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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Books: Myra the Messiah
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 26, 2009 12:09am |
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| Category | Review |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Friday, February 16, 1968 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal. 264 pages. Little, Brown. $5.95.
"It began upstairs when he tore my clothes off in the closet. Then he raped me standing up with a metal clothes hanger twisted around my neck, choking me. I could hardly breathe. It was exquisite! Then one thing led to another. Those small attentions a girl like me cherishes ... A lighted cigarette stubbed out on my derriere, a complete beating with his great thick heavy leather belt ... All the usual fun things."
Is the Olympia Press alive and publishing in Boston? Has literary decency fallen so low—or has fashionable camp risen that high?
This novel brings up such questions because Gore Vidal is a reasonably serious writer: his credentials, if haphazard, are all in order. Although he has taken time out to run for Congress as a Democrat in 1960 and to haunt television panels as a sort of sexy Schlesinger or political Capote, he has always been primarily a working novelist (Julian), playwright (Visit to a Small Planet), and critic (Rocking the Boat).
Nothing in the versatile Vidal's past will quite prepare the reader for Myra Breckinridge. Vidal and his publisher, insisting that the sexual problems of the title character represent a suspense element vital to the novel's enjoyment, coquettishly plead that the book not be reviewed at all. However, anyone who has been to far-off, murky Venice—or just down to the local fag bar—will recognize Myra's true gender long before Vidal coyly pronounces the paradigm. And in all conscience it can be reported that the key to Myra's sexual-identity crisis is about as crucial as the sound track to a stag film. |
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