Welcome to the United States of Amnesia

Gore Vidal tells Mary Wakefield that America has forgotten its constitutional roots, and explains why Bobby Kennedy was ‘the biggest son of a bitch in politics’

To kill time, as I wait for Gore Vidal by the reception desk in Claridge’s, I leaf through the pages of his memoirs, looking at the photographs. One in particular takes my fancy: Gore aged three, in the garden of his grandfather’s house in Washington DC — a dapper little chap in shorts and a smart round-collared shirt, tending what seem to be cabbages. He’s glancing up at the camera half-amused, entirely self-possessed. He’s so unusually composed for a toddler, that I squint at the pic up close, peering at his eyes.

‘Are you waiting for me?’ There on my right, at wheelchair height, are the same eyes, 80 years on. Shaken, I nod. ‘Well then,’ says Gore Vidal, ‘let’s get a drink,’ and wheels off in the direction of the bar, trailing a wake of handsome Italian helpers.

Since that snap in the cabbage patch, Gene Luther Gore Vidal (he dropped the first two names ‘for political and aesthetic reasons’) has lived through (as he puts it) three quarters of the 20th century and about one third of the history of the United States of America. But he hasn’t let the drama just drift by: he’s starred in American history, written the script. He’s partied with JFK, slept with Jack Kerouac, had tea with André Gide; he’s skied with Garbo, swum with Nureyev, travelled with Tennessee Williams and whenever the opportunity has arisen put his nemesis, Truman Capote, in his place.

Gore Vidal’s name crops up everywhere throughout the last half-century; he’s like the subject of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’: ‘Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste, I’ve been around for a long, long time…’ Sympathy for the Vidal, maybe — respect, certainly: as well as all the hob-nobbing with superstars, he’s stood for Congress, written 22 novels, five plays, over 200 essays and has become the most outspoken critic of America’s foreign policy, railing against the ongoing corruption of the once-great republic.