Barbara Boxer: “today I rise to pay tribute to the great talents and accomplishments of Gore Vidal, the extraordinary American writer…”

“today I rise to pay tribute to the great talents and accomplishments of Gore Vidal, the extraordinary American writer who died this week at age 86 in California, where he spent the last 9 years of his life. Gore Vidal was a child of the Senate--or more precisely, a grandchild of the Senate. His maternal grandfather was Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma, and the writer's happiest childhood memories were of the times he lived at Senator Gore's Washington home. According to Vidal's New York Times obituary, ``He loved to read to his grandfather, who was blind, and sometimes accompanied him onto the Senate floor.'' Vidal himself later said, ``At something like 13 or 14, I wanted to be a politician, but knew that I was a writer. . . .'' This change of career path worked out best for everyone. Gore Vidal's prose was elegant and crystal clear, and his range as a writer has seldom been equaled. His essays, perhaps his greatest triumph, utilized and displayed his wide-ranging interests, encyclopedic learning, and dazzling wit. He also wrote more than two dozen novels including a series on American political history that is widely read and admired on both sides of the aisle--as well as plays, screenplays, television dramas, and two volumes of memoirs. Gore Vidal twice ran for office, losing a 1960 run for Congress in upstate New York and a 1982 Senate primary in California.…”