Gore Vidal vs Norman Mailer The Dick Cavett Show

[Drunken Irishman]

Such an interesting dynamic. Mailer was truly an unhinged man - really the foundation of the right craziness we've come to experience the last 40 years.

[Laffy Kat]

1. Boy, did they ever hate each other.

Also, didn't Vidal and Capote hate each other, too?

[Grins]

2. Don't know about Capote...

...but William F. Buckley...? Wow!!! Now THAT was hatred!

[brush]

6. I thought it was William F. Buckley? Gore seemed to be on to the left of them all, which IMO is good

[2naSalit]

3. It seemed as though

Vidal had a lot of detractors but I always liked him for his impersonal recitations of historical and political events and meanings.

[dhill926]

9. for me, one of the greatest American writers ever...

both fiction and non-fiction...

[2naSalit]

10. He was.

[Music Man]

4. Norman Mailer sure was an arrogant asshole.

But it's interesting to me you draw a line between his craziness and modern right-wingism. Mailer was long a Democrat, though in today's terms many of his views would be termed libertarian, I guess. Certainly many fringe views that defied labeling.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. Maybe a Democrat but quite anti-woman it seems.

[Laffy Kat]

7. Vidal and Mailer were both pretentious pricks.

Typical misogynistic liberal males of the 70s. I miss the Dick Cavett show, he was such a good interviewer. Nothing ever came close to taking its place.

[John1956PA]

8. As a teenager, I viewed some of these contentious segments of the Dick Cavett Show.

At some later point, I watched when Cavett went on the Johnny Carson Show and told (bragged?) of his put-down of Mailer.