Gore Vidal: The New Yorker Has Never Been As Good As It Was Under Tina Brown



(image via NYSocialDiary)

One of our favorite literary figures is, was and always will be Gore Vidal. Vidal and Ingmar Bergman, Modernists who are both rapidly approaching the finality of Death, have been artistic signposts for several generations of non-conformist thinkers across the globe.



Amateur Classicist, Jet-setting raconteur, a-hisrical Historical Novelist, and the best damned essayist since Michel de Montaigne -- better even than Virginia Wolfe -- Gore Vidal's life spans one-third of the history of the American Republic. Gore oftentimes seems more like a Roman Senator and part-time Historian than a fin de siecle American. It is indeed unfortunate that so vehement a republican -- small "R" -- exits stage left off the pandemoniacal global theater at the precise moment that his Republic veers incoherenly into full-blown Empire.

Vidal has never shied from contrarian truth-telling, and doesn't do so now even at the doorstep of Death as he lionizes -- of all people -- Tina Brown, who once attenpted, to the horror of The Chattering Classes, to have Rosanne Barr edit the literarily sacrosanct New Yorker (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). Our favorite social chronicler David Patrick Columbia of NYSocialDiary caught up with Vidal at the American Museum of Natural History last night for the PEN gala. From NYSocialDiary:

"This year’s inaugural award went to Gore Vidal. Mr. Vidal now gets about in a wheelchair, but is nevertheless still a commanding figure even in his ambulatory vehicle. His thick grey and wavy hair looking slightly windblown, brandishing a cane which he waved just slightly and occasionally, and filling out his seat like Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner, the great American essayist, commentator, historian, novelist and now memoirist turned the floor into his stage, providing the grand and theatrical presence, as we’ve come to expect over the decades.

"After a standing ovation, he moved quickly into his signature provocative controversy congratulating Tina Brown for her great editing, and remarking that she had been 'betrayed' by the New York publishing world. 'She was a great editor and under her the New Yorker was a great magazine. It’s never been as good as it was under Tina.'"

Oddly, Chris Buckley said the same thing to The Corsair during a boozy Taki dinner at Elaine's several years ago. And it wasn't just loyalty speaking. Perhaps we should all rethink Tina's tenure at Wallace Shawn's New Yorker?

More Gore (NYSocialDiary)