1925–2012 · American novelist, essayist and screenwriter
Gore Vidal (3 October 1925 – 31 July 2012) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwriter, as famous for his televised feuds as for Myra Breckinridge or Lincoln. His running war with Truman Capote ran for years and reached a courtroom: in 1975 Vidal sued Capote for slander over a claim that he had been thrown out of the Kennedy White House. When Capote died in 1984 Vidal reached for a line that was already circulating in Hollywood — and, in a private letter, said so plainly. The wit here is in the aim, not the invention.