How one sexy gay novel derailed Gore Vidal’s literary career

[Jefferson23]

3. lol, Buckley really did lose it. Vidal really knew how to push those buttons and was

thoroughly enjoying Buckley's reaction.

I was not ever aware of this encounter nor their history..I googled out of curiosity and the
story went a bit further in case you are interested and like me did not know:

snip*By early 1969, Vidal said he had put the incident behind him. But Buckley had not, and so he proposed to the editors of Esquire that he write a piece about his exchanges with Vidal. Naturally, seeking fair play, the magazine asked Vidal if he would like to write about Buckley, and it was agreed that the pieces would run in consecutive issues - Buckley's in August 1969, Vidal's in September. The requisite lawsuits ensued at the time, and Vidal, who made it clear to Buckley that he would not back down, won something of a pyrrhic victory: Buckley, told by a judge that he probably would not win if his suit went to court, agreed to let Esquire pay his legal fees and issue an apology, after which he dropped his lawsuit. Vidal's legal fees went unreimbursed.

But in a strange twist, the conflict resurfaced more than 30 years later when Esquire, in violation of a 1972 settlement, mistakenly republished Vidal's article in a 2003 book, Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing. The magazine had to apologize for its error, make Buckley's original essay available online for a few months, and, once again, pay a settlement to Buckley. The incident caught the attention of The Village Voice, which published a short piece about the revival of the brouhaha, and a doctoral student at Columbia University has put Vidal's essay online.

http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/debates.html


Thanks for posting the video..was great to watch it.