Vidal Biography Coming in 2015

Front facade of Houghton Library

Gore Vidal with Houghton archivist Jennifer Lyons, looking through the Vidal papers in the Houghton Reading Room (June 2007)Until his death earlier this summer Gore Vidal played an important role in American society, that of a public intellectual who expressed himself forcefully on all manner of subjects. Fred Kaplan published a biography of Vidal in 1999 and it was reported in today’s New York Times that Jay Parini plans to publish a biography of Vidal in 2015. Parini has written biographies of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and Robert Frost, and was a long-time friend of Vidal, whose papers are here in Houghton Library.

[Thanks to William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, for contributing this post.]