The unvarnished Gore Vidal.

Here is a man I admire for his razor-sharp wit, his immense knowledge and his taste.
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He used to live in Ravello in a villa glued to the mountain. I saw it once and am convinced that it has the one of the best views on earth.
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The unvarnished Gore Vidal.
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Now 81, Mr. Vidal recalls the second half of his life in the just-released, "Point to Point Navigation." I wanted to pick the brain of someone who had been around that long and written that much. But how do you bone up to interview a whiplash-fast wit who has skewered some of the highest-octane intellectuals around? In nightly TV debates at the 1968 political conventions, Vidal famously called William F. Buckley Jr. a "pro-crypto-Nazi," got sued for it, and apologized to the judge by saying: "It was a modest slip of the tongue, I was searching for the word 'fascist.' "
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1124/p20s01-bogn.html