Gore Vidal's novel The Smithsonian Institution is a fictional account of the adventures of "T." as he helps a group of scientists in the basement of the Smithsonian create the neutron bomb, and encounters historical figures such as President Abraham Lincoln, Charles Lindbergh, Eleanor Roosevelt and Mrs. Grover Cleveland. Vidal supposedly claimed that this was the inspiration for the 2006 film Night at the Museum. The film was in fact based on the 1993 children's book The Night at the Museum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smithsonian_Institution_(novel) Vidal, whom a Newsweek critic called "the best all-around American man of letters since Edmund Wilson,"[26] began his writing career in 1946, aged twenty-one, with the publication of the military novel Williwaw, based upon his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty. The novel was about World War II and proved a success for Vidal.[27] Published two years later in 1948, The City and the Pillar caused a furor for its dispassionate presentation of homosexuality. The novel was dedicated to "J.T." Decades later, after a magazine published rumors about J.T.'s identity, Vidal confirmed they were the initials of his alleged St. Albans-era love, James "Jimmy" Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945;[28] Vidal later said that Trimble was the only person he had ever loved.[29] According to Vidal, Orville Prescott, the book critic for the New York Times, found The City and the Pillar so objectionable that he refused to review or allow the Times to review Vidal's next five books.[30] In response, Vidal wrote several mystery novels in the early 1950s under the pseudonym Edgar Box. Featuring public relations man Peter Cutler Sargeant II,[31] their success financed Vidal for more than a decade.[32] He wrote plays, films, and television series. Two plays, The Best Man (1960) and Visit to a Small Planet (1955), were both Broadway and film successes. Two early television plays were A Sense of Justice (1955) and Honor.[33] In the 1960s, Vidal wrote three novels. The first, Julian (1964) dealt with the apostate Roman emperor, while the second, Washington, D.C. (1967) focused on a political family during the Franklin D. Roosevelt era. The third was the satirical transsexual comedy Myra Breckinridge (1968), a variation on Vidal's familiar themes of sex, gender, and popular culture. In the novel, Vidal showcased his love of the American films of the '30s and '40s, and he resurrected interest in the careers of the forgotten players of the time including, for example, that of the late Richard Cromwell, who, he wrote, "was so satisfyingly tortured in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer." After the staging of the plays Weekend (1968) and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972), and the publication of the novel Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), Vidal focused on essays and two distinct themes in his fiction. The first strain comprises novels dealing with American history, specifically with the nature of national politics.[34] Critic Harold Bloom wrote, "Vidal's imagination of American politics ... is so powerful as to compel awe." Titles in this series, the Narratives of Empire, include Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), Lincoln (1984), Empire (1987), Hollywood (1990), The Golden Age (2000). Another title devoted to the ancient world, Creation, appeared in 1981 and then in expanded form in 2002. The second strain consists of the comedic "satirical inventions": Myron (1974, a sequel to Myra Breckinridge), Kalki (1978), Duluth (1983), Live from Golgotha: The Gospel according to Gore Vidal (1992), and The Smithsonian Institution (1998). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_vidal

• published: 15 Nov 2013
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