Publication
London Grafton Books 1986
ISBN
0586029222 / 9780586029220
Collections
Series
Description
The outrageous and immortal, gender-bending and polymorphously perverse, over-the-top, and utterly on-target comic masterpiece from the bestselling author of Burr, Lincoln, and the National Book Award-winning United States. With a new introduction by Camille Paglia "I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent ("Has literary decency fallen so low?" asked Time), Myra Breckinridge's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.… (more)
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User reviews
LibraryThing member CBJames
Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal is much better than I expected, though much trashier as well. (I'm going to assume that anyone out there who might want to read the book already knows most of the plot, so spoilers will occur where they will in this review.)
Myra comes to southern California after the
It is Myra's goal in life to completely overpower and debase the male sex, as they once did her husband Myron, who it turns out had an active and adventurous gay sex life. She plots to get Rusty into situations where she can take advantage of him, succeeding twice. While these two scenes are probably the best in the book, they are not for the faint of heart. But if you can be brave, if you can see the book as the spoof it is meant to be, and if you're in the right frame of mind, you....no, you probably won't find them funny, but you will certainly be shocked, even if you know what's coming, as I did. Once Myra has conquered Rusty she moves on to Mary Anne, seducing her as well.
What does it all mean? What was Mr. Vidal up to back in 1968 when he wrote Myra Breckinridge? The book is an all out assault on gender roles, sexuality, sexual orientation, and the Hollywood machine. During the books key scene, also it most controversial, Myra blackmails Rusty into letting her anally rape him with a strap-on dildo, at which point everyone reading the book will have figured out that Myra is really Myron, formerly a homosexual male, now not exactly a lesbian, not exactly a heterosexual woman, but something entirely new. There's enough going on in that one scene to produce many a thesis in gender studies or queer theory. At the end of the book, Myra is found out and struck down by a hit and run driver while attempting to rescue a puppy. After she recovers, she returns to living as a man in heterosexual bliss married to Mary Anne.
I'm having trouble deciding if Myra Breckinridge is more or less of a guilty pleasure than Candide was. The books actually make an interesting pairing, in an unsettling way. Vidal and Voltaire would have made interesting dinner companions in any case. I'm giving Myra Breckinridge four out of five stars, much to my own surprise. There's much more there than meets the eye, but I am a little puzzled that anyone would put it on a list of must read 1001 books which is the challenge I read it for. Must read before you die? I would not go that far. But if you have some time to spare or a flight to take, it will certainly entertain while it passes the time.
Myra comes to southern California after the
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death of her husband Myraon who left her a 25% stake in an acting academy run by former cowboy star Buck Loner. She finds the academy dedicated to taking money from young people and keeping them from ever realizing that they have no talent for acting or singing. While he tries to find a way to prevent Myra from getting any of his profitable academy, Buck gives Myra a job teaching empathy and posture. Myra is the only teacher at the academy who tells the students outright what their faults are; they love her for it and flock to her class. She soon falls in with two of them, a couple, Rusty and Mary Anne. It is Myra's goal in life to completely overpower and debase the male sex, as they once did her husband Myron, who it turns out had an active and adventurous gay sex life. She plots to get Rusty into situations where she can take advantage of him, succeeding twice. While these two scenes are probably the best in the book, they are not for the faint of heart. But if you can be brave, if you can see the book as the spoof it is meant to be, and if you're in the right frame of mind, you....no, you probably won't find them funny, but you will certainly be shocked, even if you know what's coming, as I did. Once Myra has conquered Rusty she moves on to Mary Anne, seducing her as well.
What does it all mean? What was Mr. Vidal up to back in 1968 when he wrote Myra Breckinridge? The book is an all out assault on gender roles, sexuality, sexual orientation, and the Hollywood machine. During the books key scene, also it most controversial, Myra blackmails Rusty into letting her anally rape him with a strap-on dildo, at which point everyone reading the book will have figured out that Myra is really Myron, formerly a homosexual male, now not exactly a lesbian, not exactly a heterosexual woman, but something entirely new. There's enough going on in that one scene to produce many a thesis in gender studies or queer theory. At the end of the book, Myra is found out and struck down by a hit and run driver while attempting to rescue a puppy. After she recovers, she returns to living as a man in heterosexual bliss married to Mary Anne.
I'm having trouble deciding if Myra Breckinridge is more or less of a guilty pleasure than Candide was. The books actually make an interesting pairing, in an unsettling way. Vidal and Voltaire would have made interesting dinner companions in any case. I'm giving Myra Breckinridge four out of five stars, much to my own surprise. There's much more there than meets the eye, but I am a little puzzled that anyone would put it on a list of must read 1001 books which is the challenge I read it for. Must read before you die? I would not go that far. But if you have some time to spare or a flight to take, it will certainly entertain while it passes the time.
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LibraryThing member aront
I don’t get the negative reviews of this book.
This book is
1. Thought provoking
2. Challenging
3. Hilarious at times
4. moving and sad at other times
I don’t agree that it’s aged—only if you are a dogmatic, inflexible, moralist will you find this book offensive or old hat. It’s satirizes us
As for the intensely disturbing rape scene, it is magnificently written. Unless you have a heart of stone, reading it you feel and understand exactly why rape is such an awful, inexcusable act. It also gets to the very heart of the destructive link between the abuse of power and instrumentalized sex. If we are supposedly in the age of metoo, that scene alone makes this book still topical and relevant, particularly since it happens in Hollywood.
Read it with an open mind and heart and you are sure to get much out of reading this book. Four stars because the writing is choppy at times. Really it’s 4.5
This book is
1. Thought provoking
2. Challenging
3. Hilarious at times
4. moving and sad at other times
I don’t agree that it’s aged—only if you are a dogmatic, inflexible, moralist will you find this book offensive or old hat. It’s satirizes us
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humans and our pretentious beliefs and desires. It’s certainly not transphobic, homophobic or misogynistic. Please don’t confuse the character in the book with the book itself or the author’s ideas, although it is not unlikely that like M he thought the human race better off extinct.As for the intensely disturbing rape scene, it is magnificently written. Unless you have a heart of stone, reading it you feel and understand exactly why rape is such an awful, inexcusable act. It also gets to the very heart of the destructive link between the abuse of power and instrumentalized sex. If we are supposedly in the age of metoo, that scene alone makes this book still topical and relevant, particularly since it happens in Hollywood.
Read it with an open mind and heart and you are sure to get much out of reading this book. Four stars because the writing is choppy at times. Really it’s 4.5
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LibraryThing member SaraBat86
Hilarious, grotesque, ridiculous. All this and more. Yes, it's quite dated, but that doesn't mean it's no longer important.
LibraryThing member Aberjed23
You've got to love Myra, one of the most fantastic (sic) creations of 20th C literature...Vidal's tongue is not just firmly in his cheek , it is protruding a grotesque distance.....Genius , madness or just delicious fun, you decide
LibraryThing member Chris_V
Gore Vidal's wondrous work of "memoir" of the beautiful and glamorous sex and film terrorist Myra Breckinridge and her attempts to change the face of modern Hollywood... by any means necessary!
A wonderful flying kick at the world of sexual politics!
A wonderful flying kick at the world of sexual politics!
LibraryThing member elyreader
Myra Breckinridge narrates the story of her schemes to obtain her rightful inheritance, through her late husband Myron's claim, and in the process leave her mark on the dream machine of Hollywood. Working in the deplorable "Uncle" Buck's school for would-be stars, she teaches Empathy and Posture
"... I have decided to make an investigation in depth of the problem of communication in the post-McLuhan world. Each day that I spend in the company of the students makes me more than ever aware that a new world is being born without a single reliable witness except me. I alone have the intuition as well as the profound grasp of philosophy and psychology to trace for man not only what he is but what he must become, once he has ceased to be confined to a single sexual role, to a single person ... once he has become free to blend with others, to exchange personalities with both men and women, to play out the most elaborate of dreams in a world where there will soon be no limits of the human spirit's play."
If the human spirit is nothing more than the play of bodies then Myra has something to say; if Gore Vidal is satirising this rhetoric then the book has some interesting and arresting ideas going on. But, ultimately, Vidal does not come across as strong a satirist or a moralist as another late 60s veteran, Kurt Vonnegut whose wit and lightness of touch seems in all cases more assured and more biting.
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while belittling and mocking her aspirant pupils. This novel takes the form of a series of essays and meditations (confessionals might be a better term) on her activities and the wider world of 1960s American sexual politics. The tone is light and scintillating, but the ethics are dubious. Myra has the vitality and the vivacity of a youthful prodigal, but her project to gain power and mastery over those around her makes her very difficult to respect in a sustained and serious way. The sordid escapades have some lurid entertainment value and they do strike some targets worthy of mockery; but, the overall effect is a little too close at times to the throwaway slapstick of the Blake Edwards/Woody Allen comedies of the 60s with which the story is contemporaneous. It is very much a product of its time - witness these comments towards the end which sum up the mixture of Myra's polymorphous perversity and the 1960s West Coast weltanschauung:"... I have decided to make an investigation in depth of the problem of communication in the post-McLuhan world. Each day that I spend in the company of the students makes me more than ever aware that a new world is being born without a single reliable witness except me. I alone have the intuition as well as the profound grasp of philosophy and psychology to trace for man not only what he is but what he must become, once he has ceased to be confined to a single sexual role, to a single person ... once he has become free to blend with others, to exchange personalities with both men and women, to play out the most elaborate of dreams in a world where there will soon be no limits of the human spirit's play."
If the human spirit is nothing more than the play of bodies then Myra has something to say; if Gore Vidal is satirising this rhetoric then the book has some interesting and arresting ideas going on. But, ultimately, Vidal does not come across as strong a satirist or a moralist as another late 60s veteran, Kurt Vonnegut whose wit and lightness of touch seems in all cases more assured and more biting.
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LibraryThing member keebrook
within just a few pages, i could see why this is considered Important Literature. it’s a game-changer, irreverent, and very bold. but it’s not only bold, it engages on several levels, at times very funny, satirical, intellectual, pornographic, horrific, political, frank, and prescient.
Vidal
ultimately, i think the book is transformative and reading it without having known what it’s about would have been absolutely shocking at the time of its publication-and mind-blowing now for many.
don’t let the length of this review fool you. i loved this book.
Vidal
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always shows and doesn’t tell and never overdoing it with exposition. we are given insight into thought processes and points of view that we have to put together while being entertained with interesting characters and, -to put it mildly- provocative ideas. Vidal doesn’t pull any punches in this one.ultimately, i think the book is transformative and reading it without having known what it’s about would have been absolutely shocking at the time of its publication-and mind-blowing now for many.
don’t let the length of this review fool you. i loved this book.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
What is manly, and does Hollywood truly sustain us? Vidal pokes fun at many of our cherished beliefs about sexuality/masculinity in this book. Originally dismissed as pornographic trash, it stands as Vidal's biggest joke on the 60s/70s. "Camp" in grand way!
LibraryThing member gmicksmith
An excellent writer this is one of his books that was made into a well-known movie as well.
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
This novel is Vidal the Gadfly at his most outrageous, and thus, vastly entertaining. I don't think he did any better than this book, before or since. At the time it was a breathtaking exploration of sexual identity, and does seem a pioneer in popularly entertainments on this theme. It is well
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written and I hope it was very profitable to the writer. Show Less
LibraryThing member brakketh
Loved the Myra Breckinridge character and ripped through this story.
Original publication date
1968