Baby Gore with his mother, Nina.
Gore and his father, Gene.
Gore’s parents, Rock Creek Park, 1927.
Senator Thomas P. Gore and his beloved grandson.
At twelve, Gore flies with his father and makes the news for doing it.
Gore adores Nina in her bathing suit. This will not last.
Gore enters his teenage years, 1937.
Gore at Merrywood, 1938.
Gore’s childhood home in Rock Creek Park.
Gore goes scouting, Los Alamos Ranch School, 1941.
Gore at St. Albans, right behind Jimmie Trimble.
Jimmie Trimble, all boy and Gore’s bliss.
Gore tells them off at Exeter, 1943. He’d do a lot of that in future years.
Gore’s in the army now, in Colorado Springs, 1944.
Another view from the bridge—this time of the Navy freighter USS FS-35.
Gore and Anaïs Nin, an odd literary couple.
In Guatemala, 1947, during the first of his expatriations.
Life calls to Gore, 1947, on the occasion of his novel Williwaw.
Gore and Tennessee, 1950, in Florida.
Gore with the dancer Harold Lang in Bermuda.
Gore and Tennessee and an army surplus jeep on the Amalfi Coast, 1948.
Gore, an inexplicable bear, and dancer Johnny Kliza in Florida.
The legendary gathering of poets—and one novelist, Gore Vidal—at the Gotham Book Mart in 1948.
Casual dining in New York at Johnny Nicolson’s Café in 1949—from left, the ballerina Tanaquil LeClercq, the novelist Donald Windham, the painter Buffie Johnson, Tennessee Williams, and Gore.
Howard Austen, Gore’s lifelong companion, in 1951.
Gore and Howard at their beloved Hudson Valley estate, Edgewater.
Lord of the Manor at his ease, Edgewater, 1958.
On the set of Ben-Hur, 1959: director William Wyler, Christopher Fry, Gore, and star Charlton Heston.
In Palm Beach with JFK and the Bird. Williams’s admiration for JFK was more physical than political.
Gore campaigns for Congress with JFK in Dutchess County.
Gore’s highly collectible campaign button.
In 1960 JFK arrives at The Best Man to meet the cast.
The likeness of Myra Breckinridge on a parade float. Inset: The first-edition jacket of Myra Breckinridge, 1968.
In makeup with Buckley before their epic confrontation in Chicago in 1968.
Buckley versus Vidal on set, a vicious verbal duel that would rivet the nation.
Dick Cavett welcomes Gore to his show, during which Gore and Norman Mailer had at one another.
Gore with his close friends Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Italy.
La Rondinaia: Gore’s paradise in Ravello.
Climbing the steps in Ravello.
With his editor, Jason Epstein, in Venice, 1975.
Gore and “Fred” (Federico Fellini) in Rome.
Johnny Carson and his wife, Joanne, pay a visit to Gore.
The Tonight Show: “And here’s Johnny,” with Gore during one of numerous appearances.
Time puts Gore and his novel on the cover, 1976.
Running for the U.S. Senate against Jerry Brown, 1982.
With the Italian literary master Italo Calvino in 1982. Each admired and wrote eloquently about the other’s work.
Walking the beach in Amalfi, 1987.
Leonard Bernstein pays a visit of state to Ravello 1988.
Gore and Howard in Ravello in 1988.
Gore in 1989 in costume during the filming of Billy the Kid—a subject that preoccupied him for his whole writing life.
Gay Talese, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, and Gore before a benefit reading by all four of Don Juan in Hell, 2002.
Gore (alongside Tom Wolfe) voices an episode of The Simpsons in 2006—true fame.
Gore in conversation with Jay Parini in Key West, 2010, one of the many such events they staged.
Gore at eighty-five, contemplating his exit.
A collage of the many figures in Gore’s life, assembled by Diana Phipps for his fiftieth birthday.