[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 13339]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         REMEMBERING GORE VIDAL

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, today I rise to pay tribute to the great 
talents and accomplishments of Gore Vidal, the extraordinary American 
writer who died this week at age 86 in California, where he spent the 
last 9 years of his life.
  Gore Vidal was a child of the Senate--or more precisely, a grandchild 
of the Senate. His maternal grandfather was Senator Thomas Pryor Gore 
of Oklahoma, and the writer's happiest childhood memories were of the 
times he lived at Senator Gore's Washington home. According to Vidal's 
New York Times obituary, ``He loved to read to his grandfather, who was 
blind, and sometimes accompanied him onto the Senate floor.'' Vidal 
himself later said, ``At something like 13 or 14, I wanted to be a 
politician, but knew that I was a writer. . . .''
  This change of career path worked out best for everyone. Gore Vidal's 
prose was elegant and crystal clear, and his range as a writer has 
seldom been equaled. His essays, perhaps his greatest triumph, utilized 
and displayed his wide-ranging interests, encyclopedic learning, and 
dazzling wit. He also wrote more than two dozen novels including a 
series on American political history that is widely read and admired on 
both sides of the aisle--as well as plays, screenplays, television 
dramas, and two volumes of memoirs.
  Gore Vidal twice ran for office, losing a 1960 run for Congress in 
upstate New York and a 1982 Senate primary in California. Despite these 
political setbacks, he remained convinced that ``There is no human 
problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I 
advise.'' He dispensed his advice with great wit and intelligence for 
more than 60 years, and America is far the richer for it.

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