Views From a Do-Gooder

"If we could land the Rotary Club on the moon, we are certainly capable of making solar energy cheaply. Any president who followed this sort of scenario might be killed; but that's not as important as actually having done something that the Owners did not want done but once done even they would be happy." - Gore Vidal, 1976

"1981: the ever-political Vidal out in support of a Writers Guild strike, in front of the Twentieth Century Fox headquarters"– The Guardian, Gore Vidal: a life in pictures
Photograph: Mega Productions/Rex Features

I keep going back to the 1980 Views From a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal, compiled from interviews of the 1960s-70s, selected and arranged by Robert Stanton, and edited by Stanton and Vidal. Vidal's observations on America—his main subject of fiction, essays, and public appearances—range through history, politics, the ruling class, journalism, education.
Troughout so public a career, Vidal corrected interviewers' perceptions of him and his work, as in a 1975 interview with Oui [pp 257-8]. When Vidal said he had wanted to be President—

OUI: But you need sincerity, which you hate.

VIDAL: I hate hypocrisy, not sincerity.

OUI: You like the power?

VIDAL: Obviously. To change things.

OUI: But you're not a do-gooder. Or are you?

VIDAL: If you don't see that I am, you've missed the point of my career and it's too late for me to advertise. I write essays, lecture, go on television in order to change the society.

OUI: Do you really believe in the possibility of change?

VIDAL: Change occurs all the time. Nothing ever remains the same, with the possible exception, as someone said, of the avant-garde theatre.