The obituaries after his death on July 31, 2012, were long and largely admiring, with Gore’s face on the front of major newspapers around the world. Many of the leading network programs led with news of his death. But a more intriguing story followed when, two months later, the contents of his will became known. He had, with a single stroke of the pen in 2011, left everything—his manuscripts, his real estate, his money, and all future royalties to his work—to Harvard University. A few paintings were left to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
A headline in The New York Times read: “For Gore Vidal, a Final Plot Twist.” The questions multiplied: Why had he done this, and what did it mean? Had he intended to slight people close to him? Was he seeking posthumous attention?
He certainly cut out of the will those closest to him, including his nephew Burr Steers and half sister Nina, who immediately challenged the will. Many friends (including myself) felt that Gore should have left something to the faithful Norberto, who had devoted himself for many years to looking after him when few others would. I believed that Gore should have created a charitable foundation, not unlike what Norman Mailer had done. It might, for instance, have furthered the cause of literacy and writing in generations to come. Or Gore might have given the money to liberal causes that he had spent so much of his life defending. To my surprise, he dismissed such ideas out of hand when I suggested them. “The gravy train is long enough,” he said.
Harvard, of course, welcomed his estate. Needless to say, the estimated $37 million in question would constitute a drop in the bucket of their endowment. Gore’s Harvard benefactors—future students and faculty—would scarcely notice his generosity. My best guess is that he wished to associate himself with a great name, such as Harvard. He had been impressed by their invitations to lecture on several occasions, and he thought that his papers—which he had some years earlier transferred to Harvard from the Wisconsin State Historical Society at the University of Wisconsin—had been well looked after. (He had sent me to inspect them, in fact, and I reported that the Houghton Library at Harvard was an excellent place to leave one’s papers.)
As mentioned, Gore had bought a small house in the south of France for Muzius Gordon Dietzmann, his godson, a few years before his death. Muzius would get to keep the house. This was perhaps the one aspect of Gore’s will that nobody could fault, since Muzius had devoted himself for many years to Gore, helping in any way he could, offering kindness and emotional support during the difficult final decade. The slighting of Norberto and Burr was less forgivable, as both played a major role in Gore’s life during the last years. (Gore had always told Burr he would get the house in the Hollywood Hills.)
At various points, Gore asked at least two friends to be his literary executor, including me. Matt Tyrnauer was another. I always hemmed and hawed at the prospect of looking after the rights to his work, suggesting that his vast output would require a good deal of attention, and that he should have a number of knowledgeable and interested parties involved in making decisions about future editions of his work, in various languages. It was apparent to me that he never really wanted me to proceed along these lines, although in public he often called me his executor. I was quite relieved when I discovered I was, indeed, not his literary executor. The problem was that nobody assumed this role. For a man who supposedly cared about his writing and its fate, this was a peculiar lapse of judgment on his part.
Tellingly, Gore said to me in 2011: “I don’t really care what happens to my work when I’m dead.” Stoicism had given way to nihilism. Nevertheless, his efforts to revise a few of his early novels contradict this statement. At times, he cared a great deal about his literary reputation, and he liked having readers. One has to assume he had mixed emotions about this matter, which isn’t perhaps surprising; he had no belief in the afterlife, and was pleased that during his lifetime he had managed to find a wide audience and make enough money from his pen to live in style. His empire of self had expanded well beyond what the young Gore Vidal might have imagined was possible.