Gore Vidal Gone

Other than mentioning his graceful turn on a New York stage as blacklisted-writer Dalton Trumbo (which I was fortunate enough to see), I have nothing to add to the reports of Gore Vidal’s death. Here are excerpts from the American Humanist Association’s notice:

The death of Gore Vidal on July 31, 2012, at the age of 86 has humanists mourning the loss of perhaps American’s best known public intellectual. As honorary president of the American Humanist Association since 2009, Vidal added an enthusiastic, progressive and dynamic voice to the AHA and the humanist movement.

“The progressive and humanist values Gore Vidal repeatedly espoused moved the culture in a positive direction,” said David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association. “He spent his life pointing out the places in society that needed the most attention without worrying who might be embarrassed or upset by his opinions.”

“He’s been called an iconoclast, a provocateur, and a misanthrope,” said Humanist editor Jennifer Bardi. “And of course Gore occasionally said things that gave humanists pause. But he was forever dedicated to the cause of enlightenment and exposed injustice and hypocrisy at every turn.”…

The targets of Vidal’s criticism included the Religious Right, American expansionism, political changes done for “national security,” and the military-industrial complex, among others items. His advocacy for individual liberty, separation of church and state, and reason and rationality embodies the mission of the American Humanist Association.

Vidal first made a name for himself with the 1948 publication of The City and the Pillar, a book that created turmoil because its main character is openly homosexual without also being seen as unnatural. He was forced to write several subsequent novels using a pseudonym because reviewers and advertising outlets blacklisted him….

At first known for his novels, he later became known for his essays….

I count among those who hold his essays (the ones that don’t descend into crackpot conspiratorial thinking, that is) in especially high regard.

The New York Times, a paper with which Vidal had squabbles, has a fuller obituary.

 

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Fact-Check: The NY Times on Tyson

Perhaps when The New York Times makes the rare boxing-story assignment, it should select a journalist who knows something about the sport, or at least doesn’t display ignorance of it as a badge of honor.

In “The Suburbanization of Mike Tyson,” a Sunday magazine article posted online on March 15, Daphne Merkin writes, “I have never been particularly drawn to boxing, but there was something about the younger Mike Tyson….”

Knowing a bit more of boxing than only the former heavyweight champion’s ability to attract attention would have almost certainly kept Merkin from claiming Tyson showed her “photographs from the glory days in which he is posing with other boxers (Ali, Rocky Marciano, Jake LaMotta)…” I’d never submitted a comment to the Times website before, but I did remark (somewhat sarcastically) that since Marciano died when Tyson was three years old, it was unlikely that the two ever posed together. The paper subsequently posted the following correction: “An earlier version of this article misidentified a boxer with whom Mike Tyson posed for photographs; it was Rocky Graziano, not Rocky Marciano.” The paper fixed the online text accordingly.

Granted, the two fighters had similar nicknames and a journalist on deadline could have made a simple slip up. Still, a Times editor (like the one whose name is tacked onto Merkin’s article), fact-checker, proofreader – someone! – should have noticed this before I did.

If only the newspaper saw fit to report on the sport on a regular basis…

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Boxing & Philosophy

Philosopher, boxing trainer and newspaperman Gordon Marino has an insightful column about the benefits of boxing – mainly related to the acquisition of the underappreciated virtue of courage – over at The New York Times “Opinionator” blog.

Though in a piece reprinted in Fighters & Writers I dispute remarks Marino made years ago in another boxing-related column at his usual paper, the Wall Street Journal, I do recommend his September 15, 2010, Times piece. (I don’t suggest wading through the readers’ comments, however. There are too many of the reflexive, simplistic “boxing hurts brains” type. Certain kinds of readers must feel the need to say something, anything, even if doing so only demonstrates that they paid little or no attention to the article in question.) I also address the oft-overlooked upside of boxing an essay in my book.

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Kundera Stumbles

Convincing people that there’s something to mourn in a “post-art” era, and that what has been lost can be recovered with a renewed commitment to art, will take more than exclamation-point laden proclamations about art’s importance. Reviving interest in neglected artists requires more than italicized insistence on their meritorious achievements. Yet these sorts of inadequate maneuvers too often characterize Encounter, Milan Kundera’s latest tribute to the novel and other art forms. (I offer a more detailed discussion of the book in the September 2010 Open Letters Monthly.) I wish I could have mustered the enthusiasm for Encounter that John Simon does in the New York Times, but I simply couldn’t.

As it happens, I often agree with what Kundera says, but I know that asserting something and effectively making an argument aren’t the same things, which he seems to forget. The writer of some glorious novels and some superior nonfiction could have displayed a bit more care for the art of the essay this time around, in my opinion. (I say more about Kundera, as well as Albert Camus, whom I also discuss in connection with Encounter, in an essay in the forthcoming fall 2010 issue of Spot Literary Magazine.)

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