Myra Breckinridge (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Vidal, Gore

3.69

987 ratings by Goodreads

9780394754444: Myra Breckinridge (Vintage Contemporaries)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394754441 ISBN 13: 9780394754444

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1987

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Gore Vidal's "Mira Breckinridge" (chosen by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the 20 best novels of the last 50 years) and "Myron" now appear together for the first time in paperback, with a new preface by the author. "Myra Breckinridge" is a 1968 satirical novel written in the form of a diary. Described by the critic Dennis Altman as "part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality which swept the western world in the late 1960s and early 1970s," the book's major themes are feminism, transsexuality, American expressions of machismo and patriarchy, and deviant sexual practices, as filtered through an aggressively camp sensibility. Set in Hollywood in the 1960s, the novel also contains candid and irreverent glimpses into the machinations within the film industry. "Myron" (1974) was written as a sequel to "Myra Breckinridge." The novel was published shortly after an anti-pornography ruling by the Supreme Court; Vidal responded by replacing the profanity in his novel with the names of the Justices involved (e.g., "He thrust his enormous Rehnquist deep within her Whizzer White," etc.) Myra Breckinridge, the transsexual who terrorized Hollywood with dildo-rape and lesbianism, has transformed back into her former self, the literally and figuratively castrated Myron. [Descriotion input by FreelancerFR]

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Review:

Falling somewhere between the realms of Henry Adams and all of Monty Python, Gore Vidal has for many years served as America's own Tiesias - a seer and scourge, as well as an entertainer of the highest order. (Jay McInerney)

About the Author:

Gore Vidal was at the centre of literary and intellectual life for half a century and wrote 'The Narratives of a Golden Age' series as well as countless bestsellers. He died on 31st July 2012.

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