When I visited Gore Vidal’s home in the Hollywood Hills, five months after his death, one book, left unshelved, jolted me: The Mayor of Castro Street, Randy Shilts’s acclaimed biography of Harvey Milk, the inspirational gay San Francisco city supervisor assassinated in 1978. While Milk and Shilts were openly gay in rougher times, Vidal’s sexuality occupied a more vexed, undeclared place. Like both men Vidal was arguably a gay radical and hero, although he would have hated the plaudit.
Read Full Article »
