Short Story Collections

From the poignant realisation as an adult of the cruel brutality of childhood in 'The Robin', man then comes face to face with himself as a boy in 'A Moment of Green Laurel': both stories combining the nostalgia and fear that haunt us all in old age. Meanwhile, in 'Erlinda and Mr Coffin', Southern etiquette is unashamedly turned upside down in a tale of amateur theatricals reminiscent of Dickens and Victorian melodrama. Yet it is in 'Three Stratagems', 'The Zenner Trophy', 'Pages from an Abandoned Journal' and 'The Ladies in the Library' (with more than a hint of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice in the latter) that we see Vidal as we know him best: cynical and provocative in these subtle tales of what was known in those days as 'sexual inversion'.

Vidal writes with ease and grace, and roams through many subjects and genres. He is a master of the historical novel, in which he has explored American history, ancient history, and the history of religion. He has developed his own style of science fiction combined with satire, and in the books he refers to as his 'inventions' he writes cautionary tales about sex, politics, art, and philosophy. He is at once a contrarion, a wise man, and a romantic. He is also wickedly funny, and often outrageous. This collection (the only single volume that includes Vidal's fiction and his essays) contains two complete works - MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, his most famous novel, and THE BEST MAN, a play about the American presidency. There are selections from THE CITY AND THE PILLAR, his early, controversial novel about homosexual love, and excerpts from later works as JULIAN, DULUTH, and LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA. Selections from the American history novels - BURR, LINCOLN, 1876, EMPIRE, and WASHINGTON, D.C. - have been woven together to provide a continuous narrative.

Celebrated for more than fifty years as a world-renowned novelist, essayist, and political figure and commentator, Gore Vidal is less known for the exquisitely crafted short fiction he wrote as a young man. Like the work of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, his stories have been overshadowed by the author's triumphs writing in other genres. Still, Vidal's short fiction offers us a portrait of the young artist in the 1940s and 1950s. His subtle and comic tales often center on adolescence and homosexual themes. In Three Stratagems, a middle-aged gay man encounters a male prostitute while vacationing in Key West. In The Zenner Trophy, the star athlete at an elite boys school is expelled for sexual relations with a classmate. These stories were gathered along with five others into a 1956 volume, A Thirsty Evil, and for decades were thought to comprise Vidal's complete short fiction.