Gore regretted America’s entrance into World War II, though he served honorably in it and used the experience for his first and best novel, 1946’s Williwaw opposed America’s various post–World War II military expeditions worried over the state of civil liberties following the terrorist attacks of September 11 and, despite this portfolio of rather old-line conservative causes, was himself something of a libertine. In such cases, the parlor game of “what would so-and-so have said about such-and-such” can be a bit more fruitful.ĭuring his lifetime, Gore Vidal (1925–2012) commended homegrown populists, including William Jennings Bryan and his own maternal grandfather, Oklahoma senator Thomas P. Yet sometimes there are long-gone figures who do not merely reflect their own time but meaningfully anticipate our own. The world has changed too rapidly, and in too many ways, for us to speculate with any credibility.
would say about the current Republican Party, or what Christopher Hitchens would say about cancel culture? Alas, the wisest course of action is usually to let such intellectual daydreams pass. It is always a dicey proposition to imagine what well-known wits of the past would have to say about the present.
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