In Depth with Gore Vidal - 2000

weekend on book TV up next live in depth with author playwright and essayist Gore Vidal [Music] in a writing career spanning over 50 years gorvadol has produced 22 novels more than 200 essays a memoir and numerous short stories and screenplays this month one of his plays has been revived on Broadway and the seventh installment in his American Chronicles series a novel called the golden age has been released here to join us on book TV's In-Depth series to talk about his life and work is gorvadol Mr Vidal thanks for being here very nice to be here in my hometown do you remember the first time you put pen to paper I sort of remember I must have been about six or seven and I am starting to read fairly grown-up books and I had read a book I didn't like children's books but I had been given one called the duck and the kangaroo a tale of unnatural affection the duck was in love with the kangaroo and I immediately started to write a book what I thought was a book turned out to be pretty much the duck and the kangaroo but uh I think that was the beginning that when I saw something that triggered me there's a movie called The Mystery of the blue room I think it was and that really started me off I must have been about eight or nine and I really sat down to write a novel didn't get terribly far then when I was about 16 I used to go over the Library of Congress and I wrote half a book I don't know what on Earth it was about but I just go there every day and write the rest of the time I was reading and what time there was left I was reading aloud to my grandfather Senator Gore who was with whom I lived pretty much until I was 10. and he was blind from the age of 10. and he got me to read for him and I was the I was his favorite grandchild or child because I loved reading and his other children hated it and he used to chuckle rather grimly after I'd been reading for five or six hours on end said you know John Milton's daughters went blind reading to their father he would chuckle happily to himself and now let's get to buy metalism this is an exciting subject free silver you see was the basis of my founding the state of Oklahoma this was and we'd be Off to the Races so I was getting great history lessons along with reading skills and it was what was nice about it I got to talk to him grandfathers particularly if they're senators and blind and have to be looked after aren't the best of company but I was his reader so I came into another guy wasn't just a grandchild I was a reading person and he held them and uh high regard let me tell our audience a little bit about what we'll be doing this afternoon and how they can join in in this this series called in depth we have the opportunity to spend three full hours with authors who have spent many years writing and producing books Governor will be with us for the next three hours we'll be talking for about 20 to 25 minutes and then opening up our phone lines for your questions for him from all around the country we'll put that phone number on the bottom of the screen during this first half hour so you can begin thinking about your questions and calling into our studio studios here in Washington and we do very much welcome your participation lots of opportunity for discussions of All Sorts when did you decide that writing would be your career I don't think I ever decided that I wanted to uh go into politics that was the family's trade and um I sort of aimed more toward that but that made something of a historian out of me because I kept studying the issues as I went along my grandfather was born in 1870. so between his life and my life we've covered half that of the Republic and he had memories of as far back as the revolution from a great grandfather of his so I it was natural for me to write As Natural as it was for me to read I had no clear idea I was very much a poet and a very bad poet very didactic and thundering but in my back of my mind I it just the need to invent worlds was obviously pretty great so I became a writer in the army I was in the Pacific during the War I enlisted at the age of 17. in the year 19 43 and ended up as a first mate of an army boat in the Aleutian Islands where I got soaked One Day by a wave from the Bering Sea hypothermia is that the word for it anyway I came out of it with rheumatoid arthritis in the Army hospital I began to write I need to say about the first Maid of an army boat in the Aleutian Islands I was in the traditional mode right about what you know I was by then 18 or 19. and as usual I tried to write when I was at Exeter at least six novels and some of them I got very far along and then the site could never finish anything so here I was writing this narrative about dilutions the experience of a great storm which is called Willow War in the Allied language and what it was like to be all of those men I think 20-man crew in this forlorn lunar landscape with these dangerous Seas and extraordinary beaches the beaches up in the aleutians are covered with Moonstone and Jasper and also its precious stones no indigenous Wildlife except for foxes and great black Ravens and a lot a lot of guys went crazy up there really in the Quan said Huts because you never saw the sun and I didn't go crazy because I had I had a book to write a story so in the Army hospital I didn't get much done then they made me a mess officer and Camp Gordon Johnson and Apalachicola Florida Transportation Corps and uh that was kind of fun it wouldn't let me out I I could have had a medical discharge but they said we'll keep you in two more years because you can still do work like this and one night I went to see a movie called Isle of the Dead with Boris Karloff and it was not as a monster but as a Greek Colonel on an island in which there is a kind of mad Spirit abroad wonderful picture and after I saw the picture I went I was officer of the day I was on duty at night in the headquarters and I went back and this great headquarters had all the lights on I don't remember why and there were rows of typewriters and I went over and started typing and within a week I'd finished Willow War my first book that I had ever completed in due course after three years of the army I was let out in 46. gave it to a publisher and it was published not just that it was complete but did you know that in fact it was good I thought I hadn't accomplished what I had set out to do yes naturally I was compared to Hemingway everybody was compared to Hemingway in those days if you wrote in a sort of abbreviated tourist Style but the reading I had been doing that influenced me if anything did other than my imaginary world and the real world I'm describing it would have been hard cranes the boat which I've never seen I I finally met somebody who had noticed that I was being interviewed in New York and uh the interviewer said you know I got my master's degree in college in your book Willow Walk tell me about it and he did because I've totally forgotten it and he said reread it so maybe I will but not on air when you look at your relationship with Senator Gore do you think that was the formative relationship in your life oh yes uh aside from a passion for politics which seems to be in the bloodstream of most Gore's as we are witnessing this year uh uh he gave me a profound sense of history from the loser's side he was from Mississippi and the gore has come from northern Mississippi and Albert Gore's family comes from Tennessee just across the border from us it's all the same family and we were unionists there were no slaves up there and we didn't want to succeed and Eastern Tennessee did not secede but all of Mississippi did my great-grandfather Senator Gore's father enlisted with two brothers and in due course he was wounded at Chickamauga and taken captive and one of his other brothers was was killed so my grandfather was then his son he became County Clerk well my grandfather was just able to tell me about the Civil War what it was like what the Yankees did when they came and burned the town and with that history and that politics a writer's subject was born if not a writer would you describe your politics well I wouldn't have written so many books if I could describe it in one sentence would I I come out of the populist tradition which was his tradition populist means people and we there was something called the party of the people at the end of the 19th century well the principal organizers in that area was my great-grandfather Gore and the holy ghosts were political and many of them great artists well it was a party to represent first the people who'd been ruined by the Civil War Southerners just ruined farmers and the Bourbons of the Southern as they call the aristocrats of the Southern Mississippi they had lost plantations and so on but somehow they held on to money we had nothing up in the north so in order to organize against reconstruction the the bad aspects of it and the hard cold hand of the banks in the north who were buying up the South and exploiting and keeping cotton at five cents or whatever it was playing around with the with our crops and money we became violently anti big Banks what we call corporate America today that was those were the villains and he continued along that line in due course the populists were co-opted by the Democratic Party and William Jennings Brian three times candidate for president was the heroic leader of the party my grandfather nominated him for president in 1907. or eight I guess it was at Denver and he remembered Brian was about 36 when he's first nominated sort of a wind bag but uh marvelous harder and but my grandfather said the thing about Brian is he never developed after he made his cross of gold you shall not press down upon the power of the brow of Labor this Crown of Thorns you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold the gore is naturally with free silver which was what bi-metalism was all about as my grandfather started the longest demonstration in the history of any convention when he nominated Brian how long was it do you know well I think it was about two hours a two-hour demonstration and they prayed it up and down the place went crazy because and he was speaking as the new senator of a new state which he'd helped to create in Oklahoma and so he was a great novel and he was a great artist he said as they were driving away from the convention it wasn't that convention it was the next time Brian was nominated the Brian around and lost I guess it was this next time as they were driving away in their Carriage from the convention hall Brian said you know I attribute my success in politics to just three things my grandmother said I can't remember anything he said but I do remember thinking why he thought he was a success about 15 minutes until we begin your phone calls for gorvadol and then here are the numbers if you live in the eastern half of the United States 202-624-111 if you live in the mountain or Pacific time zones 202-624-1115 I was surprised in my reading to learn that in fact Gore was not your birth name that you took it as a writer it's not true that's not true I was christened by the Canon Albert Hawley Lucas Headmaster of Saint Albans where I was in school I was christened uh Eugene Luther Gore Vidal so you chose to emphasize no that's too long you can't use that the writer's name I was going to go into politics in the state of New Mexico and was making certain preparations for it when I was in my 20s and I just got the Eugene Luther off after all my father was a gene and I didn't want to be another Gene found as I was of him and Luther just doesn't work so we kept to go of ital I did have in the back of my mind that if I were to run for office he was a great power in that section in the Southwest and a friend of his in fact we used to talk about that in um 48. I've been out of the army two years published my first two books I would go to New Mexico Santa Fe settle in the governor was a Protege of my grandfather's Jack Dempsey was his name and uh I would settle in and become a politician and Vidal is a Latin name which is a help with the the Hispanic vote although my family was Italian but so that is how I got the name or gave myself the name by cutting it off the first two two words what is your specific relationship to Al Gore well we've never met but I knew his father I love it now every time I'm on a program or whatever a distant cousin of Albert Gore well we're not distant at all I have not wanted to meet him because it doesn't do you much good if you're a political commentator to be thought to be involved with the president I discovered that during Jack Kennedy's Reign when suddenly I was not taken seriously at all having been taken quite seriously as a commentator uh because uh they thought that I was an apologist for him and that was because it was irresistible not to make fun of Richard Nixon so it seemed as though I was partisan when I wasn't but I figured out then it does no good to be attached in any way to a political figure if you want to talk about politics which I tend to do so I had I knew a young Albert was going to make himself president if he could and though I liked his father and his father and my grandfather were friends we're all here in Washington I mean you can't say distant cousins we're all in last last night I had a wonderful dinner with Deborah gordine another cousin and she's she's the granddaughter of uh Grady Gore so there's Grady Gore here in the town with a Fairfax Hotel he's the rich member of the family there's Albert Gore from uh Eastern Tennessee who comes here in the house and then goes on to the Senate and there's Thomas Pryor Gore from Mississippi but senator from Oklahoma bro all three cousins are here in the town and they all three knew each other I'm talking the older generation so uh there's a there's a saying in Mississippi if a snake bites a Goa they all puff up you know you mentioned Deborah gordine your your cousin people who follow politics closely will remember that she had uh some troubles during the Reagan Administration huh I would think that she was young she was foolish she went she wanted to work for Ronald Reagan that's that's trouble enough and acting president has she in fact disavowed herself from public life after that experience we haven't talked about public life he's a wonderful decorator a decorator now she has a over in Georgetown been a wonderful uh shop there well speaking of public life you talked about your aspirations to politics you ran twice would you talk about those two bids and what happened well the first uh oh I I like to read about my humiliating defeats this is a right-wing specialty I doubled the vote in 1960 for congress from out of state New York the 29th congressional district which is five counties very big district and in fact did Harry Truman come up to introduce you during an event there came up to speak for me yes I introduced him and in 1959 I'd written a play called the best man and I gave it to Jack Kennedy to read he was running for president I was running for the house and your eye your eye contact is gone because I'm showing the audience the best man flyer which is just oh really everything is behind me on this program what is going on upstage there I feel that there's a whole way of life Gladiators are fighting while I'm downstage were that interesting oh come now we'll do our best to enliven it downstage here well in fact I interrupted you right at the best man being written 1959. you can pick it up from there so I am running for congress Jack is running for president uh the best man which is once again on Broadway the Virginia theater in Manhattan this was in a sense a study of uh presidential character as a character somewhat like adley Stevenson some something like Truman something like uh Nixon and it was written really sort of to help out Jack because he had Nixon would be his opponent if he got the nomination and it was very very important that he'd get knocked off adley Stevenson who had had two runs and we of the liberal end of the democratic party were all stevensonians and suddenly Jack is the Insurgent but after two runs we thought that Atlas Stevenson was uh just not up to it he was a very cultivated Charming Man wonderful speech maker but he was not decisive and his great backer was Eleanor Roosevelt who was my neighbor on the Hudson and she she adored him and she wanted the party to support him and she didn't like Jack Kennedy one bit first he was a McCarthy I had in her eyes he was very friendly with Joe McCarthy and of course he detested his father which shouldn't have held over with him but it did and I remember Jack sent her son Frank Roosevelt Jr Walter Ruther was head of United Auto Workers and me to pay a call on her to alkyl Cottage to get her to support adley I saw Jack and she read a position paper to us which was my day for the next week and they said yes but she he won't make up his mind you keep proposing him and he keeps saying you know you know no I don't know if I'm running or not well she said finally Frank Roosevelt said you know Ma we don't want you can't have somebody who doesn't know his own mind and she said well that's the way he is you can't change people and he said well we know that's the way he is and we don't want him and with that she went right on to to support Ashley Stevenson went to the convention waved her finger at it said you must support this man I'm losing my thing in my ear that's uh tell the audience that's how you're going to hear phone calls in about it I can't hear the phone calls which I'm sure are a lot in now so I practically hear a phone call now they're lined up for you I can promise and in fact how is the presidency different today as you re-release this play from the kind of presidency you captured in it in 1960 in the Jack Kennedy era well it certainly makes a monkey out of Darwin there's been no evolution in 40 years the audience recognizes these types my characters they sit there it's sort of a thriller and it's quite funny people don't know they've forgotten about realism life is not always tragic and it's not always coming it's a sort of mixture and that is what realism was now everybody thinks Oh serious players got to be lugubrious and the comedy has got to be you know Pratt Falls real life is a mix and it's it is a realistic play and the audiences pick up on just about I haven't changed the word since 1960 so it's like the time machine for them they're walking into a 1960 meeting in which uh you watch over a three-day period of this convention who's two two men fighting it out with an old president being the decisive voice and they ask a lot of questions they compare it to today when a convention means nothing because by March of 2000 we knew who the two candidates were and you don't get the convention until June or July so it's quite different also we don't talk about money in the play there's no hard money soft money no electoral reform so I the more issues are probably touched upon delicately amusingly wittyly in the play than have been in this entire campaign as we sit here in Washington DC with presidential candidates roaming the country first telephone call for you is from Philadelphia welcome to the program and you're on for gorvadol yes hello Mr Vidal yes I'm honored to speak with you I met James Baldwin on your birthday the year before he died and I told him it was your birthday and he said he didn't know and he didn't say anything about the fact that you all knew each other until I read your Memoir I realized that you did know each other so I was wondering if you two ever talk politics and if so how did you find him and if not uh how did you find Mr Baldwin generally well I like Jimmy and I worked the year my first book Willow came out in 1946. EP Dutton the publisher who gave me a job as uh as as a reader and I brought them cry holy a book by Jimmy Baldwin which later became Go Tell It on the Mountain the head of epdot and Mr McRae just when he found out the author was black said but don't you understand I'm from Virginia I said well what's that got to do with it well he turned it down on the ground so he was not going to publish a black author first time I'd ever seen it that close Jimmy went on however the publish elsewhere and did very well uh relations with Jimmy himself are always kind of edgy he was um well he had a lot of problems on the one hand he was a wonderful sort of orator and a great sermonizer on the other hand he was just in love with Showbiz so he he would go from Martin Luther King on one day to Betty Davis on the next day well it was very odd dealing with such a Mercurial character but I thought he um he was a great voice in his time but I'm not so sure the novels will be remembered I was looking at one of them the other day and it seemed very sort of Showbiz novels that he wrote but uh the sermons still hold up next call for you comes from a town that's been in the news quite a bit lately Los Alamos New Mexico welcome to the program oh thank you first off I want to say when you began this uh series uh I was always hoping you would have Gore badal for three hours and Mr Vidal uh you mentioned Isle of the Dead earlier which is one of my favorite movies in the book I particularly enjoyed the viewers with screening history in your opening line you say as I now move graciously I hope toward the door parked exit it occurs to me that the only thing I ever really like to do was go to the movies and my sentiments exactly so Mom a question for you Mr badal which it's a great honor to speak to you because have you seen any good movies lately I keep seeing them and I keep forgetting their names uh there was a good Altman movie I'm a member of the academy so I vote on the Oscars so I got to see everything there's a very good Altman movie last year I've had the word cookie in the title uh the ones I like seldom are seldom very successful but I I think we've got a lot of interesting Movie Makers now I like the Cohen Brothers like Tim Robbins I worked as an actor with Tim Robbins and Bob Roberts I think is a good political movie and I went to Los Alamos when it was a boys school I was there 39 to 40. and up there on the Mesa which has now been burnt a bit and they're kind of awful place and 10 years before I got there there was another writer to be William Burroughs so Los Alamos produced Burrows and Vidal I don't know what that means if you had some free time right now would you choose to read or go to the movies I do both because uh as a member of the Academy I get everything practically on video cassette so I play that and I'm reading all the time as well so there isn't much time to do anything but look and read before we take the next call can we talk a little bit about home when did you choose Italy as your your major place of residence I don't know it's a major I mean I spent all last winter I have a house in Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills and I make the tired joke you know arguably between Hollywood and ravello Italy you can say I don't live in America at all but as America is in my head and as America is my subject and wherever I am there is America I sometimes think I've limited myself in a way by being so intensely interested in the country and in its politics and in the design of its history which is what these and I never called it American Chronicle that was Publishers I call them narratives of Empire from bird Lincoln to 1876 right up to the the Golden Age what I'm doing is trying to find a design in our history I'm trying to find how deliberate was the acquisition of Empire was there a plan or were there many similar plans that coalesced into this Global Empire that is causing the world so much trouble and is so expensive for us to maintain and I think toward the end of Alan's test I just saw the book balance test and I say the title of the golden age I begin to draw a pattern Italy is a place just to go to to write and the Hollywood Hills is a place to when I'm living in America from which I politic and sometimes do the odd moving if we were to find you in ravello writing where exactly would you be well I'd be in my Studio in a villa which is about 700 meters above the sea it's on the cliff it was a spectacular View of the Gulf of Salerno in front of me and then right across the gulf there's a pastor the Greek temples from the 5th Century on a clear day you think you can see them but I don't think we do see them and I would be there sitting in a cube room Cube like room painted white writing in longhand on yellow legal sheets no computer how do you revise I have it typed up I fax it to London where I have a typist she faxes it back to me she's got a floppy disk and I do another version I do generally about five or six versions of everything sometimes I try to cheat and stop at four and it's not right so that is the work process when do you do your best work are you a morning person oh yeah when I get up which might not be morning but uh I find it not only the closer you are to the dream state that you've been in before Awakening the much ready or the imagination is not to mention memory with age you begin to start to forget names and numbers and so on I find that if I've got a problem and I can't think of something and if I just put it on hold in the morning it comes to me I have the name that I was looking for or the book that I'm trying to find Graham green said something the same thing he used to have a house on anacapri Capri's just up the coast from us and he said that any problem he had was always solved the next morning when he got out because I regarded Graham's a wonderful man and uh sometimes a good writer but what we call an easy settler in the movie business that means somebody who does a first draft okay that's it it's perfect Huntsville Alabama here on for Gore Vidal sir can I can I stop you for a second you're having a little bit of feedback because your television's up too high and that's what's causing the problem for you turn it down and then go ahead with your question I know you went to one of the most exclusive prep schools in the U.S but to what do your tributes your Brilliance I like some pointers on how you could write a book as brilliant as the Judgment of Paris well it certainly had nothing to do with any school I ever went to I went to St Albans here and exited her up in New Hampshire I have never been so bored in my life I had one or two good teachers at both places but the courses I mean the boredom that they inflicted this is the period where you had to learn by wrote memorize memorize I remember innocently when I got to Exeter I said so when are we going to get to the Roman Empire we don't get to the Roman Empire you'll be translating Julius Caesar that's all we do they taught nothing of interest to me and my marks were very bad and I barely passed what they call then the College Board exams but instead at 17 I enlisted in the army I never went back to school I was supposed to go to Harvard I came back I did go to Harvard after my first book came out to lecture and there in the audience were at least 10 boys that I had been to Exeter been with an Exeter who were very old undergraduates having just come out of the War veterans and that was a triumphal moment you know that I had gone my own way not going to University if I am in any way brilliant or if I'm in any way learned perhaps a better word this is I was in the habit of reading all my life with a man who was part of history and a historian as well and I was immersed in literature and in history and I never stopped reading and I'm always trying to find out things I wanted to know everything when I was a kid I remember I used to make charts the history of the world and they now do them but they didn't exist then in which in the first century you'd find out what they were doing in Egypt what they were doing in China what they're doing in North America comparative history and I just thought that I might say I'd make these enormous charts and then fill in the various entries I think well I am what they call an auto Didact I taught myself unless somebody said to me in Oregon recently when I was after speed autodidacts have gone to the wrong schools of this guy from Harvard I said well let others be the judge next is the call from Seattle hi um I in uh in 1971 you wrote an article that was a cover story for Esquire magazine and and it supported Ralph Nader for president and I was wondering if you were as a supporter of his current campaign uh no Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are great friends of mine and we just had dinner together they're supporting Nader and many of my friends are obviously the idea is that he is a virtuous figure and is not going to be elected but he might through his candidacy this year set up a green party which would be useful in future years well that's the third party route I've done that and uh with Dr Spock The People's Party in 1968 70. I don't see any future in that we've we've got one political party which is Corporate America's possession and it has two right Wings Democratic party Democratic Wing Republican way I'm really interested in not in a third party but in getting us a second party as they got back in 1856 when all the splits started in the Republican party was invented and did a great job for the United States so I'm I'm for that really rather than uh a third fourth fifth Buchanan party of this party a Nader party and then when asked the question by the Press I said well at the end of the day I think Gore is thicker than Nader you mentioned your current thinking uh or that America is essentially Corporate America you mentioned earlier that this is a theme that runs throughout the series in fact has it always been a situation of the powerful interests versus the people yes and it is really the essential conflict in American Life and it's the real party system no matter what the official parties are there is the line of Jefferson and there is the line of Hamilton was for Big Industry banking National Bank World Trade forcing ourselves upon other people if necessary Jefferson was the mind your own business a more agricultural life more view colic and most Americans are jeffersonians uh only the bankers at least at the time of World War One World War II were interventionists Americans do not want to go abroad to be killed in other countries sometimes countries they've never heard of before you asked me earlier about my my politics well it is Anti-Imperialist and certainly I'm not anti-banking that would be a flat Earth politics we must have that but it must be kept in balance and our problem is that they uh they are the Masters and they have brought the politicians just look at this year that it's going to be a billion dollars half a billion anyway paid on this election an election that nobody's going to bother with if they can help it because they're not interested the candidates whether they are intelligent like my cousin Albert or if they are somewhat Disturbed or disturbing like his opponent uh basically don't differ much and have nothing to say because the people who give them the money to run don't want them to address real issues what is a real issue there's only one thing to talk about in the year 2000. and that is for 50 years we have been a militarized economy a Garrison State we've spent over seven trillion dollars since 1949 on War that is the theme of my American Chronicle as it is called uh how the people on the one hand are left behind and are exploited in the early days by Eastern Banks now it's of course it's the great corporations that own the country by the politicians the corruption is total now when corruption is systemic you can't say well bush is is corrupt or Gore is corrupt or this one or that one the whole system is corrupt the whole means of raising money well this starting out with Burr you see the fight in my first novel in that series you see the fight going on between Burr and Jefferson on these very issues in the fight particularly Hamilton and these two men Hamilton and Jefferson defined American Life Jefferson is with the people the Hamilton is with the aristos or the great business magnets and this is a struggle except the hamiltonians have won now what you should talk about is why 51 of our budget 1999 went for war went to the Pentagon they are now demanding 30 billion dollars a year more over the next decade now we're getting away from books I'm going to give a political speech you told me before the program started that you just spent some time calculating how much money this country has allocated to weaponry yes sir over what period and what's the number just this instant you gave it to me I apologize say it again 7.1 trillion dollars has gone for war since 1949 okay and we have had no enemy except the ones we selected as far as I know the Vietcong never attacked us we attacked them in the interests of corporate America there were a lot of ties between great corporations and South Vietnam we interfered in their Civil War and in their Affairs and we have suffered greatly same thing with Korea's 49 was one of the big buildups started Harry Truman put in them peacetime drafting enormous amount of money for the military and uh it was so it was all quite deliberate he used the fact that Greece and Turkey this is about 1950 might fall to the Russian Bear because England had been protecting Greece and England was broke we must take their place and he and Dean Atchison who was this is all in the Golden Age so those interested in the subject may turn to that but they got together and decided to make a real issue that the Russians were coming the Russians were coming communism was a great danger the United States while communism is a great danger to the Russians and to the people their satellite States they were no danger to us but officially the good reason for the build up was there was the Truman and Atchison were afraid we'd fall back into the depression we didn't get out of the depression until 1940 when we started to arm to go to war against Hitler and Japan struck at us that ended the depression now they're beginning to see dicey times coming they love General Motors who had what's good for General Motors is good for the country said the chairman of the board and that meant War it's been nothing but War ever since one historian put it very nicely in one phrase our policy is Perpetual War for Perpetual peace and that is insanity that is why we have the worst public educational system uh in the first world that's why we have no health care for the people the people get nothing back for their tax money this is a populist line that you're hearing from me and that is the theme of many of my books we got nothing back except oldest Armament and lately if you've been reading the papers the chiefs of the various services are demanding more and more money because it's all deteriorating and there is no enemy we create enemies we blow up an aspirin Factory in the Sudan but if the Sudanese had any power they'd probably blow up a factory here but they don't and they won't and we go right on we are the number one Terrorist on Earth and now you and through my series of seven books you see this Evolution and how the American people were left out decisions were made over their heads by him the equivalent of corporate America back in the 18th century and that nowadays that we have no redress because we have no representative government one Senator if you remember scoop Jackson was known as the senator from Boeing not the senator from Washington that's what happened to us so if we were to have a real election we'd be discussing what I've just been discussing our next caller who is from Pittsburgh has a question about Burr the first in that series go ahead uh it's a great pleasure talking to you uh I read about a half a dozen of your books and they've all bought me great pleasure and entertainment and and information um Bob Burr uh I I've drawn a parallel if you will um in school I had learned that uh and about the ninth grade I learned that Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton when he was vice president and Alexander Hammer was Secretary of the Treasury but they never told us why and I didn't find out why until I read your book they do neglect these details and uh um and it's and I I've correlated I figured that and I said well like 200 years later we're still doing the same thing uh what would have of course President Clinton brought that that Miss on himself but uh you had uh some people behind the scenes um putting pamphlets out about you know his activities which is why uh Burr shot uh Hamilton he had uh instigated a pamphlet about him yes uh one more thing uh uh live from Golgotha which is another one my uh another one of your favorite books that I like uh at the end of it there's a Japanese uh uh script and could you give me a hint that's what it is well we're giving away the plot of life from Golgotha but NBC has gone back to Calvary to play they can get through a Time Warp to film the crucifixion and suddenly there's been a takeover corporate takeover of NBC and of most media in America by the Japanese and so at the very end instead of The Agony and the passion of Jesus you see the Japanese goddess the mother goddess of the world suddenly appears on the screen and the entire past is being changed and there will be no more Jesus only the Japanese mother goddess so the book ends with two pages of Japanese celebrating her virtue and the fact she's all-powerful have any further comments for him on Burr on Burr well the allegations that that I figured out but did not I use I I don't make Reckless guesses about what people did and didn't do if I don't have something to go on Burr read in the papers that Hamilton who was uh defeated politician at this point but still making a lot of trouble ahead written a friend saying there is something I can tell you about Colonel Burr's character which is of such a Despicable nature that I could only confide it to you in private subs and paraphrasing the letter well I thought and I thought and I thought what on Earth could it be Burr had the height of an elephant he was the coolest man of his time and one of the brightest the only thing the love of his life was his daughter Theodosia it's his only only legitimate child and he had brought her up he was probably the first feminist in the United States He said women have the same Minds as men if they are educated like men so he educated her personally as as if she were a son she became a brilliant woman and and he was so close to her that they were like Buddies and his letters which finally got printed but were known about for to her other letters of of two young men writing each other I mean he writes about all of his sex life in Paris in some detail and he treats her as a son he thought of himself as Lord Chesterfield writing to his son his closeness to Theodosia was known to everybody and I intuited that Hamilton had said something about incest Hamilton wood Hamilton was Reckless and ran off at the mouth nothing else would have led Burr Vice President of the United States to call out Hamilton in a duel and shoot and kill him at Weehawken well a lot of outcry when I wrote this and I made a note I said I am making a guess here but nobody else has come up with anything the current there are two books out now about that period and one by a professor Ferguson forget his name acknowledges that he he too thinks that what is what happened and he's got some evidence in his latest biography of Burke so here we are 7 30 years later and the official historians are acknowledging that my intuition was probably correct talking about the in the parody of the series had you plotted out what you wanted to do which figures you were going to address no it just it just ambled along I said the first one to be written was actually the last one until now it was Washington DC that was written in 67. and it covered the period of of Roosevelt's Administration but I kept Roosevelt and so on in the background and uh my fictional characters were very much in the foreground it was the 30s into up to Eisenhower to about 54. that was 67 and then I decided I started to brood about it and I thought first of all I was teaching myself a lot of American history and I got interested well how what how did Roosevelt pull it off how did he get us into the second world war we all knew that he'd manipulated the Japanese into attacking us but how and why and then what what was there abroad in the land what mechanism what that he could touch to create opinion as David Hume would say that would convince the people that this war was a just War Hitler of course was a was a great monster but it's not necessary for us it's a great line of John and Quincy Adams he says the United States 1820. United States does not go forth to destroy monsters yes she could become dictators of the world but in the process she would lose her own soul you asked me what my politics is that is pure populism coming from a New England federalist but of like mind we have enough to do perfecting our society without going forth to slay monsters so that was pretty much the trigger thinking about how Roosevelt got to be Roosevelt and we got possession of the world so I went back I think I'll go back to the beginning so I go back to the Revolution and the most attractive figure to me is Aaron Burr it was also a relative of my stepfather and I'd always known that he had a bum rap from the family but I didn't know who or what he was and whoever it was one of one of your callers said you know what a mess they make of American history in school they fought a duel but you don't know why nor would it they try to guess so I go back to the revolution I go back to Washington and Hamilton Jefferson berb and he has a very sardonic style and I and I use a lot of his own writings then I move on to our great tragic period and president uh Lincoln and I'm able to bring in it a great deal of what it felt like to be on the losers side it's by the south I think has produced so many interesting writers once you've lost a war pain has has a great resonance for you then I go on to 1876. which is the Centennial of the country and we are once again steeped in corruption the Democrat Governor Tilden of New York wins the election by I think I think 200 000 votes the popular vote the Republicans who are still in some of the southern states and in the Far West in control of legislatures reverse the election and Rutherford B Hayes who lost it becomes a Republican president rather be rather be fraud he was known as 1876 and you get a sense then of the Centennial from there we go on to Empire which shows the plan being made by Theodore Roosevelt Henry Cabot large Brooks Adams brother of Henry Adams a brilliant geopolitician uh to create an admiral man who had the theories about sea power we deliberately picked a war with Spain which was a very weak but Imperial power we defeated Spain we grabbed Cuba we grabbed Puerto Rico best of all we got the Philippines right off the coast of Asia that makes us a Pacific Power which was the dream of theater of the imperialists the jingos what am I politically I'm opposed to them uh out of that came the first big Armament that we had done since the Civil War the Great White Fleet of Theodore Roosevelt then we got meanwhile we got the Hawaiian Islands and we were of great power in the Pacific and we're looking hungerly at the mainland of Asia Brooks Adams one of the four conspirators uh said he who possesses shauncey province possesses the world where is John C Province well this happened Northeast China and Manchuria and it was then the richest piece of territory on Earth it had iron it had coal it was very very rich for the kind of technology that they needed then the Japanese had their eye on it the United States had their eye on it Germany was even beginning to come and you know Slither around in the neighborhood so that is Empire we are now launched as a military power we had promised the Filipinos that we would liberate them from Spain and they could organize their own government once we saw the value of the possession of the Philippines we went back on it and we refused to remove ourselves and we took over the government of the Philippines that caused the Civil War in which something like 100 000 Filipinos were killed men women and children we went slaughtering not long after a major general the charge of the Marine Corps calls medley Butler wrote a book and he he was coming down during the early part of the century 1920s up to the 1930s and he said I was essentially an enforcer for the banks as commander of the Marine Corps he said I was making Nicaragua safe for standard oil I was making Shanghai we invaded Shanghai safe for City National Bank or whatever the bank was called and he named all of the Great entities commercial entities that he was working for even though he was the United States government and he said I was the Hitman I was the enforcer for these Banks and these corporations he said you know I operated in three continents Al Capone only had three Chicago districts this is not in the history books and that's why I write these books to remind people through the F form of a novel what was actually said and done and what has been suppressed next call for you is from Buffalo Buffalo you're on the air let's try Buffalo again all right I think we might have lost them the last in the series before the Golden Age Hollywood uh but he asked me what is it about I said well Hollywood is about Woodrow Wilson and Warren G Harding their presidencies I study but I also it was a great deal about the silent days of the movies one of the figures that runs through the last two or three novels is William Randolph Hearst it was a very important figure not only did he invent tabloid journalism but if there was no news he would invent it which then puts the whole question what is history on the table if the historian goes back to old newspapers to reconstruct an Administration and that's been faked how's he to know what is history and the the very end of the Golden Age there's a whole meditation on the nature of history is anything real so with Empire with uh Hollywood what I'm doing is I show the silent days the movies with all of chaplain and so on it's kind of fun but you also see the influence of uh first of government Woodrow Wilson on Hollywood at the time of the first world war he said a guy called George creel out there and George creel was to organize propaganda movies the Huns from Hell stuff like that and they did a lot of propaganda Wilson appeared in at least two movies as himself you know was great sentence contentious thoughts and suddenly Washington realized the importance of Hollywood and Hollywood realized that Washington was very interesting partner they talked today about Hollywood and you know as though this was something new and bizarre but it's been going on since 1914. that were symbiosis then I go into Woodrow Wilson in the first war the disaster of the League of Nations and Warren Harding who's probably our nicest president he really was a very good man surrounded by a very corrupt people next Call Yonkers New York yes hello thanks for having me on the air uh I wanted to ask Mr Vidal if you could talk a little bit about the actual process that you have to turn materials that you have acquired in your historical novels in and transform them into a narrative form uh the actual process by which you compile the the uh the bulk of the research material that you gather and uh transform and you know put it into a creative narrative uh well it's a format it's uh it's a matter of reading and I read you know I'll read 100 200 300 books sometimes before I will start I have to own the book so I can write in the margins and uh as you read you begin to see relationships between people that helps you with your characters then you begin to find things that have been omitted in the official histories and you begin to wonder why why has it been left out why is General Smedley Butler forgotten when he had made such a startling uh gave such a startling world view of our activities it's a matter of taking a lot of notes I was helped in this series because I'm working with one family so I know them and I and now I start with one generation second generation third I think I've got four generations in there so I'm at home with a family I know and they're the fictional ones the real ones are all interrelated which is a curious thing that I found doing American history that it's a very small deck of cards that governs the United States occasionally a new card is added and and some old cards are thrown out but it's always pretty limited the players and you see how from Administration to Administration there they are for the first 40 Years of our history of 50 years it was pretty much Virginians all of whom knew each other except for the two atoms as who came in and each got the heave ho from the Virginians they didn't want anybody from Boston in the White House uh you begin to see these patterns and of course the reading I mean I have the luxury of taking all the best stuff from other historians I just lifted and transform it and then I put my fictional characters together with the real people and it's not and this the reason for the fictional characters is that they can observe and have opinions which I as author must not and I can't pretend uh that I know what goes on in Abraham Lincoln's mind but I can tell you uh what one of my invented characters thinks of him and if there's a contradiction in Lincoln I can have another character no no I don't think that's what he meant at all so this gives me the luxury to comment on what I'm doing and then the historical novel is I practice it is essentially uh it's history it's like it's like a libretto and the fictional characters are the music so you might say in a sense these are sort of operas that the music starts and these are the fictional characters and then we go through the familiar story Abraham Lincoln goes to forward theater and we know the plot as we always know the plot of Julius Caesar or Aida and uh then we have the fictional characters observing what happens with pity or with all when you speak of the small deck of cards in fact you are an example of the interconnectedness of the power in America oh my Heavens yes well a lot of that is because my mother's family the Gore's were anglo-irish from uh County Donegal who came over in the 17th century well those of us in the South who came from the British Isles in the 17th 18th centuries I think we're all related there are so few of us you know we intermarried not only I've I've never I've never said it until now I don't think that in addition to the gore family and my cousin with Albert Jr oh God I tremble to think that I'm going to say this I get a lot of mayo you know from people who are relatives particularly from the south because they know everybody's connections I am a fifth cousin twice removed I don't know what twice removed means except I think by-election and defeat maybe it's what is meant of Jimmy Carter now you know it you know the worst Jimmy Carter he had a grandmother I think who was a k from South Carolina and my grandmother who really raised me Mrs TP Gore wasn't born Nina k from a South Carolina family and I'm told that Carter this was a favorite relative of Carter who was the K and she was certainly my favorite one so Kennedy Administration Jackie she and I had the same stepfather we finished the York who was descended on his mother's side from an uncle of Aaron Burr and he had a painting of Theodosia rather his friend of his had a painting of Theodosia that I used to look at when I was a child that's the daughter by bird Mexico's from San Diego it's a little uh Mr avidao I would have to say that I hadn't really uh heard too much of your speaking I've been aware of your uh sort of stature in the literature community and as a child of the Baby Boomers uh it is a product of the psychologically inadequate education that we have unfortunately uh but I would just uh so totally surprised about the shocking Clarity which had been sort of explaining the history of the age of Imperialism in the 20th century and whatnot and I just had a quick question regarding the uh the relationship of William Jennings Brian that you were speaking of earlier and the the sort of how he was supported by the greenbackers which were uh linked to Lincoln's Greenback policy and that sort of uh idealism and also when Woodrow Wilson uh Willie Jennings Brian ran last I think in 1908 ended uh Woodard Wilson of course in 12 and if he of course won the election and uh Hal Wilson and the Democratic party that was sort of manipulated by Wall Street when they passed the Federal Reserve how that sort of went against everything that William Jennings Brian thought and perhaps um in a lust uh for wanted Victory it seems as if the uh the Democratic party in 1912 sold themselves out like the Republicans did After the post-civil War era thanks well a lot to work with there thank you oh that's very well said he's quite right uh uh the Democratic party then became part of the corporate party along with the Republican party and it was Wilson's election that did it uh Wilson himself might not have gone that line but Wilson wasn't fell for imperialism Wilson was very divided about World War II and that's where he and my grandfather parted my grandfather had helped elect him in fact he was in charge of the 1912 campaign out of Chicago and they didn't get on but uh Wilson did say or not to him but somebody else rather wistfully said I wanted to be a domestic president and here I am a war president and I am and he was in favor of the war but he said I know at the end of this war those great entities that I have fought the trusts and the banks will own the United States when this war is over which is pretty much what happened I'll propose the caller from San Diego on Woodrow on William Jennings Bryan uh Brian demonstrated his anti-imperialism when Wilson uh got us into the war Brian who was his secretary of state and Brian resigned I have not known Any Man Of State ever to resign a post so high because of a disagreement over policy but the populace and the the true Americans I like to think of it did not want Foreign Wars they'd saw no point why on Earth should we be disturbed by the Kaiser so he wanted to have a fight with France let him have a fight with France it's not about business and he's thought to be a buffoon Brian because of the Monkey Trial in Tennessee he was no fool he was a man of principle he had a great speech explained in his last speech at a convention he said no matter my faults as a man and as a politician I have kept the faith in these many events over these years of American history that you've chronicled is there one that you really wish you could have been at it in person no first of all if I'm in a time machine I don't want to go anywhere where there's no anesthetic just forget it I think we would be very uncomfortable in any of those past places the one volume I I would like to have written that I didn't and it's now far too late because I can't do this sort of research anymore but I missed out on the Mexican War I really should have done Henry Clay and Franklin Pierce who's a fascinating president the most overtly nakedly ambitious he picks a war with Mexico in order to grab California and the whole Southwest of the United States that's a fascinating time and Lincoln was a young politician opposed to the war but then went along with it and out of it came of course Jefferson Davis and Ulysses Grant who's probably our greatest prose writer his Memoirs are a masterpiece wrote them penniless isn't that right dying of cancer he'd lost all of his money in one of the crashes That Wall Street prepared everything was gone so and he was leaving Julia his wife with no money so he makes a deal with Mark Twain who's also a publisher who paid him an enormous advance and uh as he died I think he finished the book one day got the money for his wife the next and died was it popular at the time oh yes in two volumes and in due course it was disdained by literary people because he was known to have been a pretty bad president but he was a very great General what nobody knew it was Gertrude's time I think first pointed it out he wrote the best American prose I mean we've had a grander writers like Henry James but for the plain Style it was perfect that was what West Point did you had to be clear when you sent an order send the second Battalion to such and such a hill you had to be precise you couldn't be windy and it's a beautifully tight austere rather the way of a rather like Julius Caesar's except Caesar's two self-serving Caesar is nothing but trying to trying to convince you it was montane said about how maddening Caesar is and he writes about his doings in the gallic wars we all want to know how how he was such a great General and all he wants to do is convince us what a great engineer he was he wastes Pages after pages on how he built a bridge over a river Grant doesn't do that he stays with the subject Philadelphia next hello um it's a great pleasure for me I'm a great admirer of your Works Mr Vidal and of Youth into personally I would like to speak about Lincoln you have aptly said that he is the tragic figure of American political history I wonder if you could expand on your opinion of the impact of his personality both as a president and as an American icon in the context of your broader themes of of Empire and militarism and secondly someplace else you referred to the American Civil War as our Peloponnesian War which I think is really a very brilliant analogy and I wish you could expand on that again it was great pleasure to hear you thank you well Lincoln is the most mysterious of the presidents and I I there is an error there's a kind of megalomania about him in when he was 29 and he was a legislator in Springfield he gave a speech to the young men's lyceum I think it was cool and it was really all in power and Presidential Power and I don't know it by heart I can give you a little bit of a paraphrase that uh he said about the man of great ambition it will not be content but simply occupying the presidential chair first occupied by Washington he will not want to be a successor that will not suit him nor will it suit anyone who is of the race of the Lion and the eagle such a man will be born and he will seek another field and to prevail he could free all the slaves and enslave all three men now this is Shakespeare this is Richard III warning us against himself and he's 29 when he gives it and he goes on and it takes a very odd line because he and he said all along I have no power to free the slaves there's nothing in the presidential Powers another in congress's power properties property and that is slavery is a shameful business but I can do nothing then the South being suspicious of him and the new Republican Party full of booze and Walter Scott decided to start seceding and he did his best to try to hold him back but they were going anyway they saw the north intervening in their affairs and he said finally as they finally all went he declared war and it was on a curious issue that our history books teach us it was to free the slaves the Civil War well the slaves had nothing to do with it Lincoln cooked up something that was only in his own brain that it was to preserve the Union and he was he was only always eloquent but he said I have some went to the union to break other others do not people differ but I have an oath sworn in heaven to preserve protect and defend the United States of America you will not go I will not acknowledge that you have left he would never say the Confederate States of America he never acknowledged that there was any entity but one United States he was a unionist he was not an abolitionist right or wrong is something else again I I treat him in a sympathetically in a balanced way and sometimes rather critically what he did now I think much of his famous Melancholy and so on was his knowledge that what he had done was reflective of that speech he gave as a Young Man at 29. he had transformed the United States from a rather loose Federation of States into a tight Union in which hundreds of thousands of young men had died and cities and cultures were wrecked and he was had created a bloodbath he also made the United States the most formidable military power in the world and I always felt and indeed the code of my you got Lincoln there I'll read you the last paragraph I do I think he knew perfectly well what he had done and I think well let's see what I think here uh John Hayes in Paris and he was Lincoln secretary and they're comparing Lincoln to Bismarck and Bismarck at the same time was doing to the German states exact same time who were independent that Lincoln was doing to the American state and I think said Mr Schuyler to the princess we have here a subject Lincoln and Bismarck and new countries for old and Hayes says well it'll be interesting to see how Mr Bismarck ends his career says hey who is now more than ever convinced that Lincoln in some mysterious fashion had willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing that he had done by giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to his Nation our next question is also about Lincoln it's from Sacramento here on the air good afternoon Mr Riddell um I have a quote from uh I don't know where the quote comes from but it says well it's from Abe Lincoln I see in the near future a crisis approaching that a nervous being causes me to tremble for the safety of my country corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed could you tell me where this comes from well it's Lincoln all right and it was I can't tell you I've forgotten do you know caller I found it in the newspaper yeah yeah well it's it's the Lincoln style is unmistakable so that is Lincoln it would have been toward the end and it probably would have been in a letter he it was never in a speech but he would he would occasionally give heartfelt letters to correspondence or to little newspapers around the country and that was his way of addressing the people and subjects that were not he couldn't do in the State of the Union but uh this sounds like one of his meditations which turns out to be prophetic in your reflection on the role of historical fiction in your newest book The Golden Age you tell a story about the reaction by the Lincoln files the Lincoln Brigade yes will you tell that story well which one I've got so many stories well the one is actually about your speculation that he dosed himself oh well Lincoln told Herndon who was for 17 years his law partner in Springfield and they share the same office and he was the only friend I think Lincoln never had he had well in maturity before that there was Joshua's speed but Herndon I don't even know if he's a friend but the two men in an office two lawyers practicing together and Herndon is the best all we have for 17 years of Lincoln's life and if you and some people try to rule him out because he tells things that are inconvenient Lincoln told him how he got syphilis uh when he was in his late 20s and he'd gone to a doctor in Cincinnati since he'd be gone to anybody in Springfield it would have been everybody would know and as he said he clung to him he couldn't get rid of the syphilis so he um finally was cured if you ever are with Mercury which is very dangerous stuff to take and it brings on all sorts of uh mental and physical abilities Lincoln was very odd at times and it conforms I have a doctor hershorn I think he is who writes me occasionally and he's doing a study of of Lincoln's syphilis uh rather the treatment for it which is mercury did he have mercury poisoning and there are great many of his symptoms The Melancholy and they suddenly be talking to him and he'd just stare off into space and not hear you and hideous nightmares he would wake up screaming in the night in the White House and there's a good case to be made that indeed he had mercury poisoning but at one point they he took something called uh blue well blue pills a purge for constipation which had mercury in it also and finally he's getting worried about it because he knows something is going wrong so he talks and talked about it he figures out he'll stop taking these purges and he did and he became pretty healthy again well all of this was quite well the Lincoln Brigade a great man has syphilis with a girl in Ohio oh maggoty said one greatest story this is a maggoty story well it's an essential story it has to do with the health and Mind of a president to forget his sex life why cover it up and that's what they do and one of the best things results of my Lincoln which was has been a formatively successful with the public and now with many scholars uh I'm I'm really giving it to the Lincoln Brigade we'll keep trying to falsify him far more to the point than that is that um Lincoln I am convinced to the day he went to Ford's Theater still wanted to colonize the freed slaves at the South in Central America he'd already got hold of some land down there which is now near near Nicaragua or over in Liberia he said he wanted to do that in his first state of the union and then he sort of dropped it in public and in due course he's freed the slaves in the South during the war but not the ones in the north who from the from the border states uh which he could have done but he didn't do that because he needed the white vote there so basically uh this was his plan because he kept saying and he rationalized it he said these are three million people who have been held in terrible slavery they are without education they are without skills and so on and he got a bunch of free men free black men from New York to try them persuade there cousins in the South to go to Liberia and one of them said to Lincoln I have all this in the book He said uh why do you think they can't support themselves when they have supported themselves and their masters in considerable luxury for the last 200 years well he didn't have much of an answer for that one and finally they said well you know this is our country we've been here as long as you have we see no reason that we should go off to the jungles of Africa now the latest word from the Lincoln Brigade is that Lincoln did have the notion but gave it up after his first year in office golis ignores John Hay his young secretary's diary when he writes his colleague Nicole he said the ancientist was their code name for the ancient I think this is August 1864. I think has given up his hair brain notion to ship all the slaves out of the South at last he's been convinced by something had gone wrong then General Ben Butler in his Memoir unsavory figure but he says that Lincoln before had brought up the subject again in the early spring before Ford's Theater of 65. about colonizing them at elsewhere so one very clever historian uh came up with the fact that secretary Stanton Secretary of War had said no General officer could come to town without permission fearing a coup I think and Butler couldn't have been in Washington which my answer is nobody told General Butler what to do if he wanted to come he came and if Lincoln had said that to him uh why not now this is the extent to which in the age of Martin Luther King the white historians have gone out of their minds trying to readjust history and this is this has been one of the great Spurs for me to write these books I can't bear the falsifications of the data the data is pretty clear they have to twist themselves into knots and history so it has finally come to this that if you want to the real truth of a situation you must turn to a novel and he must reject the court historians who are there to falsify take one last question before a brief break and it'll be from Chicago you're on the air yes Mr vadal an honor sir thank you um I have there were so many questions to ask but here's the one I'm going to ask and it's a what if question if Burr had remained politically viable after the duel or if Hamilton had not died because of their military capabilities do you believe the early course of the War of 1812 might have been different for example could we have acquired Canada Etc well as you know if you read me on the subject whenever in doubt we invade Canada at the time of the Revolution when the British occupied I think they'd already occupied New York and uh Philadelphia first thing General Washington does at Lexington is send Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr up to Canada to Montreal background to conquer Canada they failed at the time of the War of 1812 one of the first moves made was to invade Canada this is when the British were burning down the White House and they'd taken Washington we didn't care about that we wanted Canada I think had Burr and Hamilton not not one dead in the other under a cloud I think we would have been more militaristic Burr always I'll tell you who drove these two men remember they were both five foot four or five uh was Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 when Burr became vice president Napoleon was you know about to be Emperor France and going to conquer Europe both Hamilton and Burr had their eye on Mexico and uh where the Spanish were and there's Mexicans didn't like the Spanish and Hamilton was dealing with one group of indigenous Mexicans for want of a better word uh to get the Spanish out and Burr was also maneuvering to make himself emperor of Mexico after he ceased to be vice president and was under a murder charge up in New York so he goes down the Mississippi with a little army all prepared to invade Mexico and take over gets a lot of help moral help certainly from Jackson Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay this was the bum wrap the Jefferson President Jefferson put on Burr he said Burr wants to separate the western states from the Eastern he didn't he wanted to go down the Mississippi go to New Orleans go over to Mexico and make himself emperor so at Jefferson arrested him for treason which he had not committed and it was a bum rap and everybody knew it and he was exonerated but your what if question uh yes I I think that had Burr got on to be president which was the original arrangement with Jefferson the Jefferson was a very slavery a noble but Sly and devious man I must say Richard M Nixon who had the most wonderful unconscious mind says in six crises General Eisenhower was a far more Sly and devious man and people suspected and I mean that in the best sense of those words I agree with our caller here that uh 18 War of 1812 might have ended with an invasion of Mexico and of Canada our conversation with Gore Vidal is just halfway over we're going to take a break of about five minutes in length during that we'll show you some upcoming programming here on book TV on C-Span 2 and then we'll we'll be back for a second 90 minutes of in-depth conversation with gorvadol in just a moment book TV is live in depth with Gore Vidal continues I love you Ronnie is a new book by former first lady Nancy Reagan it's comprised of letters or husband former president Ronald Reagan wrote to her over the years and her Reflections on the letters the book is number three on this week's New York Times bestseller list last week Mrs Reagan signed copies of the book at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley California you can see that event following our live in depth with Gore Vidal today at about 3 P.M and later tonight at 9 30 Eastern here on book TV only on C-Span 2. this is a new collection of essays called the best American science writing 2000 and next Sunday on book TV will feature a panel discussion with contributors to this book including Stephen J Gould on the site is discredited by Darwin Natalie Angier on the fashion sense of prehistoric humans and Oliver Sacks on how his family introduced him to science a panel also includes the book Senator James Glick on the whole field of science writing the best American science writing 2000 next Sunday at noon and again at midnight the southern Festival of books takes place in Nashville October 13th 14th and 15th Southern writers will gather to take part in book signings and panel discussions and book TV will bring you live coverage of the festival Saturday October 14th here on C-Span 2. here's a list of the best-selling non-fiction books from the conservative book club at number one sell out by David shippers it examines the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton next the Triumph of Liberty Jim Powell's collection of stories about people who've contributed to America's fight for liberty Thomas Jefferson Elizabeth Katie Stanton Cicero and others at number three the Long March by Roger Kimball looks at the effect of the 1960s cultural revolution on America book TV is featuring Mr Kimball's book this weekend the world according to gore is a Critical examination of Vice President Al Gore as he runs for president by nationally syndicated columnist Deborah Saunders it's at number four next is from dawn to decadence by cultural critic and historian junk barzon it's a look at Western cultural life from the 16th century to the present year of the Rat how Bill Clinton compromised U.S security for Chinese cash is by Edward temperlake and William Triplett it's number six seventh is the homeschooler's guide to portfolios and transcripts by Loretta Hewer at number eight the irrepressible rothbard by Llewellyn Rockwell what is a man by historian and commentator Waller Newell uses writings from Shakespeare Plato and the Bible to Define masculinity and finally at number 10 the average family's guide to Financial Freedom by a husband and wife team Bill and Mary Tui the conservative book club focuses on politics religion history and current events from a conservative point of view the club was founded in 1964 and currently has 70 000 members for more information call 1-88 get book what do you like to read well I love poetry and I love literature from all over the world right now I'm reading the unbearable lightness of being by Milan Candera and it's an amazing book it's so weird because he is Czech and I'm originally from Southern Africa but the characters they just they're so great it's like I can relate to some of the characters in the book I can relate to exactly what is going on in the book and what he's talking about it's just things that we've all probably thought at some point in our lives but it's not you know been written down it's not been articulated and when you're reading it you're like oh my gosh this is makes so much sense so that's what I'm reading right now give me an example of one of those things that you find so interesting okay what I find so interesting in this particular book there's a passage where he's talking about um when you are an expatriate because his characters are checks Le living in Switzerland and he says something about when these characters do not have a safety net you don't have the the comfort of having your fan your family there all your friends and speaking the same the language that you were born you know into that culture you're born into so you don't have that safety net and at some sometimes I have felt that way because I'm an expatriate to this country so it just makes so much sense and I really love the book but I also love children's book and The BFG is my favorite book of all time by Roald Dahl so I love that book too um history books um history of Venice by Norwich on his um there's a Hitler history book by Lucas I like and my favorite is All the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein why do you like that book because the movie was based on it and I liked the movie which did you like better the book or the movie um the book was ten times better told a lot of stuff they left out in the movie it was really good um gosh it just that was my favorite throughout the fall book fairs and festivals we'll be bringing together authors Publishers and readers and here's a look at some of the events coming up the 25th Annual Deep South writing conference gets underway October 10th it takes place on the University of Louisiana's campus at Lafayette Nashville Tennessee hosts the 12th annual Southern Festival of books the three-day event includes readings panel discussions and signings by authors from around the world in November the Buckeye book fair happens on the 4th in Worcester Ohio it'll highlight new releases written by Ohioans and books on topics relating to the state the military history book fair takes place in Pigeon Forge Tennessee from November 10th to the 12th it's part of the town's 15-day event honoring America's veterans also in November the Kentucky book fair on the 18th in Frankfort on the campus of Kentucky State University and on the first weekend of December the San Bernardino Latino book and family Festival gets underway with educational workshops book signings and poetry readings if you'd like more information about these fairs and festivals go to our website booktv.org there you'll find an expanded festival list and hot links to Festival websites and please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and we'll add them to our website list write to us at booktv on C-Span 2. 400 North Capitol Street Northwest Suite 650 Washington DC 20001 for this month's in-depth program a three-hour conversation which we are halfway through and right now has a brand new book out which is called the Golden Age it is the seventh and Final in a series of American History told in a historical novel and also a play that has been revived on Broadway a few writers looking at your life right now are suggesting that you're in something of a golden age yourself does it feel like it no 75 is not a golden age it has certain elements of lead particularly the knees are you beginning to think about Legacy are you you want to be in my will certainly yeah I just brought a carousel with me preserving what's important to you beyond the works that have been published do you think about that sort of thing no Groucho Marx once so wisely said how he would be remembered he said what is posterity ever done for me that's my view of the future doesn't exist because it's not there yet when it's there I won't exist so we go our separate ways you've I would suspect describing your writing Place surrounded by your books collected quite a number of them over the years is it of interest you to have them preserved as a collection so That Others May see your work well if others are interested I mean universities and so on I've my papers are transferring from one University to Harvard into the Houghton Library and I think that's yes I do I do think that correspondence I have letters from everybody in that I've kept everything for 70 years so it will all be in one place yeah I like that idea even though I won't be around but for historians and I think more of them than anybody else yes part of this program that's very important are your telephone calls and next is one from Massapequa New York and you are welcome to this conversation with Gore Vidal hi um I'm reading these questions so I'll be a little more accurate uh the first one is what caused or prompted you to write a life from Golgotha and just as a comment uh it's the book doesn't leave the Christian faithful with much awe about the centerpiece object I.E the synchronon of their faith hey did you understand the question it didn't hear a word you didn't hear a word you know you are not plugged in I'm going to ask our technician to plug you in while I repeat the question thanks very much the the question is about the book live from Golgotha and wanted to know what prompted you and her observation was that it doesn't leave those of the Christian faith with much about the centerpiece event well I it is after a esoteric work on the founder of Christianity who's of course not Jesus but Saint Paul and it has very theology in it is not bad and it's basically anti-paul line that he reinvented Jesus who intended himself only for the Jews as a possible Jewish Messiah and Paul wanted to make him International for everybody and that was uh a distortion of the Christian original Christian message to the extent that we understand it at all so I wrote a comedy about it which I thought is the subject deserved I myself have become seriously uh well I wouldn't say agnostic I think I'm I'm closer to atheists but I love uh Christian quarreling and I've wrote a book called Julian about Julian the apostate the fourth Century emperor who tried to stop Christianity in its tracks and that was favorable to the emperor Julian and not so favorable to the Bishops that he went to war against I think what we're going to do your technology is not quite uh we're not able to connect it so we've got a speaker in here you're not you're just not plugged in we didn't do that after our break so we'll have to listen to the next call on speaker and make sure you can hear Las Vegas you are on the air welcome we don't hear the speaker out here Las Vegas go ahead please Las Vegas go ahead uh hi Susan and uh hi Mr Vidal I'm a great admirer of yours uh especially because of your frankness with that you express yourself and I enjoyed your monography as you did for odonian press about the American presidency so I had a couple of questions uh first uh what American Presidents if any do you admire or did you admire and would you say a few words about Noam Chomsky uh who most of whose books I have and whom I also admire very much thank you thank you well of admirable presidents it's very hard to separate them from the times in which they lived uh some very marvelous men have been forgotten because they were not an in interesting times I would say that um well John Quincy Adams I suppose he he has served only one term which is not successful but I quoted from him earlier as an Anti-Imperialist he also when he was Secretary of State he wrote the Monroe Doctrine which has President Monroe's name but it was his work he was the first person perhaps the last American president to understand Foreign Affairs and what America's role should be which was do business with everybody have no special friends no special enemies no prejudices and certainly not be the world's policeman so I suppose JQ Adams Noam Chomsky and I our allies we do the same sort of thing that often with the same sort of audiences we did a an anti-gulf War a half hour discussion for some independent at the time television people no one the two of us was an interlocutor no one would put it on the air not even at four o'clock on a Sunday morning in San Francisco where they put it on air I've never seen such fear across the land I wish you'd called us we would have aired it were you around at the time of uh the Gulf War yes Gulf War but I think I think we must have because the the the guy who produced it certainly was very busy with it and we had a good team from ABC who did it for nothing you know just uh pro bono public cup at chavsky and I of course we have the same enemies and by your enemies one is celebrated largely the New York Times and this funny story of Chomsky uh he went to the dentist and uh Dennis said you know your teeth are all right but you've got to stop grinding them he said I don't grind my teeth he said well you do it was the enamel is worn off well I know so Mrs Chomsky was there and he asked this well when he sleeps does he grind his teeth he said oh no it doesn't grass well they both got terribly interested when did it happen well they finally found out that in the morning while having coffee and she might be out of the room he would start to read the New York Times at his teeth mind grind too when I read that paper particularly the things they do to that scientist at Los Alamos or their invention of the White Water plot it's a bad paper New Orleans next for Gore Vidal yes uh I love your books I keep re-reading as a matter of fact and one of the things that keeps that strikes me is um that your uh your work changes over the years I mean I mean I mean not my my interpretation of your work changes over the years for example Messiah was that kind of book for me it meant different things to me as uh different events took place in the country but one the thing I'm interested now is is Lincoln I'm rereading Lincoln and uh one of the things I I wanted to know now that Dutch Dutch came out is there any difference other than that ideology between your method and Morris's Edmund Morris's okay thanks for the call actually would you speak a bit about Messiah before we return to yeah Messiah came out I had a period after the city and the pillar when the New York Times book reviewer Orville Prescott and he was very powerful he did about five daily reviews a week told my publisher that not only would he never review a book by me but he'd never read one so I published seven books that were never reviewed in the daily New York Times or by time or by Newsweek this was a blackout all because I had said in the city in the pillar about the normality of a relation between two all-American boys and I was the war novelist Etc who was pronouncing upon this heresy the seventh of the books that uh were not reviewed by the New York Times was Messiah and it came out invisibly because you get no press particularly if the times will not look at it or the news magazines but something odd happened it's about a man who sort of says he's a messiah or people say he is and his message is that death is no thing therefore nothing can not be a bad thing and in selling that it becomes a sort of cult which finally ends a lot of it's been lifted for movies solely and green stole a wonderful piece of it where people go to commit suicide to these comforting places and you lie and you look at a screen and you see movies or whatever uh well the book became a cult book in no time at all it just more and more people started to read it and hand it around and I was fascinated by the diversity of those who were drawn to this thing on another level it showed uh how easily through television that you could create a religion how quickly it took Christianity centuries to take over Europe and uh he does it in two or three years then at the end of course they want him to commit suicide as he's encouraged others to do and he doesn't want to so they have to kill him and pretended he killed himself as death is no thing and how why it's because to this day is selling and or at least it has not not a great seller but it has it has its devotees if television can so quickly create Messiahs why have we were not seen them in the television age well we do we see their uh spokespersons the Jerry Falwell Oral Roberts Billy Graham they're doing they're making a lot of money out of being a professional profits it is now that you've asked that question that's an interesting one it hasn't occurred to me why somebody hasn't used it to start a new religion oh Scientology I don't know if they've used television but they've certainly made themselves into a religion uh from a book by a science fiction writer of the 50s we had the same publisher for messiah that L Ron Hubbard had for dianetics I guess that's the case but not TV you'd have to have some a charismatic type so far they wrap themselves in Jesus or sing my way on television Flanders New Jersey or next yes sir two questions uh first what do you see the trajectory of the novel being in the next century and second can any amount of pleading on my behalf convince you to write an April in the series well plead some more I might go back to 1846 but I don't see myself doing the Kennedy years or anything closer because if I did it having been involved I would probably have to do another Memoir to cover it which might be the way of doing it and I might yet do that the novel is the you know going through a strange patch it's become academicized most of the writers and certainly practically all of the reviewers seem to be English teachers uh I don't think this is necessarily a good thing I you can make books out of books writers have always done it or been inclined to do it but anterior to literature is something called life and if you haven't had a life uh but a really involved one even if it's just simply an inner life sitting by a pond in New England you're not going to be very interesting and that to me is a problem that the writers now working particularly the ones who are School teachers and universities they've had so little experience of the world and there's so much they've shut out Mary McCarthy was wonderful on this she made a list of all the things that a novelist may not do a novelist who's considered serious you can't have a sunset you can't have an election you can't have a really good dinner party you can't have and she displays this list of all the things which had made classic fiction great have been carefully put away oh no that would be corny or we don't know enough about election have a president in the book How could you write about wanting some sort of fantasist you don't know any presidents they Pride themselves on the fact that they go to school they stay in school they get tenure and some may have a real talent for writing but there isn't the there must be a little spark which is known as life to set you going I had a fairly interesting life and certainly three years of the army gave me an awful lot to write about so the trajectory I don't think is very promising people who want narratives who want to be amused by stories that are now video cassettes I find something very odd going wrong with people who use computers now maybe it's the people or maybe it's just my inability to understand but I think the prose is flattening out I can tell Computer Pros very often now particularly when the same paragraph occurs three times the two pages and I know it's a computer on a blink uh it'll be interesting to see what happens but uh I think that the only form of prose that is going to last is the essay people need that that is it's short it's uh one man's voice making connection with another man's person's eyes it it is you're suddenly you've got montaigne from a 500 years ago and he's talking to you as though you're in the room and you can respond to them it's really the kinetic energy is so great between the great essays and the readers well speaking of essays we should tell our audience that a new collection of your essays is scheduled for the spring or the spring yes they're reissuing United States which Random House my last publisher the second I left them to go to Doubleday uh pulp that they just got rid of it and the first was my collected is do you think that should do it oh I I go on writing of course but this is a pretty big book of essays it'll be some time before I have another volume will you talked just a minute about editors over the years and how you use editors I don't have much to do with them I've got a very nice one a double day it was actually interested in books most of them are interested in marketing now and their eyes glaze over at the thought of literature he he likes it it's dedicated to it uh I had one very fatherly one Nicholas Raiden at EP Dutton when I was 19 20. and Dutton published about seven novels about 10 novels ending with Messiah and he was a very nice White Russian and he was a very good editor and no problem I'm not edited you know I'm copyrighted to go over to make sure that that I have no dangling participles but uh I don't get help for anything I've completed the work by the time I give it to the publisher and uh wonderful man at little brown where I was probably happiest and left them like a fool they did Julian and they did Washington DC they did Myra Breckenridge and we had a successful time Random House was not so pleasant and double day is well we're on the subject of of how we write in the mechanics when you described Grant's writing as West pointian what about your own how would you describe your writing well I have different different voices I'm a mimic and I can mimic or I used to it when younger and more alert I could almost do anyone's voice and also being a dramatist uh I can make scenes and people actually talk in different voices which conform with whatever their characters are if I'm impersonating a Roman Emperor I will have one style for Julian Myra Breckenridge has a style never before heard or seen on this Earth is furious terrible clamor in my head as I was putting her down so there are different styles in fact let me show you the cover for the paperback of Myra Breckenridge as we take our next telephone call and it is from Seattle uh hello Mr Vidal I really appreciate your books and I was wondering if you comment on the use of covert activity from the time of Burr through Lincoln and now that we're spending 30 billion dollars on Covert activity it actually controls our Foreign Affairs how do you I I mean all the people are interested in spies but most people don't believe that are not interested in really knowing what's going on with our CIA in this country well I deplore our secret government which the CIA is I deplore the Los Angeles Police Department which used to have a foreign policy and they were against uh enemies of the Vietnam War which I was the whole country is becoming a police state here's a statistic that I saw on the front page of USA Today about a week ago there are six million people in prison or in what they call incorrection I suppose that's parole or perform schools or something six million people that's three percent of the adult population no other country has ever imprisoned so many of its own people proportionately as we have done what is this about the harassment of Americans have you taken a trip by plane lately I have to travel with a passport in my pocket in my own country well we have to have an ID with a picture but why do you have to have an ID with a picture don't you if I'm a terrorist I'm going to have a fake one you fool uh this harassment never lets up we now have in New York there's a every taxi cab back a lot this is uh Edith Horton well you know a government that does not care enough about us to give us a National Health Service which other countries have is terribly worried that we may go through the windshield this constant harassment of the people and one day I think they're going to rise up and tear this damn thing to pieces wood that I were young and it was spring and very heaven to be there Hometown next Washington D.C Mr Vidal what a pleasure and a privilege my favorite of yours was Lincoln and I picked it up for the first time 10 years ago having never paid too much attention to historical fiction I then embarked on a reading campaign over the course of five years Sandberg Bruce catton I it just brought history alive for me in a way that no one else had and indeed you will live on these books that I'm standing in my apartment looking at now my son will inherit and of course his children will and hopefully from it will come as a historian the you sew it buyer so I have a question I've noticed an attitude of disrespect that's being embraced by Scholars by teachers by schools toward the accomplishments of our forefathers not just our politicians our leaders but our business leaders in general in this country many people feel this ties in with the changing demographics of this country how do you feel I don't I wouldn't use the word disrespect I think analysis and it's not brilliant analysis because the people in our universities are are rather timid and conformed for a lot of reasons but I think that many people are asking questions why uh have we come to the point that I have to carry a passport in the United States so that I have ID with a picture over the years attempts have been made for us to have a cards of identity which fascist states require and Bonaparte style democracies also require like Italy and France this is alien to the American tradition and yet now they've got it I don't know how a Diner's Club with a picture on it is identification of any kind but anyway that's what they want the constant intrusion the getting a hold of your Social Security number what they're doing now on the internet and buying things and they have a records they keep thorough records on just about everybody I think if there is disrespect for that I think that's good and if there is curiosity about how we got into this state most people think the CIA was always there it wasn't it was founded in uh 48 47 48. uh it's totally illegal unconstitutional I should say it does not submit it's it's uh accounts to Congress as the Constitution required lately they have seemed to be conforming to the law but I'd rather doubt it it's totally a rogue out there we have so many secret services that we don't know anything about them and we have so many activities going on abroad that we will never know anything about because they are kept obscure from us remember you know David Hume said in 1745 and he said how are the many who are many and so powerful and thus powerful controlled by the few or few and less powerful he says it is done through opinion and opinion is formed by the schools and the churches and the broadsheets which is what they call newspapers then he who controls religion who controls education and the Press the class that does will create any opinion that it wants to do anything that it wants if it's in England they want a war with France opinion will go against the French I have been reading American opinion all my life I have been reading I have never read a story in the American press that was favorable to any other Society we are constantly bad-mouthing every other country on Earth and we're the greatest we're the greatest we're the everybody envies us we're so good Sweden yes they have better education Better Health Service better daycare centers for working mothers but they're all alcoholics and they kill themselves as though because you have good health and good education you'll be so bored with your life that you will want to commit suicide and get drunk this constant drip torture of misinformation has really skewed the entire country no one knows what to think about anything I think a great many people have just pulled out they just ignore the constant propaganda yes we do get a lot of Fairly true information but who can Wade through it it comes at us in such avalanches Changing Times Palm Springs California for gorvadol thank you for C-SPAN and thank you for this interview with Mr Vidal my name is Joanna and I met you called I had the great Fortune of meeting you in Rome and also to have lunch with you in ravello together with my friend Joan we would use mind and Dynamics for an encounter with you in the Piazza del Pantheon I even wrote anonymous note saying Gore Vidal you are so beautiful that was 15 years ago now I would like to say to you Mr Vidal you are too beautiful thank you Mr Vidal well thank you I haven't received a compliment like that in at least 15 years um I work for a radio station and I'm I'm very protective of the people's trust of daily journalism whether it's from broadcasting or newspapers and I remember seeing a movie 25 years ago called Network in which he warned Patty chesky warned us of Messengers who would come and say don't trust the mass media trust me and and he would lead them in a direction plus inform them at the same time and are we getting closer to an age of that where we have people who call themselves The Messengers the mass media is not reporting this but I'm the one that's telling you this inside information and here's the direction that our government and Society should be headed is this something new or has this always happen in various forms in American history well governments generally mislead us and then again Messengers generally have the wrong message so that there is no generality that we can make out of this situation I think the opinion in the sense that David Hume used it is constant and is generally self-serving in this case for the government of the United States there are messengers there are voices that are telling the truth that are useful however everything that a government can do to silence Noam Chomsky or me that's an example they will do I talked to Chomsky I was up at Harvard giving a lecture and they had Flyers all around the Harvard Yard saying where I would be speaking what time about several hundred of them within 30 minutes they'd all been torn down there was no mention that I was there in the Harvard Crimson no message in the Boston papers I drew two or three thousand people uh that was the day I saw Chomsky and he said I just explained it he said well they do that to me too I said okay and it's all across the country this happens because opinion does not want us to be heard I said okay how is it that we we draw one two three thousand people how do they know we're there and Chomsky said I think it's mystical I don't know how there was some sort of underground out there that knows when something interesting is going to happen so that's how we Messengers get around caller uh we are drawn by the underground the underground has pulled us into their orbit at that time I should think what is called neoconservatives were the most motivated next call Idaho Falls that's in Idaho go ahead please uh well I um who's interested by your comment where you uh mentioned that the American history has been dealt from a very small deck uh The Addams Family seems to be part of this deck which is uh distinct from uh your connections I and you talked about Brooks Adams I guess I was interested if you could elaborate a little more on this person he's the one Adams member of the atoms clan that I have a lot of uh trouble finding out anything about it's a very good biography of Brooks Adams I have a copy of it don't ask me the author's name I'm at that stage of my in the springtime of my senility I'm beginning to lose names right and left but Brooks Adams uh there is a good biography I mean there's a great deal written about him and he of course wrote a great deal and he was sort of uh he figures in a novel of mine called Empire if you want to see what I have done with him uh I have a very funny scene when he he announces that McKinley has been shot and he comes rushing down and Henry Adams the atoms are staying up in New England for the summer and McKinley's been shot and their friend Theodore Roosevelt is now president and Brooks Adams and I whenever I was seen with a real person like Brooks Adams I take it from letters I take it from life and he came rushing down the lawn and he said he will be greater than trajan he will be greater than all the great Roman emperors and so on sort of him to Empire but Brooks had all sorts of uh curious Notions I talked earlier on the program about Chauncey Province in China which was very rich in minerals and so on he who controlled it would control the world that was a Brooks Adams proposition he also figured out at the time of the first world war he said Germany is too small a country to I think he had a funny funny image similarly to swing the hammer some some phrase like that they're far too small they'll find at the end of this war there are only two great Powers standing United States and Russia which is right on uh he is to be read and then the deterioration of the democratic process I can't remember that was he or Henry Adams or did he edit Henry Adams but I associate that with him but getting me so well worth reading well speaking of characters in your book I think we might have sidestepped an earlier caller's question about Dutch and the technique of inserting fictional characters into biography also Edmond Morris the author is in that book as you are in your most recent book The Golden Age what do you think about this whole technique and does it belonging biography as opposed to historical fiction well historical fiction is a is a curious phrase if it's Fiction it's not history it's history it's not fiction I have worked out a blend over the years in which my history is history the historical figures do what they did and say what they did pretty much than I have made up characters to mix with them I know Edmond Morris slightly and it may well be that he uh he might have picked up something from me along the way about the mixture I haven't read Dutch but um I gather from what I've heard about it that he He makes himself a very major character I'm a very small character in the Golden Age I'm this just there at the end to bring down the curtain and give my prosperous speech and uh our Revels now are ended and to contemplate what is history what is real what is fact I've dealt with it all through the series with William Randolph Hearst inventing Wars inventing it news and then historians working from his inventions and then what is real and then I come back to Henry Adams uh image which is all his energy and he had this image of the Dynamo which would be the great 20th century ah God it is energy it is force that matters and matter that matters is force well may I get you to read just one other paragraph while you're speaking about the closing of this book this is your view of the human race the last paragraph right there as for the human case the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide in the fall of a republic for the Rise of an Empire so significant to those involved is not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or with luck becomes something else since change is the nature of life and its hope and what do you mean with those observations metamorphosis change transformation uh before I get to that point I've already got Aaron Burr coming back and some of the characters are coming back it's now the year 2000. and we're in ravello doing a TV program and the young director who's Aaron Burr come back it's a descendant of birth and I asked him what are you going to do this time since I'm not the writer anymore always said it will he said I'm not going to bother with politics but it'll be it'll be something different more vast I said Oh you mean the internet no no he said larger than that I think the next thing is a restructuring of the human race physically that this is now a possibility that we with genetic experiments we can evolve a new kind of human being now of course we can evolve a monster or an angel or cross between the two but I think if there's a human race in a thousand years we won't look anything like we do now I'm not saying that in the book because I'm not going to end with anything technical uh or pseudo-technical but if we are to survive otherwise we will we will die I mean the planet is clearly dying uh we're running out of water the air is polluted there are too many of us we've used up too much of the planet so either we escape to another planet which we will that's why I use the image of bacteria we like bacteria the planet is our host and we're eating it up because there are too many of us so either we die out or we transform ourselves that's my message to the Troops next for gorbido's Albuquerque New Mexico Mr Vidal first first I want to say that throughout my life I've learned more I've learned history and social critique through the works that you have done and I think I have read more books by you than any other person on the planet ever at any time second I want to say something about an experience I had 25 years ago when I tried to meet you psychically and I and I ended up in the Beverly Hills Hotel and maybe you'll recall that moment and my friends were there and you I told you this experience and you were most gracious to me and I for that I'm very appreciative I think the confidence that I took in mind and thinking about that I could do something to affect the life of myself others the planet and being an activist actually derived from that moment of meeting you and I was I'm 50 today now my question 25 years later or from that time is that in your books it's seems to me that you actually transcend time and space feel that there's another energy that motivates you as well as the research thank you for contributing so to my life in the life of the people on this planet thank you that's the second caller who has attempted to make psychic connections with you does this happen to you a lot you're making one now I don't know about this other Force um we're certainly all interconnected we all go back to the Big Bang we we're all units of energy that when we go cold and dead entropy as they call it uh we then the elements that make us up will be rearranged in new kinds of energy new kinds of force so in that sense we are agreeably immortal though the Consciousness that his Jain and the Consciousness that is Jack is not going to continue but the material the matter that makes us up does go into new Arrangements and at the end of the Golden Age I'm through the return of Aaron Burr trying to show that uh something is can be in the works and it's probably going on we can say it's psychic we can say this part of our common Heritage of that init initial bang that's started creation what it is where it is we have still don't know it's a Pity it's like being handed a mystery story and you get interested in it halfway through so they take it away from you oh you don't need to know the end next call is from Vicksburg Mississippi and you're wonderful uh play I guess from 1960 the best man uh it was Senator Joe Cantwell was he based upon Simpson McCarthy and secondly did you have any say and and the cats you know the uh film and the leads uh played by Henry Fonda and uh Cliff Robertson [Music] um yes I worked with the producers on the cast stand Fonda was marvelous and Cliff Robertson uh was the best he's ever been as Cantwell Cantwell was not based on Joe McCarthy but I mean none of them are based on anybody they're suggested by certain political types and there's a nixonian ruthless type which is much closer I suppose to Senator Caldwell but the interesting thing about the play and how it works when it works is um the supposedly good guy has a lot of things wrong with him and the supposedly bad guy has a lot of good things going Chris North is wonderful as Senator Cantwell and half the audience thinks that he probably should be president despite his ruthless amoral ways and Spaulding gray who plays The Elegant stevensonian Style candidate um there's a lot of things wrong with him that you might not want in a president so the audience is I I don't I don't tell anybody what to think about characters I obviously have opinions but I I give the evidence I give the characters autonomy they say they take over and they say and do what what they must do unless they're historical in which case I stay with the agreed upon facts so I think it's a first of all it'd be boring if you knew what you thought about your characters before you wrote them and it would be very dull if you had a message to deliver you just let it evolve and then as you go over it you begin to see what what it is you've done you generally I find one right to find out what one thinks and I find if I don't write I don't think I just I I sensate that's about all Portland Oregon you're next good afternoon uh yes it is indeed an honor to ask you a question Mr Vidal actually I have two questions first you talked about the deck of cards being very small and I'd like to know more about the relationships or the uh among the presidents I know Franklin Roosevelt was supposedly related to 11 presidents number two had Ben Franklin and the others in Paris failed to get French help what would have been the result and how long would it have taken us to throw off British rule thank you so much well that's a good question without the French I don't think we could have done it you know Washington for all of his uh really great great character and and staying power was not a very skillful General thank God neither was Cornwallis so we we didn't have two bonapartes fighting each other here but had the French Fleet not come in at the end and decided the whole thing we might have lost the Revolution and we might have gone on for a Time as a possession of England as as even the the stupidest British government realized you cannot have a colony three thousand miles away whose population soon will be larger than yours I mean that's just it would have fallen apart in other words we we would have had a republic later on rather than immediately we might have had a monarchy there were a lot of monarchists and uh there was serious discussion should George Washington had George Washington's not name but not George he might have had he been William he might have become king he I I think he was tempted but we were getting rid of George III for George the first I mean that would send shivers down proto-populus spines but it was all important French aid and we got it and that was that small deck of cards particularly at the beginning uh particularly people who've been here a long time whether English from the British Isles or Dutch like Roosevelt yes uh through intermarry a web of marriages you do get related to everybody My Relations are more on the Redneck Side and Franklin Roosevelts were more on the Eastern aristocracy uh which intermarried all along so all the great Dutch families Beekman and so on Roosevelt was far more proud of being related to The Beekman family which were last distinguished in the 17th century in the state of New York than he was of being a fifth cousin to Theodore Roosevelt it's a combine's work earlier you mentioned the number of years that you were shut out from the New York Times today as you and I are talking in this town pick up the papers read by many both the New York Times and Washington Post have reviewed your new book do you tend to read reviews well I read this one because I'm going to take some action against the times I don't quite know what but uh they're in for a bit of punishment they gave the book The Golden Age to a British journalist who is Catholic has no subjects that I can tell other than the glories of being and sufferings of being gay and Marty parrots of the new Republic brought him over to everyone's surprise uh to edit the new Republic I guess that didn't pan out now he's a freelance journalist the times wanted an all-out attack on the Golden Age so they give it to somebody who knows no American history and he makes so many mistakes I forget what he says about me the mistakes that he makes no editor who knows anything would allow in their paper he writes it is silly when Gore Vidal says the Japanese wanted to surrender before the atomic bomb at Hiroshima everybody knows they want to in May of 45 the bomb was August of 45. every everyone who knows anything about that war he knows nothing knows the Japanese were trying to surrender they were defeated and the only sticking point was that Roosevelt had said unconditional surrender as Lincoln had said in the Civil War and they had a condition which was they could retain the emperor and they were still arguing about that Roosevelt is now dead Harry Truman goes to Potsdam he goes back he wants to go back on all the agreements made at Yalta by Roosevelt in the middle of his meetings with Stalin Stalin has promised to come into the war against Japan suddenly in the middle of the meetings he gets a message that a bomb has gone off near Los Alamos in the desert and the atom bomb works he now knows the tour in Japan will be over anytime he drops it meanwhile the Japanese are trying to surrender and they're dragging that we're dragging our feet and he wants to drop the bomb to frighten Stalin that was that was the whole point to the bomb Japan was there was no Tokyo the b-29s had eliminated the city so this was a very brutal Act of of diplomacy I guess there's a polite word for it to scare Stalin and to say look we're the Massachusetts of the world now we have this extraordinary weapon and you don't it'll take you years because you're too primitive anyway this Joker who should not be allowed to write about these things or if he is he certainly should be heavily edited and corrected uh doesn't know this he knows nothing indeed about the subject of the book which is Roosevelt administration and Harry Truman and Dean Atchison I have a marvelous Aria by Herbert Hoover but I don't make up her Herbert Hoover Arya or Roosevelt Arya I take it from what they've actually written or said and it's a it's a quite a passage if you've got a he's got it in his review and I've come to quite admire Hoover in some ways but Hoover was a very perceptive man and now he acts as though this reviewer as though I have made up the speech for Hoover when Hoover himself wrote it I am certain that the next war will apps will transform us absolutely and he means World War II I see more power to the great corporations more power to the government less power to the people that's what I fear because once this starts it is irreversible you can't extend the Mastery of the government over the daily life of a people without making government the master of those people's souls and thoughts the way the fascists and the Bolsheviks have done in his Serpentine Way Franklin is going in the very same direction that they have gone in and I think he knows exactly what he's doing now my dear Herbert Hoover was a bitter man who had just been had been defeated badly by Roosevelt in the 1932 election he was also very very conservative which I thought it was nice to give the conservative point of view since I'm thought to be liberal and so uh now you have a quotation from Herbert Hoover and he thinks that I make up everything and he's trying to tell use the authority of the New York Times and say oh don't believe anything he says whoever never said that that's redial talking well this is saying that what I do is totally a fraud and that's actionable what would make you happy from The New York Times oh with that fold well with regard to this review when you say it's actionable uh well we'll see what what action might be taken I'll tell you one thing if I wrote a letter to the New York Times correcting all of the distortions and just lies that he has written they wouldn't publish it they never published letters that criticize them they just get lost Renata Adler did a book about the New Yorker in which she mentions rather unpleasantly the editor of this book section and the times took revenge on Renata Adler on her little book on the New Yorker and wrote she's seven or eight pieces different parts of the paper attacking her in the book over and over and over again she wrote two letters of the times trying to correct them they wouldn't publish them so she went to Harper's magazine and did her entire attack on the New York Times and what it tried to do to silence her this is a bad newspaper Virgin Islands thanks for waiting you're on the air now can you um comment on the influence of Freemasonry on the American government and the possibilities of American imperialism might very well be an extension of British imperialism I don't know much about Freemasonry my grandfather Vidal was a 33rd degree Mason I never knew what that meant I don't well I don't know it's a secret society allegedly uh it certainly had great power in England the Prince of Wales was almost always automatically the nominal head of the Freemasons and we've had many important Americans have been Freemasons but I would think if there was a Smoking Gun somebody would have noticed it by now I haven't spending three hours with us on our in-depth program this afternoon we have about 25 minutes left in that conversation next calls from Sacramento a conversation next call from Sacramento you obviously have your TV set turned up too loudly why don't you turn it down and then go ahead well I don't think we're going to work with that call let's move on if we can please to our next call from St Louis hello Mr vadal hello I want to thank you so much for uh your book on Lincoln I the first biography I ever read was in first grade was about him and I then read everything I could about him and when I read your book it made him in his flesh for me and it was just an absolute wonderful experience my question for you are you very much disappointed me when you said well I'd like to write about the Mexican war but I don't have that time to research any longer who can you recommend these days as let's say someone who's going to take on your mantle to to write these historical novels that do indeed put put flesh and breath in a into a magnificent history that's that's so much better than any any story could ever be can you recommend anybody that I can be looking forward to reading their books since you are disappointing me so much by saying that you're not going to write another well I I don't read much historical fiction because I have to read so much history but I think for your purposes you know let's let us hope that in the near future we're getting some very good young historians are coming along and I think that they will fill in what what you want filled in in your view of the past they're much smarter and sharper than let's say 20 30 years ago you don't have the Dumas Malone as you know he wrote that huge life of Jefferson which he had nothing interesting to say about the most interesting of the president looked to history look to biography I think that's of Richfield what are you reading right now I'm reading uh trevellian's life of John bright and John bright was Quaker he was in Parliament in England he was a liberal in the 1870s and a superb writer and superb speaker and a great influence on my grandfather can you think of this boy from Mississippi who goes out to Indian Territory invents a state called Oklahoma and spends his time reading through a surrogate John bright and all of these English radicals I'm reading San Jose yes Mr Mr Vidal um I'm I'm one of these late readers I always read books about six years after they've been published and I'm uh enjoying Empire and particularly enjoying your description of Theodore Roosevelt with his clicking teeth um I guess my question has to do with the American aristocracy every time I mention it I'm told that I'm engaging in class Warfare my daughter is applying for college and she has a 3.8 GPA very high sat and she was basically advised that her chances of getting into Yale were nil yeah George Bush with a c average in high school gets him to Yale with mediocre grades at Yale by his own admission gets into Harvard Business School for the rest of his career he's basically protected by corporate interests who continue to fund his campaign and I guess my question is one that never seems to be discussed is what is the state of the American aristocracy and if there's time how does it differ with the British aristocracy having having lived in Britain do you do you agree with me my having lived in Britain do you agree with me that at least the British aristocracy has a redeeming quality that everybody admits it's there and that by right they get accepted to Eaton and not by supposed Merit thank you well we certainly have a a very durable aristocracy there's enough meritocracy that people join the aristocracy both here and in England England is always taking in new people to have new blood but the the heart of an aristocracy are the schools and this is interesting you use the example of your daughter and you use the example of bush who went to Andover and Yale and I went extra and would have gone to Harvard had I not chosen the Army instead uh it's the schools are what control the opinion of the children of the Rich and or powerful I had a stepbrother who was going to inherit a lot of money and he was sent to Groton that's when I've gotten Saint Mark's and so on those schools are invented for those who will be rich to make them into not only into gentlemen and Scholars but to inculcate certain values opinion I come back to David Hume this is how opinion is formed in the ruling class they know if you're sent to Groton what they're going to get in the way of Morrow and political training what their view of the world will be I belong to the ruling class I'm a stepbrother but I'm not going to inherit any money so I'm sent to Exeter which is for the bright boys of the ruling class who will eventually work for the rich boys and we will become judges Senators editors of the New York Times the many fields are open to us bankers but we we are the sort of apparatchics and not properly speaking except by birth a member of the ultimate class well that's how it's done and that's how they continue it uh there's always been a move in England where as you point out they know about the upper classes and we're not told we have the most intelligent upper class I've ever seen or at least overall they are nobody knows they're there they own the newspapers the newspapers aren't going to give the game away who really owns what who really controls what who controls opinion and to be there and never be named I mean people like Spengler and so on have done marvelous works but nothing really gets through to the people at Large and so uh they go on and on occasionally a Maverick appears among them I was one and there are others but by and large it's a closed Corporation there's a very good guy if you want to read more about this called G William domhoff d-o-m-h-o-f-f he teaches at Santa Cruz or used to a University of California who rules America he's written three or four of those books well he does he goes through corporations and he gets lists of directors then he goes to the social registers uh and uh finds their names and then he starts finding what clubs they belong to where they went on to college and he begins to construct you begin to know all their names they become sort of friends that you don't have and would we likely find them on the list of invitees to this and previous white houses of course some more than others you know now with the cost of Television so high a somewhat cruder sort of millionaires coming to the White House I don't think you'll see many melons going there or Rockefellers but you will see here movie moguls next is Ogunquit Maine are you there hello yes go ahead please Peter Lucas will you command online hello a caller go ahead please um yes um a very interesting program thank you very much for taking my call uh my question for Mr Vidal I have never read a Gore Vidal novel and wonder in your opinion sir where should I start well I don't know if what we've been talking about largely about which is the American Empire and the Republic for which it does not stand I'd start with Empire which is Theodore Roosevelt and Hearst and uh it's sort of a duel between two Titans will Roosevelt through his strenuousness and Empire building and the seizure of the Philippine Islands in Cuba is he going to really be the Augustus of a new great new world Empire or as William Randolph Hearst who controls opinion and who can make him or break him or so he thinks be the the titular deity of the empire and it's it's a duel between these two great figures throughout the book and it's kind of funny too have you a favorite among all of these big favorites choosing among your children yes next call is from Costa Mesa California hi good afternoon to the both of you thank you a question for Mr Vidal I tuned in a few minutes ago and heard you almost Lively toss off a comment about the uh Japanese trying to surrender before the atomic bomb was passed and although I'm not a learned man or a scholar I've read dozens of Memoirs and books about the subject and although there might have been some behind the scenes negotiations with the Swiss it seems that there was a uh not much not much thinking that the surrender terms were were really uh taken seriously by the Americans and so I just wonder how you tossed that comment off and uh I just didn't think that they were really trying to surrender at that time well you're not supposed to think they were trying to surrender uh it is the will of the American government and the school teachers who follow the lead of the government largely because they have to because there's a huge allocations for research and development that universities get which affects the humanities that is the history departments as well anticipating such a question is yours I will give you a little reading list first of all in May of 1945 Alan Dulles you made a reference to the Swiss meetings uh he was I think head of the OSS part of the OSS was having conversations with the Japanese about the conditions of surrender uh we had said unconditional surrender but basically we were probably willing to adjust it uh they had a condition they wanted to keep the emperor so I would propose that you read let me see here the decision to use the A-bomb by Edwin fogelman f-o-g-e-l-m-a-n it's very thorough and also unconditional surrender by John D Chappell c-h-a-p-p-e-l-l this is one of the most thorough uh studies of what preceded the dropping of the bomb by the 28th of May the president had been assured that the Japanese were defeated Admiral Nimitz said we don't need to invade and we certainly don't need to use nuclear weapons they will surrender in the course of the summer now that's Nimitz who was the admiral of the fleet in the Pacific at the time Stimson the Secretary of War under Roosevelt had been Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover and stimpson asked by committee was he surprised when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor this was earlier but leading up to it to the the way the Japanese mind allegedly worked he said I was not surprised letting on that is because I knew the situation best having been Secretary of State that indeed uh if put in a box I'm now shifting from the atomic bomb to uh Pearl Harbor that Roosevelt provoked Japan into attacking us in 1940 he got reelected by saying that no sons of yours will ever fight in a foreign war unless we are attacked and that was his campaign pledge to the American people he got elected president he wants to go into the war on the side of England which is being battered by the German air force France Has Fallen eighty percent of the American people do not want to go to war any more than they wanted to go to war in 1917. he does his best to try and convince them and virtuously since I'm on the side of England against Germany I too was all for the idea that we give them destroyers material help Russia too but the American people aren't going to buy a war the only way he can get in Japan has made a tripartite agreement with Germany and with Italy each will help the other in case of War Roosevelt is now deliberately moving Japan into attacking us finally in August I think it was of 1941. he gave them an ultimatum through Cordell Hall his secretary of state they had two Japanese ambassadors that come to Washington and he said you must withdraw from the mainland of Asia since 37 they've been trying to conquer China and they had already conquered Manchuria if not we will put an embargo on you and they were getting most of their oil came from us and scrap metal they didn't have metal of Their Own they imported if you don't obey this ultimatum they immediately prepared for an attack on Pearl Harbor apologists for Roosevelt in this instance by the way I am Pro Roosevelt and pro new deal I'm anti-American Empire apologists for Roosevelt to say that he expected the attack to come at Manila or some other place he didn't expect this massive all-out attack on Pearl Harbor which cost us 3 000 lives it came to pass on the 7th of December 1941 a week before the attack he wrote a letter this is all a matter of History to Wendell Wilkie the Republican opponent his Republican opponent in the previous election and he said we will be attacked probably before next Monday and we were attacked on Sunday now if he could write that a week before to Wendell Wilkie why didn't he write it to the commanders at Pearl Harbor the only warning that they were given by the war department was to watch out for saboteurs that they were around and a funny order came to move some of the newer ships out of Pearl Harbor and send off in a Westerly Direction hope that answers you Bloomington Indiana with about 10 minutes left to go you're on the air thank you I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to Gore Vidal and I appreciate what C-SPAN is doing and exposing different points of view uh I have a question about three specific individuals uh first of all Howard Zinn I'd like to know if you're a friend of his and if you approve of his work uh second of all Alan Ginsburg I'd like to know what your opinion is on his role as a spokesman not just for radical causes but particularly for the cause of tolerance for sexual diversity and finally I'd like to revisit the subject of Ralph Nader where I really don't understand your opinions because uh the opinions you've expressed about the duopoly our vote virtually identical to naders and uh when you say Gore is thicker than later are we to take this to mean that you're supporting him because uh of familiar connections because he supports NAFTA Gad corporate managed trade is totally inadequate on the environment and health and he depends he has a dependence on corporate money so I'd like to hear your your view on that well I certainly sympathize with your position and you haven't said anything that I regard as untrue about Gore is a bit more to Nader that I well remember when I was with Dr Spock I was co-chairman the People's Party 1968 to about I don't know 70 72. and uh Nader made no statement about the Vietnam War he avoided it and that was the the great issue of art of that period of time I'm not pointing a finger at him I'm just saying that I I would find a more attractive figure politically if indeed uh he had taken a stand no I I see it I I but I've been through this already I said yes there's a good point in making a not a duopoly but a third party but there isn't a duopoly there's a monopoly the Democratic party the Republican Party are the same party they're the corporate party of America they're paid for by the same people yes Gore is part of that but between an intelligent duopolist or monopolist I should say and an unintelligent one like Bush I'm afraid I would vote for despite or because perhaps of the family connection for the more intelligent one one of those two is going to be elected and it better be Gore of the two that he's totally unsatisfactory on many issues that I care about and you care about is something else and I don't even know it's if it's personal I don't know him I can't speak for him but I would certainly say he's part of the most corrupt political culture that the United States has ever seen we've had some bad patches before but this is like nothing else uh he is part of a system can he transcend it I doubt it but I hope you can that's the best I can do Howard Zinn or Alan Ginsberg I don't know who Howard Zinn is historian Alan Ginsburg was an old old friend of mine and uh he's wonderful he uh sexual diversity he was wonderful and uh he was just he was a Charming Man and and I miss is not being alive next call Springfield Missouri yes sir um do you talk about uh there being a police state and that sort of thing uh having developed after World War II two major futuristic police States if you will have been uh written about and uh celebrated quite a lot this Century in terms of uh or what I'm speaking of as of course Orwell and and all the cyclics Brave New World of the two which do you feel that we're more approaching well I must say eldest Huxley sounded a lot more fun than ours with that Soma everybody was taking because I suppose we can say the drugs are the equivalent today but I don't I don't see us going in either those directions uh everything changed after 89 we lost our enemy it takes a lot of money to create opinion as powerful as the opinion our ownership created for us and the Russians are coming and communism is everywhere when it isn't anywhere at least not in the United States it wasn't uh I see it more as too few people have too much money too many people have too little and the graspingness and the total power of corporate America if you own the New York Times if you own the present and if you own the Congress there's no way for the people to express themselves there's no there's no means of redress you can't say we've got a great out of the West out of the Monongahela Valley came a man a Titan you can't do that anymore times won't report the great new leader his speeches will not be recorded they have silenced just about every descending voice in the country and done it very very successfully we have C-SPAN here for which we should all be very thankful that at least they are able to fall as it were between the cracks of a pretty monolithic structure there isn't much else does the internet give you hope that I don't understand the internet I mean I don't know what it's all about I don't use it I look at it I've seen several sites with my name on it and uh one is run by a guy who seems to be making money out of it somebody told me I don't know uh yes it anything that one person or one Corporation cannot control is obviously going to be free or potentially free so maybe that is an answer I don't but not my subject Miami uh Mr Vidal let me say it's an honor to speak to you I I came to you at 25 years old it's late in life but fortunately before the uh establishment and the propaganda the admittedly impressive job I was able to turn a once idealistic 14 year old into a bitter and Crema doing at age 27 but a question and a comment first off I'd like to ask if you think it's possible in my lifetime for someone to campaign and have a successful shot of being president without uh binding to the agenda of the Jesus Christ resist to say someone who is an agnostic who sees religion and what it's done and campaign on that trend and the second point is that I think you're much too harsh on your old friend John Kennedy uh he his his idealism still Rings true for today and I think in uh in light of the revisionist the last 20 years he comes across as a better president and certainly a more realistic figure then I think the crop that is today thank you very much well on Jack Kennedy um I knew him pretty well and he was one of the most Charming men I've ever known one of the funniest but he um first of all he didn't have a liberal bone in his body it was ambition ambition and he really believed in the Cold War you know Truman and Eisenhower were two Old Pros they knew the Cold War had been cooked up by Truman the Russians are coming so that we could establish NATO the CIA militarized the economy control our own people not to mention everybody else who falls under our sway they're very cynical and in fact Eisenhower and his farewell to the nation in January 61 when Jack came to office he warned to the military-industrial complex he also something that people forget he warned of the influence on the universities of the of the military-industrial complex he said once a university accepts a large Federal allocation of funds that University ceases to be free where you should have free inquiry Etc and you will not have it because of the necessity they will feel I'm interpreting now I'm not quoting him that they will feel uh the government wants and this has affected the history departments they are serving up history even near history like Kennedy uh they're serving it up in order to create a kind of false picture of a country that anybody can be president and a land of opportunity of the People by the people for the people all that has been erased in the last 50 years there is nothing left of it except false histories and hagiographies and what was his other question it was about winning the White House as an agnostic I I think you better keep quiet about it because um Jefferson got caught on that and Lincoln almost got caught both were agnostics Lincoln came to use God a lot in speeches in his last year or two or the almighty and God he never mentioned Jesus and all of the Federalist Papers the founding fathers God has mentioned only twice Jesus is not mentioned at all you might tell some of your Jesus Christ of friends as the founders of the country where men of the Enlightenment and by and large they were either agnostic atheist or not interested they they they nearly got Jefferson who finally said he was a deist which means nothing at all he just thought there was probably a god and slithered out of that one Lincoln wrote a book called in uh pamphlet called infidelity meaning not believing in God and he showed it to Herndon his law partner and everyone said this is all-out Attack on Christianity I said this is great stuff said her into now burn it because you're going to be president so don't publish infidelity our three hours is finished uh they're about to say hallelujah as uh we close let me show you once again Gore Vidal's latest novel it is called the Golden Age it is the seventh and Final in the series of books chronicling American history published by Doubleday and available across the country in bookstores Mr Vidal thank you for spending so much time with us we appreciate it you can see book TV's three-hour in-depth interview with author playwright and SAS Gore Vidal again tonight at midnight

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Length: 180min 36sec (10836 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022