Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I just finished reading Gore Vidal's latest book, Inventing a Nation; Washington, Adams, Jefferson. It's a lovely, long conversation in Gore's voice about the founding and the founders of our Republic, which, of course, he doesn't think much is left of­ his point. It's a short book (198 pages) and at the end of it, Vidal informs us that this work was the result of a conversation he had with President John F. Kennedy at the Kennedy manse at Hyannisport back in 1961. The President asked Gore: "how do you explain how a sort of backwoods country like this, with only three million people, could have produced the three great geniuses of the 18th century­ Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton?" Gore covers the familiar territory and adds his own riffs­ how bad teeth of the founders got in the way of their large banquets. During the XYZ affair, in the Adams administration, Gore meditates on the advice that Talleyrand, then the Foreign Minister, had to offer the young men in his office in Paris. Talleyrand told his young colleagues to be sure to masturbate in the morning; that would keep their minds clear of the sex for most of the rest of the day. Did Talleyrand follow his own advice?

View our poll archive

What I find intriguing here is that Vidal took more than 40 years to answer JFK's question. Gore's is not the final answer. Gore may be thinking along those lines; it's been a tough year for him. He's a man I admire a lot. But the past months have seen him put his Italian home up for sale. And Gore's companion since 1948, Howard Austen, died earlier this year. I had met Howard on a number of occasions. Once, over drinks, I asked Howard why he stayed with Gore. Howard, chain-smoking his cigarettes, told me: "I told myself that the minute it gets boring, I'll leave him. It's never been boring." It sounds like it was a fun ride.

But for how many of us is it true that you take years and years to fulfill the conversation? It takes many years to even have the opportunity, obviously, and it requires that someone in your past actually posed a question or questions that linger in your cortex. I recall one incident with my father. I was somewhat alienated from my family members­ and may still be in some capacities­ for many years, but at some point I started calling up my Dad and just yakking and here's the point: when we were back on the horn, it's as though, after all the years, the conversation was still in play, not over, just on pause and, with us both in conversation, stitching the narrative. I have had this experience with others and I find it quite striking. As I get older, there's so much one does forget or wants to forget­ I couldn't think of Elian Gonzalez's name this morning; it was an answer to a clue in the crossword puzzle, "Cuban Boy in Headlines in 2000"­ and yet, strangely, there are comments, queries, and challenges heard over many years which linger.

Once, when I was 29, I was surveying my life and gave this account to a friend in his 50s. I was not my pleased with how my life was turning out. He had good advice: "Your 30s will be terrific," he told me. "But when they're over, let me know." My 30s were just fine, thank you, I think, but I didn't call him up­ he was an old boyfriend­ and I don't think he wanted a report. Still, answers to old inquiries have a certain utility and fascination. How do things turn out? Gore's essay is his take on how the country turned out. Most of us are just as concerned with how our lives and the lives of the people we know­ and knew­ have turned out or are in the process of turning out.

I ran into an old friend, Nick, the other day. We had been great pals since early Gay Lib days back in the early 1970s and then he roamed. He gave me a big embrace and we shared some small chit-chat; I offered condolences on the recent death of his father, a gentleman who had been at Los Alamos and was part of the team which developed the atom bomb, which in subsequent years might have provided conversation at the dinner table, though I do not know, each family being different.

What are those answers which all of us have never spoken? What questions have we been asked over the decades which none of us has yet addressed? My mother called me not many weeks back and addressed a lingering question which had hung around for over 50 years, something I found quite disturbing, a kind of thing not terribly out of the ordinary but something which throws the light through the prism in a slightly skewed way. I thought it an oddity that one waits for so many decades to give an answer. But if Gore waited 42 years to answer Jack Kennedy, after all they went through, then this may be the standard model. Our culture has a strong tilt toward doing everything instantly. Buy now. Call now. What is your answer? The quiz-show mentality. The long-term narratives have a rough time. Sometimes if you wait long enough, there comes clarification. Or at least explanation. I think Gore's book, and certainly my conversation with my mother, reminds me of where we, even I, came from­ our history, the invention, the creation, actually the rather unusual vector of whence we came. I think it's worth the wait. If it isn't, what is?

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com