T A B L E+T A L K Why is there such a backlash against memoirs? Join the discussion in the Books section of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Russell Banks By Cynthia Joyce (01/05/98) Haruki Murakami By Laura Miller (12/16/97) Allan Gurganus By Dwight Garner (12/08/97) Mark Leyner By Laura Miller (12/08/97) Doris Lessing By Dwight Garner (11/11/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERVIEW ARCHIVE R E V I E W S Preston Falls By David Gates This powerful novel of yuppie disillusionment is about a fading, flabby New York PR representative and his family (01/14/98)		gore's wars__________ THE SALON INTERVIEW - - - >GORE VIDAL ____ GORE VIDAL RAILS AT THE EMPIRE, DEFENDS THE INTERNET AND SAYS HE'D MAKE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN COUSIN AL. BY CHRIS HAINES | Gore Vidal puts us at ease with history, probably because he has spent so much time at its elbow. Born at West Point and raised in Washington, D.C., the grandson of the legendary blind Sen. Thomas Gore and kin to Jimmy Carter, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the current vice president, Vidal has woven his sitting room perspective of American politics into novels like "Burr," "Lincoln," "1876" and "Empire." It is his familial view of great people and events that makes them feel real. Vidal's contributions to popular culture -- both as an early writer for television and as a Hollywood screenwriter -- expose human folly and frailty, in a more contemporary and occasionally picaresque mode. Compare, for instance, "Visit to a Small Planet" or "The Best Man" to "Suddenly, Last Summer" or "Myra Breckinridge." His forthcoming novel, "The Smithsonian Institution," returns to his favorite political and sexual themes. In his aptly titled autobiography, "Palimpsest," the personal and the historical rub shoulders again. Jack and Jackie, Tennessee and Anaïs all wander across the playing field, without their political or literary raiments -- drunk, fragile, mendacious -- as if caught in the harsh, incontestable light of a Polaroid snapshot taken by a sober nephew or cousin. Even better are the essays. Reading through the dozens of reviews, stories and editorials that compose "United States" (accounting for approximately two-thirds of his published articles), it becomes clear that Vidal's reputation as a polemicist is something of a bum rap. He is, at heart, a brilliant pragmatist, with a great sense of humor and irony. But Americans have never cared much for irony. Perhaps it's his extended exposure to the famous that allows Vidal not only to point out that the emperor's new clothes are not there, but that the emperor is actually an emperor and not just the prez (as he recently argued in Vanity Fair). It was Vidal's commentary on American empire and the Internet that inspired the following interview, conducted via fax, with Vidal at his villa in Italy. Do you own a personal computer? Yes, but a friend operates it. How is your perception of American culture and politics influenced by your perspective as a resident of Italy? I watch CNN, read the Herald Tribune, plus two Italian newspapers, the Guardian weekly roundup of Washington Post stories, Le Monde and the Brit Guardian. The Economist is invaluable. Our corporate owners lie to us about everything except money, which they have to deal honestly with, in reporting, that is. And I get faxed information I need. I'm more in touch than if I lived, let us say, in Anahaim, Orange County. Sorry, Mickey. In Vanity Fair, you quoted Dean Acheson's comment about "the average American" spending 10 minutes each day "listening, reading and arguing about the world outside his own country." What impact has the global-village effect of the Internet had on those 10 minutes? I don't think the Internet has hit the "average American" yet, but when it does, I should think the 10-minute attention span will probably still obtain because back of it is the refusal of the American corporate ruling class to educate the people at large. How can you find out what you don't know -- nearly everything as far as history and foreign countries go -- if you have no idea of what it is you don't know? How great a threat is the global community created by the Internet to the American empire? I should like to think terminal, as the empire has wrecked our society -- $5 trillion of debt, no proper public education, no health care -- and done the rest of the world incomparable harm. But in the next few years, the empire is going to strike back at the Internet in the interest of protecting our children from porn, drugs and terrorism -- all of which the U.S. government will claim is being peddled by the Internet. There is not a trick they won't pull to get control. After all, what better way to control everyone's mind, or at least the input of information? Does the distribution of pornography over the Internet influence your position on pornography -- or your position on the Internet? I am for the First Amendment and so pornography is protected along with really damaging stuff like CIA disinformation on public matters or false-claiming commercials. No child was ever raped by a book or a picture. Actually, pedophiles are turned off by explicit sex and adolescents can't think about anything else anyway. One effect of new technology and new media is an increased demand for speed: instant news, immediate communication between disparate points on the globe. What does this mean for the writer/reader of tomorrow? Not good in the sense that the more rapidly a story is told, the less well it is told. It is also hardly understood at all if there's another story on its heels. So -- slow down what's important and provide context. N E X T+P A G E +| An amorous first lady ILLUSTRATION BY ZACH TRENHOLM