Historically famous critics

Gore Vidal

1925-2012 · American · 20th-21st century

American novelist and essayist, an acid critic of empire, politics, and public morality

Gore Vidal was a novelist and essayist who turned criticism of American power into an art form. He skewered the country’s political class, its imperial ambitions, and its sexual hypocrisies, from the taboo-breaking novel The City and the Pillar to decades of caustic essays collected in United States. His public feuds with figures like William F. Buckley Jr. made intellectual combat into theater, and his prose gave dissent wit, historical depth, and range.