How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV

Frank Marcie Frank

Description

Novelist, television personality, political candidate, and maverick social commentator, Gore Vidal is one of the most innovative, influential, and enduring American intellectuals of the past fifty years. In How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV, Marcie Frank provides a concise introduction to Vidal's life and work as she argues that the twentieth-century shift from print to electronic media, particularly TV and film, has not only loomed large in Vidal's thought but also structured his career. Looking at Vidal's prolific literary output, Frank shows how he has reflected explicitly on this subject at every turn: in essays on politics, his book on Hollywood and history, his reviews and interviews, and topical excursions within the novels. At the same time, she traces how he has repeatedly crossed the line supposedly separating print and electronic culture, perhaps with more success than any other American intellectual. He has written television serials and screenplays, appeared in movies, and regularly appeared on television, most famously in heated arguments with Norman Mailer on The Dick Cavett Show and with William F. Buckley during ABC's coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.Frank highlights the connections between Vidal's attitudes toward TV, sex, and American politics as they have informed his literary and political writings and screen appearances. She deftly situates his public persona in relation to those of Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Susann, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, and others. By describing Vidal's shrewd maneuvering between different media, Frank suggests that his career offers a model to aspiring public intellectuals and a refutation to those who argue that electronic media have eviscerated public discourse.

Sujets

• Télévision
• États-Unis
• Television
• Cultural studies
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822387152
• Langue: English

Extrait

Public Planet Books A series edited by Dilip Gaonkar, Jane Kramer, Benjamin Lee, and Michael Warner

Public Planet Books is a series designed by writers in and outside the academy—writers working on what could be called narratives of public culture—to explore questions that urgently concern us all. It is an attempt to open the schol- arly discourse on contemporary public culture, both local and international, and to illuminate that discourse with the kinds of narrative that will challenge sophisticated readers, make them think, and especially make them question. It is, most importantly, an experiment in strategies of discourse, com- bining reportage and critical reflection on unfolding issues and events—one, we hope, that will provide a running narra- tive of our societies at this moment. Public Planet Books is part of the Public Works publication project of the Center for Transcultural Studies, which also includes the journalPublic Cultureand the Public Worlds book series.

How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV

How to Be an Intellectual

in the Age of TV

The Lessons of Gore Vidal

Marcie Frank

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Mary Mendell Typeset by Tseng Information

Systems, Inc. in Bodoni Book. Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Michael Moon

1

2

3

4

5

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction



xi

The Print Intellectual

The Screen Intellectual

A Fine Romance







Sexual Politics in the Print-Screen Circuit

TV: Another Erogenous Zone

Notes

Index







