Customer Reviews

Myra Breckenridge/Myron

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vidal's Myra Breckinridge is one of the most insightful books I have come across in all of my extensive reading. Through outrageous humor and wit, Gore Vidal communicates powerful messages about sexuality, psychology, and the human condition. The reader follows Myra Breckinridge from her arrogant and obnoxious narcissism to a complete transformation which has such an impact, I don't dare try to describe it. This book is wonderfully one-dimensional on the surface, but a bit of thought reveals it's depth and perceptiveness; so cleverly hidden it seems to jump out and bite in a few incredible sentences! I am recommending this book for anyone who is questioning traditional and orthodox views of the world, or their own sexuality.

It's wonderful to go through the various reviews and realize that this book, written in part in 1968 and then, the "sequel", in 1973, stirrs the same controversy it did when it was published. And I'm sure Gore Vidal, one of the most remarkable American writers and thinkers of the previous century, is having a great deal of fun out of it. In a way (and not in every way), Gore Vidal is a great writer/thinker resembling the way Voltaire was one: it's not necessarily any specific work that makes him *the* thinker/writer of his age (well, in the case of Voltaire, "Candide" does weaken my argument...), but it is his combined output that makes him the unabashed, non-PC voice of his generation. And Gore Vidal does it with great panache in Myra Breckinridge/Myron. There are few issues that remained untouched - anything from linguistic deterioration (the Californian drowning in the ocean yelling : "like, Help!"), film theory, sexuality, politics (Nixon is an important protagonist), what not. And mud is slung in all dierctions, and the goal justifies any means... It is hilarious from beginning to end, and even if one is not familiar with the dozens of B-movies and their actors mentioned in the book, and allowing for some repetitiveness here and there - reading this book is a wicked joy. A previous review rightly mentions that this book is not for everyone: the sexual and surgical activity (sometimes combined) are very explicit, and Myra has on her agenda young and healthy all-American dudes to be anally penetrated (for some very good reasons, as we learn...), but if you wish to make sure that there's still someone looking at this world with X-ray glasses - read Gore Vidal, and read Myra/Myron.

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE moves to Hollywood in order to collect the inheritance left by her husband Myron. The one problem is Uncle Buck Loner who stands between her and the property - a profitable school for would be actors run by Buck. Myra is certain that everything will turn out her way, as she is the New American Woman. Every man wants her, but none may have her. However, there is a twist to Myra that will throw her plans into turmoil if anyone finds out.

This is a darkly comic book with one of the most intriguing of characters in Myra Breckinridge. She is self-confidant (perhaps overly so), knows how to control and manipulate both men and women to fulfill her wishes, and determined not to let anything stop her. She is ready to change the world to suit her. In other words, a force to be reckoned with. I also liked that she patterned herself after movie heroines and relates to people as though they were characters in a movie, shown for her benefit.

The novel itself is written as a series of diary entries, written by Myra as events happen. This gives an immediacy to the story and makes the reader feel as though he/she is a part of the action. The twist in the story is definitely a shocking one; I admit that it threw me for a loop. I can only imagine its impact when the book was published in 1968 with the sexual revolution just underway. An incredible book.

MYRON: This sequel to "Myra Breckinridge" follows poor Myron as he battles against Myra, only this time they've somehow become stuck in the 1948 movie "Siren of Babylon." It's a strange world, the Hollywood of 1948, and Myron tries frantically to return to 1973 and his beloved Richard M. Nixon while Myra has plans of her own to both bring back the glory of MG Studios by fixing "Siren" and to curb the human population growth by re-forming man in her image - strong, sterile Amazonian woman. Her one problem: Myron and how to keep him from escaping the film.

It's a totally bizarre and wonderfully campy look at Hollywood of the 1940s but seen through the eyes of the 1970s. And, like its predecessor, is written in journal entries so you're in the action as it happens from the characters' perspectives. A great piece of fantasy fiction.

These two novels are very vulgar and very funny. I personally preferred "Myron" which is about being stuck on a Holywood movie set because of a time/space continuum glitch and...well it is difficult to explain but a great read. I do not think that Vidal has ever been funnier. Some people will be turned off by the vulgarity. I was at first but then I was captivated by Vidal's brilliant campy sense of humour which was never as sharp as it was in these two novels. The whole thing is so original and outrageous that you may never read anything like it again. I got the impression that Vidal giddily laughed his way through the writing of these two novels. They are a great deal of outrageous and wicked fun. Definitely provocative. The work of a master satirist at his very best.

The fact that Gore Vidal's highly original 'Myra Breckinridge' (1968) and its sequel, 'Myron' (1974), have been published together in one edition by Penguin Books strongly suggests that the novels are in the process of becoming accepted as part of the canon of American Literature. This is extraordinary, since 'Myra Breckinridge' is a genuinely radical and subversive novel that strikes forcibly at the very heart of traditional American values, particularly at the country's conservative sexual mores, though most readers seem to miss the 'unacceptable truth' that the book shrewdly exposes. Oddly, the disastrous film version of 1970, presently in constant rotation on multiple cable channels, made the same point more clearly, which was perhaps somewhat responsible for its critical and box office failure.

On the basis of its tone alone, 'Myra Breckinridge' may be difficult for many readers to read comfortably, which was doubtlessly Vidal's intention. Told in first person through a series of journal entries, Myra's often hilarious commentary is a litany of keen perception, self-hatred, sniping mania, arrogant sarcasm, brittle irony, continuous domineering combativeness, and camp-laden neurosis.

Cultural critic Camille Paglia has championed the novel, and as critic Reed Woodhouse has suggested, Myra's voice is often comparable to Paglia at her acerbic, devil-may-care, 'the truth must out' best. As Paglia would also begin to do with the publication of Sexual Personae in 1991, 'Myra Breckinridge' is additionally a scathing attack on the then-untouchable decorous High WASP values and social mores of the first half of the Twentieth Century. The book's genius lies in Vidal's ability to make the reader first sympathize with and then champion the marauding sociopathic Myra, who is a liar, an extortionist, a sadist, a rapist and, ultimately, something of a phantasm.

The unmentionable--and entirely unacceptable--'ugly truth' that the novel subtly declares is that self-identified heterosexual men can, in fact, be converted to full-blown homosexual desire if they can be made to be the passive partner in homosexual intercourse on at least one occasion. Using an artificial phallus, Myra rapes the hyper-masculine but brainless Rusty (whose buttocks she refers to as "a cannibal banquet"), who then abandons his longtime girlfriend, brutally transfers his rage to aging nymphomaniac Letitia Van Allen, and settles into a life of active, willfully chosen homosexuality as the novel closes.

"We are furnaces inside," says Myra, who has introduced Rusty to an internal furnace he hadn't know he had. Thus Myra, "goddess enthroned and all-powerful," has achieved one of her primary goals: "that is woman's role, to make the wound and then heal it." Myra, who has been reborn several times herself, provides Rusty with a reawakening and second birth, one that would very likely never have occurred without her sadistic intervention.

Curiously, Vidal seems to have lost his nerve as the novel draws to a close. Myra is run over by an automobile driven by one of her enemies, awakens badly injured in a hospital, and, via a process never made clear to the reader, psychically reverts back to Myron Breckinridge, the man she was before physically altering genders via an operation in Denmark.

But while the original Myron was an effeminate if sadomasochistic homosexual male, the post-Myra Myron is a docile, heterosexually-identified house-husband married to Rusty's former girlfriend, Mary-Ann. Lifting a syrupy message from The Wizard of Oz (1939), the novel closes with Myron stating that "it is a proven fact that happiness, like the proverbial bluebird, is to be found in your own backyard if you just know where to look."

While Myron's advice, which violates absolutely everything which has come before, is intended to be ironic, it's odd that Vidal chose to brutally punish--and even physically dismember ("where are my breasts?")--social terrorist Myra for her all-out, hubristic assault on American values, beliefs, manners, and gender roles. Perhaps Myra's failure was an inevitability, since her broad goals are consistently inconsistent: while she zealously worships the depiction of manhood and masculinity reflected in Hollywood films of the Thirties and Forties, she simultaneously desires to figuratively but aggressively reduce every man she encounters to a submissive, quivering eunuch, a position which oddly mirrors her own transsexual status. Whether this confusion is Myra's or Vidal's is difficult to assess, but the book's tepid conclusion suggests that Vidal became unexpectedly mired in his theme and simply lost his way.

The unfunny, grossly overlong 'Myron' is more a parody of its predecessor than a genuine thematic sequel, revealing a Vidal even further removed from the first book's disturbing origins and motivators. Here, Myron, who has had radical reconstructive surgery, continues as a mousy heterosexual house-husband living comfortably in the San Fernando Valley circa 1973, where he runs a Chinese catering business and remains happily married to Mary-Ann.

Though Myron hopes to "block out that awful period" of his life, the now repressed Myra struggles to liberate herself and take control of Myron's "mutilated body." To this end, Myra, "the arch-creatrix herself," supernaturally inserts Myron into a telecast of the fictional 'Siren of Babylon,' after which he finds he is "caught inside the movie" while it is being filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1948. 'Myron' reduces Myra to the back lot B-movie heroine she has continually threatened to degenerate into.

While 'Myra Breckinridge' has sharp and potentially deadly teeth, 'Myron,' sadly overladen with third-rate, 'naughty' gay camp humor, has none. However, it's likely that admirers of the first book will want to follow the further adventures of Vidal's dangerous, dazzling creation.

As part of her plans to conquer Hollywood, Myra Breckinridge arrives at her late husband Myron's uncle Buck's drama academy to stake her claim. She turns heads and wreaks havoc all in her efforts to get where she wants to be. Myra takes no prisoners in any venture, especially in terms of sex. When Buck confronts her with the lack of evidence of her marriage to Myron and of the demise of Myron, Myra is forced to reveal her true nature. Ultimately Myra gets what she wants, but not in the way she planned, after a hit-and-run accident nearly destroys her. Challenging the 1960s' attitudes about gender and sexuality, "Myra Breckinridge" is not as scandalous now, but it's still shocking and campy. This is #23 of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels, as selected by the Publishing Triangle. Picking up several years after "Myra Breckinridge", "Myron" finds the banal man living with his wife in a nice California town, when suddenly he finds himself inside the movie "Siren of Babylon", during its filming in 1948. Myron struggles to find out what's happening to him as well as figuring out a way back, but the revitalized Myra is determined to seize control of the body they share and conquer the Hollywood of 1948, thereby recreating the world according to her wishes. Even more outrageous than its predecessor, "Myron" is loads of fun and showcases Vidal's wit, intelligence, and wild imagination.

The worst thing you can do with this book is read the storyline before you pick it up! The "twist" is the essence of the book and the reviews which revealed this twist and the story basically ruined what would have been a much more enjoyable experience for me, had I discovered them myself. So leave NOW! Do not read any other review here!

I have had this novel for some time, and if only more people were able to understand the full extent of what Gore is trying to say, then the world wouldn't be the over-populated, over-pompous, conceited place that it has become. I have always suggested his satirical books for people who need a break from the self-help, pro-active, New-Age, political correct mess that has become people nowadays.....and now, if only they would reissue the movie with Raquel Welch...now that would be something....pick up this book..you will like it...

The incomparable Gore Vidal wrote this book in the middle of the sexual revolution of the late sixties. He managed to write a book that is a profound statement on the women's movement on the brink of political madness; revealing the madness of patriarchal society during the Vietnam years while it began to embody the intimate criminal mentality of its enemy at the edge of its success. This book is still, more than thirty-five years later, ahead of its time. Myra Breckinridge is a symbol of America at this tumultuous time--a time that has not only not ended but is being ignored for the benefit of going backward to the Commie-hunter fifties culture, where it is seemingly safe from critical scrutiny. The sexuality, the artistry, the marketplace, the spirituality, and the narcissism that goes from the ridiculous to the sublime--defining the time in which is what written--is all here in this novel, in a way that is not only brilliantly entertaining but non-stop funny.

Vidal was the favorite writer of my baby-boomer parents when I was a child. And like my grandfather, who can tell me all the dirty little secrets of my parents generation without them even being aware, Vidal, with his unmatched artistry and biting wit, reveals all, with a talent for weaving stories that has been unmatched. Who is Myra Breckinridge? A better question would be who ISN'T?

An incredible novel.

I had always been intimidated by Vidal. His intelligence and class are well known but WHO WOULD HAVE EXPECTED this sassy and irreverent book about a transexual !! I absolutely loved Myra and Myron B.. Vidal's intelligent humor made the naughty vulgarities acceptable. Read it . You'll love it, too