Gore Vidal said that he hoped to be remembered as “the person who wrote the best sentences of his time”. It was a typically vainglorious boast from an author whose finest writing remains overshadowed by his reputation as one of the most waspish and spiteful public figures in recent memory.
Vidal, who was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr at the West Point Military Academy on 3 October 1925, wrote 25 novels, 14 screenplays, eight stage plays and 26 works of nonfiction, including his majestical essays. He was also a master of the insulting one-liner. Most of the obituaries that followed his death on 31 July 2012 featured his celebrated epigrams, such as: “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
