‘Book Review’ Editor and a ‘Minor Manhattan Academic’ Get GoredBack in 1999, Fred Kaplan, the author of Gore Vidal: A Biography, told Salon that after the biography came out, he continued to enjoy a “relatively stable rapport” with his subject; the two even appeared on a panel together that year. But my, how things have changed! In her November article in the Times Book Review on the relationships between biographers and their subjects, Review editor Rachel Donadio referred to their “bitter falling-out,” largely due to the fact, Kaplan claimed, that although Vidal had asked him to write the book, he got pissed when Kaplan wouldn’t let him see the final manuscript, which, according to Kaplan, touched on Vidal’s “narcissistic egomania, his fascination with celebrity, his need to be in the spotlight, his evasion from serious self-analysis, that kind of thing … but not in a judgmental way.” Well, of course not. Anyway, this version of the story didn’t sit well with Vidal, who responded with a letter to the editor in this week’s Review so scathing, rambling, and gleefully insane that we can practically see the note that must have prefaced it, something like “IF YOU ARE GOING TO PRINT THIS PRINT IT EXACTLY LIKE I WROTE IT YOU BASTARDS.” Highlights include a reference to the bio as a “sacred project” and descriptions of Kaplan as “a minor Manhattan academic” or “at best slightly below the mediocre, flailing and giggling about and telling lies,” and worse. “How did I get involved with someone so undistinguished?” he asks, rhetorically.
