What a bummer to hear that Gore Vidal passed on last night. I’ve read an enormous amount of the man’s writing and I think I encountered him at just the right time in my life, as a college student who was ready to have my cage shaken a bit. Vidal supplied many ideas, some of which I agreed with, some of which I didn’t, as with anyone. As the years went by I came to see his grand unified theory of politics as a bit oversimplified, but I came to appreciate his qualities as an observer more and more. Like it or not, this guy had a perspective that was distinctive and fascinating. And few people could phrase their point of view as well as he.

Ever since going through them, I thought his “Narratives of Empire” were just about perfect in terms of the narrative they told about America. In Vidal’s view, the same contradictions, the same tendencies, have been cropping up in American life since the very start of the country. Our imperial dreams were in place from the beginning, uneasily coexisting with the peaceful republic the country was initially conceived of. Every installment is essentially about another generation struggling with the same basic problems, really, and how the times took us ever closer to the empire that we wound up becoming. The thematic cohesion between all the novels is incredible–they’d make a hell of an HBO series if that were ever to be considered–and while they are a bit uneven near the end–the last book eventually just surrenders to bitterness over America’s lost Golden Age, and he didn’t write them in order so there are some interesting/jarring jumps in style and tone in between the volumes–it’s a fascinating way of looking at history, and it was inspiring to me then and now. Vidal loved that old peaceful republic, and spent much of his life trying to make people desire its return as much as he did.

Fare thee well.