SOURCE: A review of Gore Vidal, in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, Summer, 1994, pp. 377-8.

In the following review, Corber offers a positive evaluation of Gore Vidal.

Gore Vidal is arguably one of the most important writers of his generation. Unusually prolific, he has published over twenty novels, several collections of essays, a volume of short stories, five Broadway plays, and several screenplays. Moreover, his treatment of gay male experience in such novels as The City and the Pillar (1948) and Myra Brickingridge (1968) helped pave the way for the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s. Vidal’s refusal to treat gay male identity as a form of ethnicity deeply influenced postwar gay male activists who looked forward to the end of “the homosexual” as a category of individual. Despite his importance, however, he has not been taken seriously by academic critics. He continues to be overshadowed by his...