“‘Old age is a shipwreck’. Like man a ground soldier, General de Gaulle was drawn to maritime metaphors.”
Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000
This last significant collection of essays by Vidal was published in 2001 around the inauguration of George W Bush. He did publish some smaller texts later, and a kind of end of life memoir before he died, but this is probably the last sizeable work of his before his death in 2012. Like the large collection United States, this book covers literary, political, and personal topics, sometimes all at once. There’s readings of John Updike’s contemporary writing, there’s a kind of political obituary of Timothy McVeigh, and there’s numerous literary obituaries of people like Anthony Burgess, Charles Lindbergh, and Frank Sinatra.
There’s a handful of long essays that discuss the current state and decline of American Empire, which Gore Vidal is deeply and passionately critical of, especially what sees as the bankrupting of American life in order to pay for the Defense budget for the last 80 years. He circulates and reiterates this numerous ways, but what it basically means here is that since 1950 or so, the US has taken on trillions in debt in order to fight the cold war (something that Gore Vidal thinks was particularly necessary nor ever reached any actual crisis level) and the result is a state with no social safety net, deep cultural depression, no real infrastructure to speak of, and the intense widening of the wealth gap (what a loon!). I think I more or less agree with everything Vidal says, but man I wash I was as rich as he was (from the day he was born until the day he died) so I could worry about the state of the world from the privilege of not ever having to be at risk. I am not calling him out for privilege in the sense that he’s wrong or anything, but some of us need our little denials to stay sane.
The Best Man
This is a play that Gore Vidal wrote in the middle fifties which was also filmed starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson in 1964. The play takes place on the eve for the nominating convention for what really feels like the Democrats, but this is neither entirely clear or important as the criticisms and ideas here are more about modern campaigning than a particular ideology. The two leading candidate comprise a young Senator with a cute family, vague platitudes about the future, and solid military career, and the currently Secretary of State who was also a popular governor from Tennessee. Also on the scene is a retired elder statesman, the former president who can possibly play kingmaker with his endorsement. The play splits its time initially between the meetings of the former president and each of the two leading candidates. May the best man win, so goes the idea. We find out that the secretary is known for having affairs, but he and his wife seemed to have reached some kind of détente about the state of their marriage, and former president tells the secretary that while he respects him, he’s worried he doesn’t have the fortitude to be president. He’s got the ideas, but not the spirit. When he leaves the scene, the secretary correctly interprets that he won’t be getting the nomination.
In the second meeting, the young hothead senator is defensive with the former president and before he’s even able to say he will support him, the senator is telling him he doesn’t need him and that he has primo dirt on the secretary, who apparently had a nervous breakdown replete with suicidal ideation. Now that this is on the table, the endorsement is off, and when it gets back to the secretary, it’s revealed by one of his senior staff, that they’ve been vetting a story from the military career of the senator, that he was named as a possible homosexual in a court-martial case during the war. This presents a moral challenge to the secretary who doesn’t want to use or even threaten to use this info, but also doesn’t want his own dirt to come out, not that he’s defensive or even ashamed, but that it is painful and not relevant. So the play explores the choices between the two men as the clock on the convention moves forward.
This play is basically a very cynical Mr. Smith, but with some post-cynical sentimentality to it as well.