[rating=4]
Cert: U • US: 90 min • Amnesia Productions • April 18 2013

A deft insight into the life and work of one of the twentieth century’s great public intellectuals.

“The film works to remind us what a remarkable figure Gore Vidal was and vividly illustrates how rare such liberal voices are, not only in American politics but anywhere.”

Gore Vidal, by Christopher Bryant.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“Larry Kramer pressed Vidal in an interview to say he was a homosexual person, to which he responded, ‘Look, what I’m preaching is: don’t be ghettoized, don’t be categorized. Every state tries to categorize its citizens in order to assert control of them.’ He subscribed to an ideal politics.”

[rating=3]
240 pages (estimated) • Rex Press • 25 August, 2012 [ebook]

Cry Shame! is the story of Graziella Serrano, the ambitious daughter of Mexico’s greatest lion tamer. It’s Vidal writing in bestseller form..

“Vidal would not allow the Kay and Everard books to be reprinted, which is somewhat telling. In August 2012, about three weeks after Vidal died, Cry Shame! was issued as an affordable ebook on Nook and Kindle. Cry shame, publishers!”

1925-2012.

Gore Vidal, one of America’s greatest writers, died on July 31 at the age of 86.

“Over the course of sixty-six years Vidal published twenty-nine novels (five under pseudonyms), four memoirs (one disguised as an extended essay, Screening History [1992]), and countless essays as well as plays for television, stage & cinema.”

A Selection of Cover Art from Vintage Gay Adult novels

Olivier Joly curates a gallery of vintage gay novels, from pulp to classic.

What is fascinating about these books is that, from the ‘40s to the ‘60s, their cover art, titles and marketing blurbs give an insight into the evolution of gay male behaviour.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

Carved in Marble: An Interview with Gore Vidal.

Polari Magazine talks to the legendary author about his great character Myra Breckinridge, his 63 year writing career, and the turning point promised by the election of Obama.

My greatest achievement is that I’ve never killed anybody. Which reveals an awful lot of temptation. Because I have been visited.