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"  Originally published in the June 2008 issue Somebody was here the other day from BBC Radio. It&amp;#039;s odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been reading you all my life.&amp;quot; It makes you feel a slight chill. God has been expelled. I think he knows when he&amp;#039;s on a losing wicket. I went into a line of work in which jealousy is the principal emotion between practitioners. I don&amp;#039;t think I ever suffered from it, because there was no need. But I was aware of it in others, and I found it a regrettable fault. There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, &amp;quot;Well, so-and-so will like this,&amp;quot; which you do when you&amp;#039;re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it. You hear all this whining going on, &amp;quot;Where are our great writers?&amp;quot; The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers? Everything&amp;#039;s wrong on Wikipedia. My general response to boarding school was: anything to get away from that fucking mother of mine. She was a monster. Some of my father&amp;#039;s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, &amp;quot;I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.&amp;quot; We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once. Every fool I knew had gone to university. I didn&amp;#039;t think it necessary. I&amp;#039;d seen some of the results, you know? When I was young, I was bored shitless with being desired by others. I don&amp;#039;t look in the mirror anymore. I lived with Howard for fifty years, but what we had was certainly not romantic love, not passionate love. And it certainly was nonsexual. Try and explain that to the fags. Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country. At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care \u2014 if, that is, you&amp;#039;re going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler. There are some joys in the higher hypochondria. When you get a hereditary disease, you realize you&amp;#039;re part of the main. No matter how much you may have tried to be your own man, you&amp;#039;re going to be like your parents. I&amp;#039;ve developed a total loathing for McCain, conceited little asshole. And he thinks he&amp;#039;s wonderful. I mean, you can just tell, this little simper of self-love that he does all the time. You just want to kick him. Patriotism is as sickening today as it has ever been. I was watching the news before you came and there was a lot of coverage of Kosovo and the problems there. They showed footage of people burning an American flag. And the newscaster got all broken up and teary-eyed. He says, &amp;quot;I guess [sob] I just feel something here, folks, when I see the American flag being burned.&amp;quot; And I said, You fucking asshole. Whatever happened to the news? When she was running for the Senate, Hillary&amp;#039;s psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately \u2014 I heard she said, &amp;quot;I remind them of their first wife.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You got to meet everyone \u2014 Jackie Kennedy, William Burroughs.&amp;quot; People always put that sentence the wrong way around. I mean, why not put it the true way, that these people got to meet me, and wanted to? Otherwise it sounds like I spent my life hustling around trying to meet people: &amp;quot;Oh, look, there&amp;#039;s the governor.&amp;quot; I met a lot of people, but I didn&amp;#039;t get to know them. People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It&amp;#039;s generally wrong. Or oversimplified \u2014 which is sometimes useful. For a writer, memory is everything. But then you have to test it; how good is it, really? Whether it&amp;#039;s wrong or not, I&amp;#039;m beyond caring. It is what it is. As Norman Mailer would say, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s existential.&amp;quot; He went to his grave without knowing what that word meant. I was the meanest kid on the block. We&amp;#039;re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody&amp;#039;s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else. Get rid of religion. It&amp;#039;ll do you no good. As the Greeks sensibly believed, should you get to know yourself, you will have penetrated as much of the human mystery as anyone need ever know. I wasn&amp;#039;t like everyone, you know. What everyone did, I was sure not to do. --REMEMBRANCES: \u2022 Gore Vidal, American Roman, by Tom Junod \u2022 The Living Embodiment of a Century, by Mike Sager THE CONVERSATION: \u2022 Mailer and Vidal: The Big Schmooze THE GORE VIDAL ESQUIRE ARCHIVE: \u2022 A Manifesto for Saving the Human Race \u2022 On Childhood Reading \u2022 On the Wrath of the Radical Right \u2022 On a Fist-Fight by the White House \u2022 On RFK \u2022 On Ralph Nader \u2022 On Life After Eisenhower \u2022 On Ayn Rand&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Philosophy&amp;quot; \u2022 On &amp;quot;Naturalist&amp;quot; Writing \u2022 ...and the Legacy of the Old Frontier "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a4581/gore-vidal-0608/>