Vidal, Gore 1925–

Vidal is an American novelist, playwright, critic, essayist, and raconteur. He is considered a brilliant essayist and his principal themes for both fiction and nonfiction are social and political. He has also written detective stories under the pseudonym Edgar Box. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

[While] outwardly flattering to the political opinions of the spectator, The Best Man is secretly destructive of all intelligent politics: complex ideas harden into ideology, and liberalism itself is tainted with the demagoguery it professes to abhor. It is worth observing that while we are encouraged to sympathize with the upright Russell … in his uncompromising concern with issues rather than personalities, there is not a single political issue of any consequence discussed in the play. And at the same time that we are hooting Joe Cantwell's low-road penchant for malicious scandal, we are...

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