Never before have the sex writings of Gore Vidal been collected in a single volume. These works offer some of the most provocative and reasoned insights into sex, gender, and sexual orientation ever composed by an American author. Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking collects 13 essays and four interviews produced between 1961 and 1998. Topics include George Washington's homosexuality; Norman Mailer's feminism; bedding Jack Kerouac; the "sapphic tendencies" of Eleanor Roosevelt; turning tricks for Dr. Kinsey; Christopher Isherwood on the "heterosexual dictatorship"; cruising postwar Italy with Tennessee Williams; Henry Miller's sex drive; AIDS; monogamy; plus many more.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
From a delightfully caustic 1965 review of Henry Miller's Sexus ("Arcane words are put to use, often accurately") to a brief response to the homophobic torture and murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, Sexually Speaking brings together some of Gore Vidal's best essays on sex and sexuality. Although some of the essays are explicitly political, such as the 1979 Playboy article "Sex Is Politics," many seem to be included simply because they mention the sex lives of people Vidal has known. (One doesn't really need an excuse to republish his delicious reminiscences of Eleanor Roosevelt, Christopher Isherwood, or Tennessee Williams; the Roosevelt piece in particular feels somewhat wedged into the present volume.)
There are also three interviews: two from the mid-'70s, although written for semi-underground gay magazines, touch upon a variety of political and literary issues; a 1992 conversation finds Larry Kramer practically badgering Vidal to admit that he's a homosexual. As he has throughout his career, Vidal refuses to be categorized on the basis of sexual acts: "I've never applied [these labels] to myself nor have I applied them to anybody else, even when they have invited me to." Sexually Speaking is as entertaining as it is provocative, an interesting supplement to the more comprehensive The Essential Gore Vidal. --Ron Hogan
Review
"Gore Vidal is renowned for his literary talent, but what makes him truly special is his ability to ignore the taboos, customs and norms of his time and look at contemporary society with the clear-eyed perspective of an anthropologist studying an ancient culture. This be comes quite evident in "Sexually Speaking," a collection of his essays on gender and sexuality, which have appeared in magazines and new spapers over the past few decades. "The sexual attitudes of any given society are the result of political decisions," he declares. "In societies where it is necessary to force great masses of people to do work that they don't want to do (building pyramids, working on the Detroit assembly line), marriage at an early age is encouraged on the sensible ground that if a married man is fired, his wife and children are going to starve, too. That grim knowledge makes for docility." Witty, acerbic and always original, Vidal knows how to stimulate readers intellectually with his daring mind. "Sexually Speaking" should make a nice companion piece to his much praised, star-studded memoir, "Palimpsest." -- Associated Press Book Review by Waka Tsunoda, October 10, 1999
"Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking contains some of the author's most challenging, thought-provoking, and controversial work, and also some of the wittiest-when asked whether his first sexual partner was a man or woman, Vidal replied, 'I was too polite to ask.' That remark speaks volumes about Vidal's attitudes toward sex and gender-as does the following, which sums up this brilliant collection: 'I think when it comes to writing about subjects like sex, people want reassurance. I'm not terribly reassuring.'" -- Thomas Fagan, Rain Taxi Review, October 1999
"Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking contains some of the author's most challenging, thought-provoking, and controversial work, and also some of the wittiest-when asked whether his first sexual partner was a man or woman, Vidal replied, 'I was too polite to ask.' That remark speaks volumes about Vidal's attitudes toward sex and gender-as does the following, which sums up this brilliant collection: 'I think when it comes to writing about subjects like sex, people want reassurance. I'm not terribly reassuring.'" -- Thomas Fagan, Rain Taxi Review, October 1999
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Timely and Welcome Collection,
By A Customer
This review is from: Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings 1960-1998 (Hardcover)
This collection of Vidal's essays (and a few interviews) on sex and sexuality is both timely and welcome, since, as he states, sex is never far from public consciousness in the ever-repressed U.S.A. Essays like "Sex is Politics" are as fresh today as they were when first published, and is there another writer alive with a more authentic knowledge of American history and a more genuine understanding of American culture and political thought? I think not. Combine these assets with, as always, exqusite writing, and you have one utterly irresistible book.Contrary to what certain "gender absolutists" would have us all think, Vidal's opinions on sexuality are more trenchant than ever before at a time when more men and women are transgressing the false boundaries of gender to explore sex with whoever we please. This collection is a happy defiance of those who would try to neatly categorize all of us based on our sexual acts or even our preferences (a difficult feat indeed when one considers women like me, who perform with men acts that might be considered, ahem, decidedly queer...)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bisexuality, Global Overpopulation, Childless by Choice...,
This review is from: Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (Paperback)
... Environmental Consciousness, Political Awareness and generally not succumbing to the mindless morass of pedestrian thought and values -- which are neither thought-through nor truly valuable. Gore Vidal's compiled essays on sexuality -- both in terms of the act as well as gender and sexual orientation -- is an invaluable comfort to anyone whose rejection of "The American Dream" has been met with resistance and criticism. Read Vidal, and then remember that being who you are is more important than succumbing to who other people try to convince you to be.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disparate Works of an American Master Artfully Bound,
By A Customer
This review is from: Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings 1960-1998 (Hardcover)
It is axiomatic that Gore Vidal has long been one of the more underrated American literary masters of the 20th century. It is brilliant compilations like SEXUALLY SPEAKING that do battle with this oversight. Not often do books emerge that contain such wit, history and a chilling timeliness, that can be both enlightening and serve as a puckish summer read. The supplemental commentary is piercing, poignant and vulgar. This is the book that archeologists will dig up in two hundred years, to see how sexual identity in the 20th century was both confused and triumphant
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