Gore Vidal / Jonathan Ned Katz Correspondence: April 28, 1982 - 2001

In 1982 historian Jonathan Ned Katz initiated a correspondence with Gore Vidal that lasted, intermittently, until 2001. To honor the death of Vidal, OutHistory reproduces the texts of Vidal’s often humorous letters, often on the theme of heterosexuality and sometimes homosexuality.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Katz to Vidal, April 28, 1982:

Sends Katz’s essay “Melville’s Secret Sex Text,” published in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, April 1982: 10-12. The article analyzes the many coded sexual references in Melville's novel Redburn.

Vidal to Katz, postmarked Los Angeles, May 21, 1982:

Envelope with printed inscription: “Gore Vidal for U.S. Senate”. Letter on stationery of same group.

Dear Mr. Katz, / I’d read with delight yr. piece before yr. letter arrived – I think an excellent counter-strategy in Academe is to prove that all the known fag writers (precious, marginal) were really totally hetero – Emphasize the uxoriousness [fondness for his wife] of Oscar Wilde, father of two; show how he was railroaded into “Somdomy” because of his socialism -- /Proust? Cunt in a cork-lined room—Albertine? Aubergine – I think the possibilities are endless -- / Best G Vidal

Katz to Vidal, surmised letter, 1983:

Asks if Katz’s publisher could send Vidal a copy of Katz's new history Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (Harper & Row, 1983), saying that it historically interrogates the "invention" of the categories “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality”.

Vidal to Katz, postmark illegible, 1983:

Dear Mr. Katz – I can’t guarantee that I’ll read yr. Almanac but if they want to risk sending me a copy – Anything on the invention of the two crazed categories is always of interest – Best G. Vidal

Vidal to Katz, post marked July 21, 1983:

Dear Mr. Katz / Surely, I wrote you about your book [Gay/Lesbian Almanac] which I thought splendid. The very words – or signs, as they say now – like “sterile” [used about homosexuality in the early-20th-century] – You should study the reviews of Duluth for new insights – I am not just disliked but deeply hated -- / I thought the Baldwin ’49 piece brilliant;1 I never knew it existed, which explains Jimmy’s nervousness with me at the time – “his panic” is an excellent description of a state of mind which my characters [in The City and the Pillar]2, perhaps, shared though the author not. But I was a realist back then – if you succeed in driving a stake through those false nouns ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual,’ statues will be built in yr, honor – or perhaps just a large stake to burn you at. / Best wishes / G. Vidal

1 James Baldwin's "Preservation of Innocence: Studies for a New Morality", published in 1949, in Tangier, Morocco, in a small-circulation journal, Zero. Baldwin criticizes all the sexual and gender categories socially imposed to divide, conquer, and trivialize. He names a panic . . . close to madness" caused by terror at "sexual activity between men." See: Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), pages 647-651.

2 The City and the Pillar is the third published novel by Gore Vidal, written in 1946 and published on January 10, 1948. The story is about a young man who is coming of age and discovers his own homosexuality.

Katz to Vidal, July 29, 1988:

Sends advance draft of Katz’s essay for The Advocate about Lucien Price, a friend of Vidal's, asking for Vidal’s reminiscence of Price. See: Jonathan Ned Katz: Rediscovering Lucien Price, November 7, 1988 and Junius Lucien Price (January 6, 1883 – March 30, 1964)

Katz to Vidal, August 29, 1988:

Sends first published column for The Advocate on Abe Lincoln and Joshua Speed and another column titled “Alexander Hamilton’s Nose.”

Vidal to Katz, September 2, 1988:

Dear Mr. Katz -- / Did you write that piece I liked on Melville? Lucien Price admired Messiah (’54) in the Boston Globe—This was a time when I was either not reviewed or sternly attacked – I got to know him during the decade (his last) when I could no longer publish novels so turned to theater, TV, etc – I read his book on [the philosopher Alfred North] Whitehead* with fascination. He was also splendid to talk to, an old-fashioned Platonist in his questioning style not in his ideas about the state – He read Julian in galleys (I had dedicated to him my return to the novel) – He told a friend, “Now they can no longer ignore him”— I’m not so sure he was right –- anyway, we were as one in our detestation of Christianity & the moral mess that accompanies it like acid rain – He used to speak of the pre-civil war world – “Look at their faces,” he once said to me at Harvard, I think, [looking at] class pictures from 1850, early 60s – “That was the way they looked when I was young; and they were so open –“ The novels proceed to develop this idealization. He could not bear what the Irish had done to his Boston; but it was [crossed out: not the race but] the religion, not the race that he deplored – He had a view of Arcadia – well, Thebes – that he had imposed upon the Western Reserve – True or false, he was a consistent philosopher, and lived in a glowing nativist past – On the modern world, he was shrewd & tough as nails in his Globe columns – Best G Vidal

• Lucien Price, The Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead as Recorded by Lucien Price (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown & Co., 1st edition May 1954).

Katz to Vidal, November 15, 1988:

Katz publishes, "Glimpses of Gay Arcacdia: Rediscovering the Works of Lucien Price, Unknown Homosexual Emancipation Pioneer", Advocate, November 7, 1988, including Vidal's reminiscences of Price. Thanks Vidal for comments on Price.

Katz to Vidal, January 24, 1989:

Sends Katz’s gay history columns published in The Advocate: “Alexander Hamilton’s Nose,” “The President’s Sister and the Bishop’s Wife” (about Rose Cleveland, Grover Cleveland's sister and Evangeline Marrs Simpson Whipple, married to bishop), and another column on the novel Roderick Random.

Vidal to Katz, postmark illegible, received February 11, 1989:

Dear Katz – What Joy yr. researches bring me! There is something going on between Abe & Speed but it’s hard to say what – You know that David Herbert Donald is devoting his last years to writing the Lincoln biog. – Should you share yr. findings/hunches with him? He’s very open for a professional academic -- / Miss Cleveland is a Joy too – I knew Miss Arthur [?] – or was she Mrs? in Paris in the 40s – What about Pierce & Hawthorne? / Best G Vidal

Katz to Vidal, August 21, 1989:

Sends Katz’s latest columns in The Advocate.

Vidal to Katz, postmarked September 15, 1989:

Dear Katz, Do you not fear the FBI? Such vileness as you reveal, as you lift the flat rocks of the republic from the temple floor, may yet cause a hetero backlash – It is not enough that you include Abe & Josh in Sodom’s column but Buchanan as well[NOTE] – Did you know that the great American novelist Speed Tomkin [?} (Capote’s Capote) is a direct descendent of JS [Joshua Speed]? Keep up the good work. Best, G. Vidal

Vidal to Katz, received April 11, 1990:

Quote whatever you like – [I] Enjoy as always yr Polemicals –In “Sex is Political” (Matters of Fact and Fiction)* I do the same job that you’re doing but without yr marvelous data – “Son of Kinsey”? I cam first with the C & P [City and the Pillar, 1948] whose theme under the romantic agon of my Romeo & Tybalt was the naturalness of the love that has no name because the noun is enough & no category is required etc --

• Vidal’s essay on sex was actually published in his collection The Second American Revolution.

Katz to Vidal, April 16, 1990:

Thanks Vidal for his positive note in response to Katz’s article “The Invention of Heterosexuality”, published in Socialist Review. Asks if Vidal will agree to say he will write a preface to a book Katz is trying to obtain a contract to write on “The Invention of Heterosexuality”.

Vidal to Katz, postmark illegible, 1990:

Dear K – Yes, you can say I’ll do a preface & maybe I actually will – / If the tit people suffer a collective breakdown, so be it. Best, GV

Katz to Vidal, May 3, 1990:

Reports that Katz has procured a contract for a book version of The Invention of Heterosexuality.

Vidal to Katz, post marked May 13, 1991:

Walter Clemons* will never get the book [a biography of Vidal] done -- a nice man but diabetic, vague -- four years of interviews (suspiciously, mostly with movie stars I have known) & still no text -- He does not need a helper; he needs a ghost -- But try him anyway [to see if he could use Katz's research help]. Tel - [followed by telephone number].

Yes, I'll write the preface [to Katz's book The Invention of Heterosexuality] but Mailer, say, would be better. Road to Damascus stuff, take yr . first left at Sodom. . . . You must also collect all those tributes to how gutsy real guys are to go near pussy -- Back of it is my theory that nature only intends a few of either sex to breed & the others are off the hook & supposed to have fun -- But fun causes envy etc -- / GV

• Literary critic and editor, who died in 1994.

Katz to Vidal, October 5, 1993:

Katz to Vidal, December 10, 1993:

Vidal to Katz, telephone call from Bangkok, December 22, 1993:

Hand-written Katz notes made during talk, and typed notes completed just after talk.

Vidal: Introduction to Katz’s book The Invention of Heterosexuality, received from Vidal at the Plaza Hotel, January 18, 1994.*

Original photocopy of Vidal’s Introduction to The Invention of Heterosexuality, with Vidal’s minor edits in pencil:

• Katz’s The Invention of Heterosexuality was published by Dutton in 1995, with a foreword by Vidal.

Katz to Vidal, January 19, 1994:

Katz to Vidal, July 11, 1994:

Vidal to Katz, ?-18-1996:

Dear Ned, / [Commenting on the reception of The Invention of Heterosexuality:] Sorry it was not a better outing, but had you [not?] let slip the dogs of ridicule, you would nave been serious, & in our flat-earth society solemnity is all-important -- One can't be stupid enough for our few dull readers as for the rest -- FRench horns, the triumph of the will, really courtesy of Mike Isner -- Keep the war going / Best Gore

Vidal to Katz, postmark illegible, 2001:

Written before the imminent publication of Katz’s book Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality by the University of Chicago Press, December 14, 2001:

Dear Jonathan, Good to hear the book is imminent – I don’t appear in Newtland [Newt Gingrich land--the U.S.] until May though I may have to go to Hollywood before in which case I’ll do what I can to pitch -- / Just read a book on “bisexuality” – a late-comer – by a woman called Gabler or something close* – Not bad – I suspect the word “sexual” may yet be taken off its shelf in the Museum of Dumb American Notions & allowed to fill in all round – Yours G

• Marjorie Garber, Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (Routledge, 1st edition February 2000)

Katz’s book Love Stories is published December 14, 2001: Contains a chapter on the intimacy between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Vidal is sent a copy and responds:

Vidal to Katz, postmark illegible, 2001:

Dear J N K, I’m reading at yr book with pleasure – Think you’ve got AL-JS [Abraham Lincoln-Joshua Speed] about right but I don’t want to enter that can of worms at the moment –- Can’t yr. editor take a line or two from my preface, was it?*

• The University of Chicago Press was planning to reprint Katz’s The Invention of Heterosexuality and Katz had probably asked Vidal for a blurb.