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Gore Vidal had several spats with other public figures, including William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer. Which writer did Vidal sue for libel in 1975 over a claim that he had been kicked out of John F. Kennedy’s White House?
- A James Baldwin
- B George Plimpton
- C Truman Capote
- D Tom Wolfe
That's Correct!
It's Wrong!
From Charles McGrath’s 2012 obituary for Gore Vidal in The Times:
In 1968, while covering the Democratic National Convention on television, he called William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.” Buckley responded by calling Mr. Vidal a “queer,” and the two were in court for years. In a 1971 essay he compared Norman Mailer to Charles Manson, and a few months later Mailer head-butted him in the green room while the two were waiting to appear on the Dick Cavett show. They then took their quarrel on the air in a memorable exchange that ended with Mr. Cavett’s telling Mailer to take a piece of paper on the table in front of them and “fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine.” In 1975 he sued Truman Capote for libel after Capote wrote that Mr. Vidal had been thrown out of the Kennedy White House. Mr. Vidal won a grudging apology.