Vidal, that is. I'm going through something of a Gore Vidal phase after having read the fabulous sixties camp classic he wrote, Myra Breckinridge, which was turned into a Raquel Welch/Mae West movie, so buy it now as I did earlier today ( I try the poison before recommending it).
The thing about Vidal, whose film career includes this turkey as well as the celebrity-studded soft porn Caligula (1980), is that he has an unflinching iconoclastic verbal skill that feels like the brain is being fed an intelligence tonic when we come in contact with his sturdy words. Here's what he said in 1988 and which I agree with 100%:
"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system."
I wonder if anyone will replace him when he dies (he's 80 now). This type of artist/intellectual is becoming an increasingly rare sighting in Western culture, but then, as Vidal loves to say, humanity won't be around for much longer, so it doesn't really matter.
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