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Vidal has much else to think about these days. The next item on his agenda is Gore Vidal's Caligula, a film project financed by Penthouse Publisher Bob Guccione and starring Malcolm McDowell. The title, naturally, is Vidal's idea. "I decided to strike a blow for the writer," he says, "and against the idea that the director is the sole auteur of a film Some are—Fellini, Bergman. But most directors are parasites, peculiarly dependent on the talents of writers whose names they very rarely reveal to the press." More immediate is a March visit to the U.S. promoting 1876. Vidal seems unenthusiastic: "When I think about it, I just see 10,000 Ramada Inns from one end of the country to the other."
In such a mood, he muses about retirement: "After all, I've been at it for 30 years. At my age Scott Fitzgerald had been dead for six years, Hemingway had nearly stopped, Faulkner wasn't much good. It might be a good idea to stop while you have all your marbles."
Then, with typical reverse English he announces that he will be back in the country next summer, covering the Democratic Convention for Rolling Stone. There may be more than
sheer perversity behind that assignment: Vidal is surely aware that 50 is barely puberty in the life of a politician. Could he be subjecting himself to the chaos of political conventions because of an old obsession, the one prize life has denied him? How could a writer resist the fantasy: a hopelessly deadlocked convention; a sudden mammoth coming-to-trie-senses by the delegates; a whisper cascading into a roar that will not be gaveled into silence. And out into the glare of klieg lights and a forest of microphones there steps, at last, the Best Man.
Such a scenario, Vidal admits, is impossible. "You can't write —how to put it discreetly?—adventurous books like Julian and Myra Breckinridge and then make the trip to Pennsylvania Avenue."
True enough. But if you can create Charlie Schuyler and his engrossing history, why bother with Conventional thinking? As every author—and every reader —knows, writing well is the best trip of them all.