GORE VIDAL IS DEAD

we have lost a literary legend, gay icon, trail blazer and one of the last original social commentator of our time.

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Gore Vidal, the elegant, acerbic all-around man of letters who presided with a certain relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilization, died on Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, where he moved in 2003, after years of living in Ravello, Italy. He was 86.

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(RICK CASTRO PHOTOGRAPHS GOVE VIDAL @ HIS HOLLYWOOD HOME~ 2004)

on a personal note, i had the pleasure of meeting & photographing mr. vidal back in 2004 for arte channel. he was charming, clever, funny and very personable. we were greeted @ the door by his "man servant." we waited in his glamourous living room full of immaculate antiques. gore appeared @ the top of the stairs and very slowly hobbled down the steps. "yes,  he stated, " i am lame. give me sometime."  his home in the hollywood hills was decorated with the upmost of taste. he even had an opium den! GORE VIDAL was one-of-a-kind. the world will never know someone like him again.... ever. RIP~ MASTER~ RIP.

"Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge," he once wrote, "all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. "Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all."~

GORE VIDAL