Gore Vidal on Truman Capote, Johnny Carson and Television | 92Y Readings

for those of you who are recidivists the last time I sat on this stage I think in this chair I was afflicted by I felt like the Pharaoh of Egypt by a fly it was an awful fly every time I started to talk then I would and I kept missing it and missing it and then you remember that movie the fly and which says the little voice comes out and said help help I realized it was the late Truman Capote had come back I have been persuaded to read which I hate to do I hate when other people read to me too but it seems to be in the cards I must read a little bit so I'm going to read a bit explaining the title of the book which is fairly useful and a summing up at the end point-to-point navigation in World War two I served his first mate of an army Freight supply ship in the Aleutian Islands where the weather was so bad that we seldom saw the Sun much less moon and stars that made it nearly impossible to use the compass to chart a course instead we relied on maps where we had memorized various points or landmarks as guides a process known by Mariners as point-to-point navigation a process with obvious dangers we had no radar then as I was writing this account of my life in time since Pelham said I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather now there is a very curious summing up which we at the end of the book which we can chat about I saw the Kennedy murder case and I do useful things from time to time things of general interest I like to call it and there was a very funny book about me by a professor called Marcy Frank and she's at the University of Toronto American professors by and large are not encouraged to go after tenure through me but I say that just it's really the last couple of pages of the book professor Marcy Frank has flattered me by a comparison to Alexander Pope so an ending let me quote the last lines of the done see ads for my love lines that I learned voluntarily as a schoolboy nor public flame nor private dares to shine no human spark is left nor glimpse divine lo thy dread Empire chaos is restored light dies before thy uncreate in word by hand great an arc lets the curtain fall and universal darkness buries all in 1943 when I recited this to a classmate at the Phillips Exeter Academy he was bewildered why did you learn that he has because I said it's bound to be apt one of these days so it is half a century later and so it is today when I wrote the ending of the book and quoted those lines and I gave the date January 1st 2006 since then we have lived to see the end of the Rumsfeld era well where do we begin I was so terrified that I was going to be gonna be the fly there Gore I love the description of going across the room without your glasses somewhere and and sitting on ottoman it turns out to be Truman Capote I couldn't tell you no I is it actually true that when he died and he were told about it that you said a wise career move well I told that to my publisher privately and of course I had to read it every day for the next ten years I did send I've got a good good bit in this book about Johnny Carson who was a great friend and well the only man who gave a satire on television and no one except I suppose as mr. Stewart now is doing pretty well with it the Carson was brilliant with the month alone the opening monologue and suddenly there was Truman he's about to celebrate his 59th birthday and he was staying with Johnny's ex-wife Joanne Carson and he dies there it's very sad story and I looks publicly grieving naturally sack cloth ashes you know I do the whole thing I don't I don't just play around with mourning the word was spreading all around the newspapers were ringing me to see what I would say and I was generally benign I didn't say much of anything and then I sent Johnny Carson a message I said I promise that I'll die in your house just as he was cooling it or the end of his life living down at the beach as he said he said you know I've tried for 15 years that story of yours on air and I've never dared do it so now you know what Carson did not dare say I wonder you were on so many television programs in the 50s and 60s and 70s endlessly on Carson and other shows honest tv looked to you now when you came back from Italy and looked at American television well everybody's sick that's interesting to know but I mean really sick I mean that for our 40 hour erection you know that you know which generally you send out for a new set of friends but some people are thrown by it literally and just all the illness going on that we're told about and everybody this is Los Angeles television everything is mortgages you know if you are a home owner and would like to pay off your credit cards and you see these slices and you know that house by house is going to be too stolen from the people

Channel: The 92nd Street Y, New York

Views: 98,171

Keywords: Truman Capote (Writer), Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation, advertising, 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Jay Parini

Id: oHIlTy9rfA8

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 03 2012