Free Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal Page A

something I was ever able to do, and so did not even try. The admirable Cranston was himself rather good at it.
    In the course of the 1982 primary I talked to numerous journalists. Most were only interested to know how much money I had raised. When I said, accurately, “practically nothing,” they concluded that I was not “serious.” Yet I was going up in various polls without running many of those TV ads made gratis for me by well-wishers in television. One journalist in San Francisco, Richard Rapaport, had an interest in California history and here is what he wrote some time after the election. During the buildup to the primary, Rapaport: “had been disappointed to watch the varying degrees to which political writers supped on Gore’s spectacular repartee and witty commentaries and then go on to question his electoral bona fides. Inevitably, a hugely amusing and news-desk-pleasing campaign appearance would be chilled by the stopper, ‘but really Mr. Vidal, are you serious?’
    “A writer from the
San Francisco Chronicle
named Randy Shilts billed himself as the nation’s first openly gay mainstream newspaper reporter, and he would soon gain immense fame as the author of
And the Band Played On
. This 1988 history of the ravaging AIDS epidemic would ironically and tragically claim Randy within a few years. Somewhat blinded—I felt—by the light of his own coming-out celebrity, Randy had confronted Gore over the fact that he would not declare himself America’s first openly gay Senatorial candidate. Gore had asked me to stay on several occasions as he took Randy aside and patiently explained to him that although it was no secret, his sexuality was his own damn business and not a thing gentlemen of his generation comfortably advertised.
    “Each time, Randy took it a little more badly, and then took it upon himself to punish Gore with some unnecessarily, pointedly nasty reportage. I had made it my own brief to make sure that Randy understood that his behavior and critique were neither fair nor professional. Several noisy confrontations occurred between Randy and me to little effect. His
Chronicle
stories continued to damage Gore’s campaign and helped, I felt, secure the nomination for Jerry Brown.”

FOURTEEN

    Obituary Time. Arthur Miller is dead and I have broadcast five times today to the BBC, to Italy, to everywhere except our native land where he has always been underrated. I praised
The Crucible
as well as his political courage in the McCarthy years. I have been wondering what to call this memoir. Should it be
Between Obituaries
? Those of us whose careers began in the twentieth century are now rapidly fleeing the twenty-first, with good reason.
    I first met Miller at Tennessee’s flat in New York shortly before
Death of a Salesman
was about to open. Miller had given Tennessee a copy of the play and had come to pick it up. They had little in common except the director Elia Kazan, who had successfully staged
A Streetcar Named Desire
and I think now, in retrospect, ruined Tennessee’s play in the interest of Broadway success. Kazan allowed Brando, as Stanley Kowalski, to upstage the play’s true protagonist, Blanche Dubois. The audience was mesmerized by Brando and so found Blanche—his foil—somewhat ridiculous. At the time even Tennessee agreed that Brando’s appearance in the theater was unique and there was no way that Jessica Tandy could compete with him. She seemed all tics and mannerisms while he was the male principle writ large. Tennessee, who loved glory almost as much as his inventions, made no fuss then or later.
    With the best intentions in the world, Kazan managed to do quite a lot of damage to Tennessee’s plays while, simultaneously, making them into sexy melodramatic commercial hits. I think it was that season that someone asked me to define “commercialism” and I said that it is the ability to do well what ought not to be done at all. I admired and personally liked Kazan but I felt