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Authors: Gore Vidal
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not surprisingly. He used them carefully and listened carefully to the way others used them. The moment we realized that we were, somehow, on each other’s wavelength was when I was doing my deep hollow-voiced radio-announcer Nixonian voice. I quoted from Nixon’s book
Six Crises
: “President Eisenhower was a far more
sly
and
devious
man than people suspected and I mean those words in their very best sense.” On air, I got a look of genuine astonishment from John. Then he nearly slid out of his chair. Over the years, when one or the other of us would characterize someone as “sly” and “devious,” the other would add in an oily voice, “I assume you mean those words in their very
best
sense.”
Last winter I ran into Janet De Cordova, now a widow. She had tried to get John to come to a memorial service for Freddie and he’d said, “I’ll think about it.” He did. He rang her back and said, “No, I can’t do it.” When reminded of their long friendship and so on, he was to the point: “I can’t do it because everyone thinks I’m still Johnny Carson but I’m not anymore. I wouldn’t even know how to fake it. So, I won’t be there but I know what a lousy businessman Freddie was and I’ll bet his affairs are in a mess so I’m sending you something useful.” He sent her a large check and she was pleased. But how odd it must be
not
to be the self you have spent a lifetime perfecting. To vanish like Prospero into thin air, leaving behind pale understudies but no replacement.
As I was writing these last thoughts on Carson, a friend sent me an old clipping which John would have enjoyed. I start to imagine we are back on his show. I remark how the administration is praising the recent election in Iraq where, perhaps, 72 percent voted. I sit in the swivel chair to his right, an old bit of newspaper clipping in one hand.
“I hear, Gore, you’ve got the latest news from the election in Iraq. It was certainly a real triumph for freedom and democracy, wouldn’t you say?” To myself I mutter, “In the very best sense of those words.” Aloud I say, “Well, actually, it’s from
The New York Times
of September 3, 1967.”
“A dicey year for freedom, wasn’t it?”
I read the headline: “U.S. encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83 percent turnout despite Vietcong terror…A successful election has long been seen as the keystone to President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.” Suddenly, we are sitting on the balcony in Ravello.
CARSON
What’s that phrase you use all the time for the country?
VIDAL
The United States of Amnesia.
CARSON
I’ll open with that, then you read off the “latest” Iraq election news with the quote from 1967.
VIDAL
But where do we do this?
CARSON
Oh, we’ll find a show.
VIDAL
There isn’t one. Remember?
You’re
dead.
CARSON (evasively)
No, no. I’m just living down at the beach, I think it’s called in seclusion.
The screen is now crowded with Leno
et al
. telling jokes until mortar fire drowns them out, and we have faded to black. Anyway, a few of us once heard the chimes at midnight and were the better for it.
ELEVEN
I read somewhere how odd it was that although I ran for public office twice I have never really written about either race or, indeed,
why
I ran. Well, part of the why of 1960 was Jack Kennedy who had married Jackie whose mother had taken the place of my mother as Mrs. Hugh Dudley Auchincloss. After my mother and I had moved out of Auchincloss’s Virginia house Jackie’s mother and sister moved in while my half brother and half sister became Jackie’s stepbrother and stepsister. So many divorces and remarriages in our interconnected family has made for numerous weird connections as well as non-connections: I have four stepbrothers, sons of my mother’s last husband, General Olds: I have not only
Six Crises
: “President Eisenhower was a far more
sly
and
devious
man than people suspected and I mean those words in their very best sense.” On air, I got a look of genuine astonishment from John. Then he nearly slid out of his chair. Over the years, when one or the other of us would characterize someone as “sly” and “devious,” the other would add in an oily voice, “I assume you mean those words in their very
best
sense.”
Last winter I ran into Janet De Cordova, now a widow. She had tried to get John to come to a memorial service for Freddie and he’d said, “I’ll think about it.” He did. He rang her back and said, “No, I can’t do it.” When reminded of their long friendship and so on, he was to the point: “I can’t do it because everyone thinks I’m still Johnny Carson but I’m not anymore. I wouldn’t even know how to fake it. So, I won’t be there but I know what a lousy businessman Freddie was and I’ll bet his affairs are in a mess so I’m sending you something useful.” He sent her a large check and she was pleased. But how odd it must be
not
to be the self you have spent a lifetime perfecting. To vanish like Prospero into thin air, leaving behind pale understudies but no replacement.
As I was writing these last thoughts on Carson, a friend sent me an old clipping which John would have enjoyed. I start to imagine we are back on his show. I remark how the administration is praising the recent election in Iraq where, perhaps, 72 percent voted. I sit in the swivel chair to his right, an old bit of newspaper clipping in one hand.
“I hear, Gore, you’ve got the latest news from the election in Iraq. It was certainly a real triumph for freedom and democracy, wouldn’t you say?” To myself I mutter, “In the very best sense of those words.” Aloud I say, “Well, actually, it’s from
The New York Times
of September 3, 1967.”
“A dicey year for freedom, wasn’t it?”
I read the headline: “U.S. encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83 percent turnout despite Vietcong terror…A successful election has long been seen as the keystone to President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.” Suddenly, we are sitting on the balcony in Ravello.
CARSON
What’s that phrase you use all the time for the country?
VIDAL
The United States of Amnesia.
CARSON
I’ll open with that, then you read off the “latest” Iraq election news with the quote from 1967.
VIDAL
But where do we do this?
CARSON
Oh, we’ll find a show.
VIDAL
There isn’t one. Remember?
You’re
dead.
CARSON (evasively)
No, no. I’m just living down at the beach, I think it’s called in seclusion.
The screen is now crowded with Leno
et al
. telling jokes until mortar fire drowns them out, and we have faded to black. Anyway, a few of us once heard the chimes at midnight and were the better for it.
ELEVEN
I read somewhere how odd it was that although I ran for public office twice I have never really written about either race or, indeed,
why
I ran. Well, part of the why of 1960 was Jack Kennedy who had married Jackie whose mother had taken the place of my mother as Mrs. Hugh Dudley Auchincloss. After my mother and I had moved out of Auchincloss’s Virginia house Jackie’s mother and sister moved in while my half brother and half sister became Jackie’s stepbrother and stepsister. So many divorces and remarriages in our interconnected family has made for numerous weird connections as well as non-connections: I have four stepbrothers, sons of my mother’s last husband, General Olds: I have not only
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