English -- Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain edited by Jay Parini

Gore Vidal has written over twenty novels (starting with Williwaw in 1946), three mystery novels under the pseudonym of Edgar Box, nearly a hundred television scripts, a volume of short stories, two very successful Broadway plays (Visit to a Small Planet, 338 performances; and The Best Man, 520 performances), film scripts, and a collection of essays on literature and politics. He ran for Congress in 1960 in New York; in 1982 he ran in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in California. He has debated William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer. In short, he is as prolific and visible a writer as twentieth-century American letters has produced. Yet Jay Parini, who edited the comprehensive and masterful collection of essays on Vidal's work Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain, states in his opening essay, "When the dust settles on this half of the twentieth century, Gore Vidal may well assume the place among his contemporaries denied to him throughout a long and various life of writing."

That Gore Vidal...