Gore Vidal Dead at 86

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Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal, the celebrated and iconoclastic author, playwright and commentator, died Tuesday at the age of 86.

His death was first reported by the Associated Press
shortly after midnight Tuesday on the east coast, and later confirmed
by a number of other media outlets. His nephew, Burr Steers, said that
Vidal died that evening at his California home of complications of
pneumonia.

The Los Angeles Times
on his literary legacy: “Vidal was a literary juggernaut who wrote 25
novels, including historical works such as ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Burr’ and
satires such as ‘Myra Breckinridge’ and ‘Duluth.’ He was also a prolific
essayist whose pieces on politics, sexuality, religion and
literature—once described as ‘elegantly sustained demolition
derbies’—both delighted and inflamed and in 1993 earned him a National
Book Award for his massive ‘United States Essays, 1952-1992′”

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