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Vol 1. No 4. January, 1998
Queer of the Month
When Gore Vidal's novel The City and the Pillar was published in 1948, the New York Times not only refused to run ads for it, because of the book's theme, male homosexuality, but also refused to review it. The Times' daily reviewer, Orville Prescott, disgustedly announced he would never review a book by Vidal again. It wasn't until 16 years later, with the publication of Julian, that the Times relented and reviewed one of Vidal's novels.
"As we all know," Vidal once said, "I invented homosexuality in 1948 with The City and the Pillar". Vidal told the newspaper Fag Rag in 1974 that he had "never allowed, actively, in my life the word 'gay' to pass my lips... It's just a bad word. You see, I don't think you need a word for it. This is what you have to evolve. These words have got to wither away in a true Hegelian cycle."
Vidal, who real name is Eugene Luther Vidal, was born in 1925 and has written numerous highly-acclaimed novels including the Rise and Fall of the American Empire and Lincoln.
-- New Gay Book of Lists
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