes, with Gore as the sole provider of income, with Howard indeed acting as secretary, housekeeper, and taking overall care of their practical daily needs, while Vidal focused on his writing. Their mostly comfortable relationship over the decades would seem to suggest Duality, pointing to SEE for Austen. Yet, the overall evidence for his type, independently from his relationship with Gore, points clearly to SEI, thus with a Super-Ego relationship for them. This may be counter-intuitive but I suggest that it is not so odd for two Integrator, Irrational types: both content to drift into a lifestyle where their functional preferences would overlap rather than contradict each other. So Gore would choose to live in isolated, pleasant locations as per his T thoughts, which mostly also pleased Howard's S focus, like Edgewater, Rome and Ravello. Howard was sometimes unhappy with Gore's life choices, on occasion "vetoing" some decisions like a move to Ireland, but never enough to justify risking the loss of an arrangement which was also pleasant and convenient for himself. Also, Gore's self-imposed social isolation in order to avoid focusing on E did not prevent Howard from developing his own social circles near their different homes, with Gore remaining oblivious or indifferent to them.
Sources: Fred Kaplan had full support and cooperation from Vidal to write his 1999 biography, Gore Vidal: a Biography, but Vidal did not like the finished book. He himself wrote two volumes of memoirs, Palimpsest (1995) and Point to Point Navigation (2006). After his death, his friend the author Jay Parini wrote another biography in 2015, titled Empire of Self in the US edition. Another writer acquainted with Vidal over decades, Michael Mewshaw, wrote in 2014 Sympathy for the Devil, which is a personal memoir of his friendship with Gore Vidal rather than a biography. All of those report the same basic facts and convey the same impressions of Gore's character and personality, but the books by Kaplan and Parini provide some useful corrections to Gore's occasionally self-serving narratives, especially regarding the nature of his relationship with Anaïs Nin and his claim to having been "self-made" since he was 17. There is also a vast number of videos on Gore Vidal on YouTube and elsewhere.
To learn more about ILI, click here.
If you are confused about our use of Socionics shorthand, click here.
