A Thirsty Evil
by Gore Vidal
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From the poignant realisation as an adult of the cruel brutality of childhood in 'The Robin', man then comes face to face with himself as a boy in 'A Moment of Green Laurel': both stories combining the nostalgia and fear that haunt us all in old age. Meanwhile, in 'Erlinda and Mr Coffin', Southern etiquette is unashamedly turned upside down in a tale of amateur theatricals reminiscent of Dickens and Victorian melodrama. Yet it is in 'Three Stratagems', 'The Zenner Trophy', 'Pages from an show more Abandoned Journal' and 'The Ladies in the Library' (with more than a hint of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice in the latter) that we see Vidal as we know him best: cynical and provocative in these subtle tales of what was known in those days as 'sexual inversion'. show lessTags
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Seven short stories, often understated, especially those with gay themes, all of them barbed, My favourites: "Three Stratagems", that is stratagems in place for cruising for company at Key West, mid-Twentieth Century: "The Zenner Trophy", scandal and hypocrisy surrounding expulsion at a boy's high school and "The Ladies in the Library", plain nasty.
My first Vidal. I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. He is a fantastic story teller. I particularly enjoyed 'The Robin', 'The Zenner Trophy' and 'A moment of Green Laurel'. A brilliant read.
specially bound hardcover edition of 100 numbered copies, of which this copy is no. 60
Signed by the author on the title page
Signed by the author on the title page
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168+ Works 31,145 Members
Gore Vidal was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. on October 3, 1925 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He did not go to college but attended St. Albans School in Washington and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1943. He enlisted in the Army, where he became first mate on a freight supply ship in the show more Aleutian Islands. His first novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946 when he was twenty-one years old and working as an associate editor at the publishing company E. P. Dutton. The City and the Pillar was about a handsome, athletic young Virginia man who gradually discovers that he is homosexual, which caused controversy in the publishing world. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel and gave a negative review of it and future novels. He had such trouble getting subsequent novels reviewed that he turned to writing mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box and then gave up novel-writing altogether for a time. Once he moved to Hollywood, he wrote television dramas, screenplays, and plays. His films included I Accuse, Suddenly Last Summer with Tennessee Williams, Is Paris Burning? with Francis Ford Coppola, and Ben-Hur. His most successful play was The Best Man, which he also adapted into a film. He started writing novels again in the 1960's including Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Myron, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, Live From Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal, and The Golden Age. He also published two collections of essays entitled The Second American Revolution, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982 and United States: Essays 1952-1992. In 2009, he received the National Book Awards lifetime achievement award. He died from complications of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Thirsty Evil
- Original publication date
- 1956
- Epigraph
- From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty:
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,
Like rats that ravin down their prop... (show all)er bane,
A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die.
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare - Dedication
- For HOWARD AUSTEN
- Disambiguation notice
- This LT Work is Vidal's 1956 collection of seven stories, A Thirsty Evil:
- Three Stratagems,
- The Robin,
- A Moment of Green Laurel,
- The Zenner Trophy,
- Erlinda and Mr. Coffin,
- The Ladies in the Library.
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- Members
- 157
- Popularity
- 207,914
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.63)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese (Portugal)
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 8
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 9
