Gore Vidal Interview (page: 5 / 9) National Book Award	Print Interview

You mentioned going into television to make a living, which raises a point. What does a novelist have to do to survive in this world?

Gore Vidal: You write plays for live television, if there is such a thing. It had just come into being in the early '50s.

I wrote a play for something called Studio One, which was CBS. That did well, and then, I wrote 20 more plays. Hollywood beckoned. I was the last contract writer at MGM. I didn't need the money by then, I was just doing it to see what a great studio was like, because I knew the studio system was about to vanish from the earth. It's like observing the troglodytes at home, and it was fascinating. By then I was on Broadway with plays. I've supported myself by writing all my life.
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You left out the mystery books.

Gore Vidal: No, you left them out.

The question that could arise in the minds of some aspiring writers is, "How do you get started? How do you go about writing?"

Gore Vidal: I remember being present when a Jesuit priest in Rome asked Tennessee Williams, "How do you write a play?" and Tennessee said, "Well, I start with a sentence." Well, I start with a sentence, and that's how you write a book.

Have you ever suffered from writer's block?

Gore Vidal: No. I always tell people who say they are suffering from it, "Be grateful. You are lucky. You don't have to do it, because you're not a writer." Writers don't get this unless their brains go or they're very ill or something. I think circumstances can drive them to being dried up, but no real writer ever gets that way. There are just some of them that have been kind enough not to go on writing all the time. Those, I honor beyond belief!

No self-doubt, no fear of failure?

Gore Vidal: All life is a failure since you are going to die. Why be afraid of it? That's part of the contract.

Writers, among others, are subject to criticism. How do you handle that criticism?

Gore Vidal: I became a critic. Attack me and I will have your head. You must defend yourself. By and large, it isn't worth it most of the time, when you think about who the critic is. If somebody I respected were to attack me, yes, I would be upset, somebody whose opinion I valued. But if you don't value the opinion of some unknown journalist, why should it bother you? It's like being bothered by the daily astrological signs.

You have never been shy about offering your own opinions and your own points of view, and often that leads to controversy. How do you handle controversy in your life and career?

Gore Vidal: Obviously I love it. I would not evoke it if I didn't. The unexamined life is not worth living said Socrates, allegedly. One's job as a writer is to examine the world around him. If that causes distress, so much the worse for those distressed.

Does a day go by when you are not writing? Is it something you have to do every day?

Gore Vidal: No, I don't have to do it. I have slowed down with age, and I don't think I can ever go back to those long novels that I wrote, all that history.

When you were writing those novels, or working in television or when you're writing essays or commentaries, when all of this stuff is coming out of you, did you have a routine? Is it important to stick to one?

Gore Vidal: It's best to start writing when you wake up in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever it is you wake up. Just start then, because you are closer to the dream state than at any other time in the day, which means the imagination is really working on all cylinders, and it means that whatever it is that manufactures sentences in your head is very fresh, and you have all kinds of slants on things that by the end of the day you won't have, or you will just lose along the way. Further advice I have not.
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