Gore Vidal says he’s written advice to Obama
KEY WEST (AP) – Outspoken author Gore Vidal offered advice for President-elect Barack Obama and remembered playwright Tennessee Williams during the first session of the 27th annual Key West Literary Seminar that concludes Sunday.
The 83-year-old Vidal, whose historical novels spotlighting American political history range from Lincoln to The Golden Age, said Saturday night that he had written to Obama about goals and priorities for his administration.
The restoration of the constitution of the United States should be number one, Vidal said after criticizing the Bush regime for eroding constitutional freedoms.
Vidal joined other authors including Peter Matthiessen, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates and William Kennedy in Key West for the seminar themed Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth.
Topics during the seminars two four-day sessions included the fictionalizing of political history, the relation of fiction to fact in historical fiction, history as a path to truth and rethinking and re-imagining the past in a changing world.
Vidal, who once mounted unsuccessful campaigns for Congress and the U.S. Senate in addition to penning 24 novels and more than 200 essays among other works, discussed Obama, President George W. Bush and the American educational system.
He said Williams, who owned a home in Key West from the late 1940s until his death in 1983, was the country’s best playwright.
Vidal focused on the playwright’s rich metaphors, saying the image of the bird is all over his writing.
The Literary Seminars second session is scheduled from Jan. 15 through 18.