REVIEW: Russell's Reviews Volume One # 9

[Tom Russell]

On Mar 3, 1:25 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > > [Quoting Buckley]
> > > > "The man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction,
> > > > and in his art the desirability of it
>
> > > Most likely he meant to say "in his heart".
>
> > No; he was referring to the writing-- i.e. the art-- of Mr. Vidal.
>
> Strange way of putting it then.  If he had said it out loud I would
> have been sure he meant "heart". :)

Buckley was differentiating Gore's nonfiction-- his "essays"-- from
his novels-- his "art".  Some of Vidal's essays-- at least, if one can
trust Buckley's interpetations of them (I've never been big on Vidal
myself and so have not read much)-- put forth the (thankfully now-
accepted) idea that homosexuality is not abnormal; some of his art
presents homosexuality as being preferred or desirable compared to
heterosexuality.

It's because Vidal's work "pushes" this whole tolerance thing that
Buckley considers him a "pusher".

(Vidal, for his part, considered Buckley a crypto-Nazi.)

==Tom