The author, playwright, politician and commentator died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications from pneumonia. He was 86.
American Writer Gore Vidal Dead at 86
The author, playwright, politician and commentator died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications from pneumonia. He was 86.
Jerry Cooke / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images
Vidal began his writing career at 19 with the publication of the novel Williwaw. The book, which was based on his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty, was one of the first novels about World War II and put the then teenage Vidal on the map. In a portrait for LIFE magazine in April 1947, the magazine described Vidal, then 21, as a poet who writes "Hemingwayesque fiction."
