Gore Vidal at age 23

“It is something of a surprise — at least for an outsider — to meet the youthful Gore Vidal and to find him a 24-year-old gentleman of poise, maturity and sobriety,” wrote Harvey Breit, in a profile of the young author published in the January 22, 1950, edition of the New York Times.

The ostensible purpose of the interview was to promote Vidal’s fifth novel, A Search for the King, but Breit only refers to it in passing, merely noting that it was “published last week.” That the Times even deigned to interview Vidal was noteworthy. Just two years earlier, the paper had refused to review — or even run advertisements for — Vidal’s third novel, The City and the Pillar, because of its scandalous-at-the-time, forthright depiction of a gay relationship.

Today, 62 years later, the Times profile is fascinating because it offers a glimpse into the mindset of Vidal, who, though not yet 25 years old, was already a World War II veteran and successful author, who seemed aware even then that big things lay ahead.

Young Vidal was also an avid traveler. “Did Mr. Vidal do nothing but keep his nose to the scrivener’s grindstone?” wrote Breit, in the Times. “No, Mr. Vidal did not. He found plenty of time to travel. ‘I’m very relaxed by motion,’ he said. ‘I like to leave a place, too. I have a sense of victory when I do. You know, to have divorced yourself from a pattern, a milieu, a people. The leaving, as a matter of fact, is more important than the arrival. But you have to arrive if you want to leave. I get a sense of confinement staying in one place long. How long is long? Oh, anywhere from twenty-four hours to six months. I haven’t stopped traveling since the day I was born,’ Mr. Vidal said slowly, but with no intimations of gloom. ‘I am positive I shall be killed in an airplane accident; it is the destiny of the traveler. But I shall continue to travel.’

In his recent travels abroad, Vidal had had the occasion to meet two great men of letters, both of whom were then in their eighties, Andre Gide (1869-1951) and George Santayana (1863-1952).

“Not very long ago,” wrote Breit, “Mr. Vidal journeyed into Europe. He went to see Andre Gide, who gave him a copy of Corydon (just translated into English for the first time). Mr. Vidal reports that Gide quipped when he handed the book over, ‘First the Kinsey report and after that the Nobel Prize.’ Then Mr. Vidal visited Santayana, who has six years on Gide’s 80. Mr. Vidal found him capable of quips, too. Surrounded by all of Toynbee’s volumes, Santayana said to him: ‘Do you know whether Toynbee was ever a preacher? But I think his footnotes very interesting.”

“What a diabolical man!” said Mr. Vidal admiringly. “Santayana said, ‘I live as though I were already dead.’ He is very frail and the light practically shines through him. Though his mind is very clear and very sharp, and he has that touch of maliciousness that shows he is still interested in the world.” The only professional remark he made to Mr. Vidal was: “You seem to have a very good life because you are lacking in superstition.”

And what sort of literary career did Vidal see in his future? “My best work is satire,” said the future author of Myra Breckinridge, “and perhaps some day I may become a humorous writer. There are signs of it … What sort of signs? Well, the world seems less desperate to me now and I find myself at least aware of the fact that a writer has to overcome the initial feeling of self-importance when he begins to write. Also there’s the fact that I know the work I most admire makes me laugh.”

But what about the big picture? How did Gore Vidal, age 24, imagine himself when he was in his eighties, as Gide and Santanyana were when he met them, and, at 86, as he is today?

“If I live to an old age,” said young Gore Vidal, “I dread to think of all the work I shall have done.”

That “dreaded” work would include 24 novels, five plays, numerous screenplays, histories, essays and memoirs, as well as decades of ongoing political activism and, as of this writing, active engagement in the revival of his play, “The Best Man,” which is set to premiere on Broadway in the spring.