In his immediate moments of exile, however, it was Weybright who allowed Vidal to survive as a man of letters and stories. His “Narratives of Empire” series chronicling American history through one fictional family would solidify his reputation as one of his country’s best and most important writers, and he would also find his name regularly coupled with the title, “America’s best essayist.” (His then comprehensive collection of essays, United States: Essays, 1952 – 1992, won the National Book Award.) Eventually, Vidal would move from New York to Hollywood, earn a handsome living as a screenwriter, and triumphantly reemerge as a brilliant and bestselling novelist with his historical epic, Julian in 1964. The New York Times Book Review blackballed Vidal from its pages and most major publications followed suit. Homophobia was so virulent and vicious in the mid-twentieth century that the 1948 publication of The City and The Pillar, Vidal’s groundbreaking and brave novel sympathetically depicting the lives of two men in love, threatened to end his literary career.
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