• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Classics: Books / Myra Breckinridge (1968) • Gore Vidal

Myra Breckinridge (1968) • Gore Vidal

03 Dec 2008 / Comments Off / in Classics: Books/by Christopher Bryant

Myra Breckinridge   ★★★★★
Gore Vidal
224 pages • Little, Brown • 1968
………………………………………………………………………………………….

Myra Breckinridge was first published in the US in February 1968. It was released six weeks before the official publication date and without the usual pre-release for reviewers. “I wanted to prove,” Gore Vidal said, “that a book could do well simply because it was interesting—without the support of bookchat writers.” Vidal’s two previous novels were the political Washington, D.C, and the historical Julian. “Nothing in the versatile Vidal’s past will prepare the reader for Myra Breckinridge,” wrote the Time reviewer, who went on to ask, “has literary decency fallen so low—or fashionable camp risen that high?” Newsweek accused Vidal of writing “erotic propaganda” for homosexuality, and Publisher’s Weekly concluded “most of it just seems sniggering, like a small boy writing dirty words on a wall.”

Myra Breckinridge is written in the form of a diary. It is a record of Myra’s attempt to “recreate the sexes and save the human race from certain extinction.” The setting is the Academy of Drama and Modelling in Hollywood, California, an institution owned and run by the former “Singin’ Shootin’ Cowboy” film star Buck Loner, uncle of her late husband Myron. Due to its location in Hollywood, “the source of all this century’s legends,” the Academy is a microcosm of the world Myra plans to restructure.

Myra identifies an archetype of traditional masculinity, the 6ft stud Rusty Godowsky, as the focus of her mission. “Rusty is a throwback to the Forties,” she concludes, and therefore “sadly superfluous, an anachronism, acting out a masculine charade that has lost all meaning.” She therefore sets out to redefine his relationship to his “triumphant sex”.

Myra Breckinridge – the first of Vidal’s iconoclastic “satirical arias,” which include the sequel, Myron (1974), the satire on the television era, Duluth (1983), and the Gospel in the Internet age, Live From Golgotha (1992) – is a virtuoso performance by Vidal. Like all great comedy, it is equally funny and serious. “I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess,” the narrative begins, and this confident tone does not let up. It proved far too subversive, and its descriptions too pornographic, for the book reviewers who condemned it at the beginning of the revolutionary year 1968. When it was published in the UK censorship demanded that the most pornographic of the descriptions be removed.

Italo Calvino wrote that Myra Breckinridge “inaugurated a new phase in the way to present our era, which is comparable to pop art, but much more aggressive, with an explosion of expressionistic comedy.” It predates the writing of Angela Carter on the subject of sexuality, Hollywood and pornography by almost a decade. The issues that Vidal explores – how identity and sexuality are shaped by the cinema and television, and how machismo is played out in irrational wars on foreign nations – are as relevant now as they were in 1968. It is a classic of the Cold War era in American literature.

“We are now passing a diner in the shape of an enormous brown doughnut. I feel better already. Fantasy has that effect on me.”

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: cold war literature, duluth, gore vidal, italo calvino, julian, myra breckinridge, washington d.c.

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Snapshots in History’s Glare
The New Messiah in 1950s Science Fiction
A New Gore Vidal Biography
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 13
Carved in Marble
Reflections on The United States of Amnesia
Gattaca • Michael Nyman
The Alternative Queen’s Speech 2011
The Fear of the Homosexual: 1967 vs 2012
This Week In The Same Sex Marriage Debate

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies