September 22, 2011

“Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia,” Gore Vidal said in an interview in the May 2008 edition of Esquire.

We know this, in part, because someone added this quote from the Esquire interview to Gore Vidal’s biographical sketch on Wikipedia.

What follows here are corrections and commentaries dictated by Gore Vidal with the intention that they be added to his Wikipedia page. This page, which is published in Vidal’s official website, gorevidalnow.com, is intended to serve as the source of citations for the Wikipedia updates.

The following items related to his Wikipedia page were dictated by Gore Vidal on July 26, 2011, and are presented here verbatim:

• In 1.0, third paragraph, Gore requests that “actress” be stricken from the description of [his mother] Nina. He also requests that “as an extra” be added to the description of her Broadway debut.
• In 1.0, fifth paragraph, Gore requests that the word “often” be inserted between “was” and “his guide” in the second sentence. He also says he joined the Army as a private and it was not the Reserves as stated herein. He served as “first mate on the F.S. 35th which was birthed at the Dutch Harbor.”
• In 2.1, third paragraph, Gore requests that we add at the end of the paragraph the following: “Vidal has accused Heston of being a compulsive liar and a truly bad actor to boot.”
• In 4.0, fifth paragraph, Gore said: “Jerry Brown joined The race after Mr. Vidal in order to gracefully exit the governorship, in spite of knowing that Vidal was the more beloved across the United States, a situation which likely still provides rancor. Mr. Vidal prophetically announced that their Republican opponent would take the race.”
• In 4.1, first paragraph, Gore requests the addition of “, who is patently in favor of Buckley throughout the debates,” behind “Howard K. Smith.”
• In 4.1, fifth paragraph, Gore said the burdened amount he bore was much less than $75,000 because most of the work was provided pro bono.