A Few Words From Gore Vidal

"I have collected these plays [Visit to a Small Planet and Other Television Plays (Little, Brown and Company, 1956)] in the parental hope that eventually some sort of repertory system will be evolved in television and certain plays will be done again from time to time, saving one's efforts from total oblivion. At the moment it is somewhat discouraging to see so many fine performances, so many good plays written, as it were, on air, nothing to show for all the work done but a kinescope (a filmed record of the play) which, because of unions and technical considerations, is seldom shown again on television. It is a criminal waste of many talents and some day, perhaps on the new magnetic tape, a play which is broadcast live will be accurately recorded and reshown."---Gore Vidal, from the book's Foreword.


Hopefully one of the classic television show channels like Cozy or Antenna will seek out these live shows and broadcast them.

On Masculinity

"When a young man rejects the advances of another young man, his motive, often as not, is a fear of losing autonomy, of being used as a thing by the other, conquered instead of the conquering." --Gore Vidal, from the afterword of his revised 1948 novel The City and the Pillar (New American Library, 1965)