A Quote by Jay Parini

When Gore Vidal was coming up, there were three major channels, and he could count on a big audience when he debated someone like William F. Buckley on TV.

Jay Parini

Quote Topics

Audience Big Channels Coming Could Count Gore Like Major Someone Three TV Up Were William

Quote Author

Jay Parini
American - Writer
Born: April 2, 1948

They don't make people like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley anymore.

Morgan Neville

I'm not Gore Vidal or William Buckley.

Lawrence Sanders

There will be a debate on Firing Line between Buckley and Gore Vidal on the proposition: "This nation cannot survive as long as the income of 50 percent of the population is below the median." Mr. Vidal will take the affirmative.

M. Stanton Evans

When you watch the sitcoms that were the big hits when I was growing up, TV was still just TV. It was allowed to just be TV. There were three channels that were competing for the whole family and you couldn't take your business elsewhere.

Dan Harmon

I knew who Buckley and Vidal were growing up, being a political junkie.

Morgan Neville

Vidal was a novelist, an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and many other things. Buckley started a magazine, hosted a TV show, lead a political movement, and was a master debater. They were multihyphenates in a way that you rarely see anymore.

Morgan Neville

I knew Buckley - he was a friend of mine - and Steve Bannon is no William F. Buckley. Buckley marginalized the kooks. Bannon empowered them.

Charlie Sykes

In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.

Malcolm Gladwell

If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.'

Christopher Buckley

Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to other forms of entertainment.

Garth Risk Hallberg

Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.

Lance Morrow

'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted novelist, poet and biographer, has gone very deep into the 'black energy' of Gore Vidal's relentless narcissism and megalomania. Parini envisions an epic battle between Vidal's angelic and demonic sides, yet there's very little of the angel in Vidal.

Jerome Charyn

The show with Buckley and Vidal was happening live. There was no editing. There was no delay. So they were aghast. How America reacted is sort of the most interesting thing because as these debates progressed, the ratings were going up. So people began to program these sort of point-counterpoint setups, where two people with opposite sides would come on.

Morgan Neville

I know the difference between someone coming up to you on the street and saying, 'Hey, you're that dude, right. Yes, that's what I thought,' and somebody coming up and saying, 'Big fan of the show. Big fan of that character.' And that's nice. You're out there telling stories, you're hoping to find an audience, and it's very appreciated.

Timothy Olyphant

I had a year off, so my wife and I were heading to Italy to study Italian. We found a little house in a village called Atrani. I discovered that Gore Vidal lived right above us in a big house, so I sent him a note.

Jay Parini

We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare.