(8 of 9)
Everyday details are handled by Bronx-born Howard Austen, 47, Vidal's companion for 26 years. Vidal rises most mornings between 9:30 and 11, has a small breakfast and then writes until 3 p.m., pausing only to consume a boiled egg for lunch. Next comes 30 to 45 minutes of weight lifting, a daily regimen to keep his 6-ft. frame tolerably within range of 180 Ibs. When this fails, he adopts a last resort: holing up in a hotel where he hates the food. Vidal manifests an unembarrassed narcissism about his appearance. "When I was a little boy," he says, "I looked just like the Gores —blond and pig-nosed. But growing older, I've grown more Vidal." He cannot resist a final Roman vanity: "I have the face now of one of the later, briefer Emperors."
Night life at Ravello is generally subdued. Visitors to La Rondinaia have included Princess Margaret, the Newmans, Andy Warhol and Mick and Bianca Jagger, but Vidal spends most evenings alone, reading until 3 a.m.—usually research for what he will write the next day.
Vidal also maintains a spacious apartment in Rome but spends less and less time there. He is friendly with journalists and occasionally sees such fellow novelists as Anthony Burgess and Muriel Spark. Curiously for the author of Julian and a man who considers Christianity "the single greatest disaster that has ever happened to the West," Vidal seems to delight in the company of clerics. One of the people he dines with in Rome is American Jesuit John Navone, a theologian at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Navone once brought a group of visiting Jesuits to Vidal's apartment, Vidal greeted them with the question "Out for a night in Transylvania?"
On another occasion, at dinner, Vidal teased Navone: "Now, John, tell us what your idea of heaven is ... all about those angels." Navone gently replied: "There are no harps. We are already there. Heaven is communicating with friends." Moved, Vidal had nothing to say.
That rarely happens, as TIME Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof discovered during a recent interview with the author. He found the celebrated Vidal tongue as sharp and active as ever. A sampling of Vidal's current opinions and animadversions:
— Truman Capote: "He's made lying an art form—a minor art form."
— Norman Mailer: "I think his whole life was destroyed by his name. He should have been called Male-est."
— The "cleansing effect" of
Watergate: "Everybody's so anesthetized by scandal that if it turned out Richard Nixon were the illegitimate son of Golda Meir, it wouldn't even make the front pages."
— Senator Edward M. Kennedy: "He will probably be our next President. Every country should have at least one King Farouk."
— Ronald Reagan: "Reagan can't talk for more than about 28 minutes. That's all he's programmed for, then he has nothing to say."
— The presidential campaign:
"It doesn't make much difference who's elected. The system doesn't work. Our elections are an expensive public charade to celebrate the owners of the country."