Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings 1960-1998

14 essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot button issues such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay-bashing in the US Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac.

... Environmental Consciousness, Political Awareness and generally not succumbing to the mindless morass of pedestrian thought and values -- which are neither thought-through nor truly valuable. Gore Vidal's compiled essays on sexuality -- both in terms of the act as well as gender and sexual orientation -- is an invaluable comfort to anyone whose rejection of "The American Dream" has been met with resistance and criticism. Read Vidal, and then remember that being who you are is more important than succumbing to who other people try to convince you to be.

This collection of Vidal's essays (and a few interviews) on sex and sexuality is both timely and welcome, since, as he states, sex is never far from public consciousness in the ever-repressed U.S.A. Essays like "Sex is Politics" are as fresh today as they were when first published, and is there another writer alive with a more authentic knowledge of American history and a more genuine understanding of American culture and political thought? I think not. Combine these assets with, as always, exqusite writing, and you have one utterly irresistible book.Contrary to what certain "gender absolutists" would have us all think, Vidal's opinions on sexuality are more trenchant than ever before at a time when more men and women are transgressing the false boundaries of gender to explore sex with whoever we please. This collection is a happy defiance of those who would try to neatly categorize all of us based on our sexual acts or even our preferences (a difficult feat indeed when one considers women like me, who perform with men acts that might be considered, ahem, decidedly queer...)

It is axiomatic that Gore Vidal has long been one of the more underrated American literary masters of the 20th century. It is brilliant compilations like SEXUALLY SPEAKING that do battle with this oversight. Not often do books emerge that contain such wit, history and a chilling timeliness, that can be both enlightening and serve as a puckish summer read. The supplemental commentary is piercing, poignant and vulgar. This is the book that archeologists will dig up in two hundred years, to see how sexual identity in the 20th century was both confused and triumphant

"Sexually Speaking" in these times is risky business, as Clinton, Starr, Lewinsky, and Tripp et al have more than shown us. Whereas with politicians sex becomes cloistered in the beltway and below the belt, in the hands of the esteemed Mr. Vidal's "Sexually Speaking", sex *is* politics and political.And since when has it not been?Ribald? No. Illuminating? Yes. Funny? Hell yes! Pounding down the nails of repression and hypocrisy, Vidal arms us all with intellectual firepower and in the process unlocks one more shackle, much to the dismay of those who would not have it that way... you all know who you are.A brave work.