title: S. Muralidhar

texts:
S<mask> is an Indian Judge. Presently,  he is Chief Justice of Orissa High Court. He is Former Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. He was initially appointed as a Judge to the High Court of Delhi by the President of India in May 2006. He assumed the office of Judge at the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on 6 March 2020. Education
S<mask> completed his Bachelor of Sciences (Chemistry) from the Vivekananda College, Chennai securing first class from the Madras University in 1981. He secured first rank in the Bachelor of Laws course ("BL") from the University of Madras and was awarded the Lakshminarasa Reddi, the L.C.Miller Medals and the Carmichael and Innes Prize, 1984. As a law student, he was a part of a two-member team of Madras Law College, that won the All India Moot Court Competition and consequently represented India at the 25th Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition held at Washington D.C. in April 1984. He completed his LL.M specializing in Constitutional and Administrative Law from Nagpur University in 1990, securing first rank. Dr. S<mask> was awarded a Ph. D by the University of Delhi in February 2003 for a Doctoral Programme entitled "Legal Aid and the Criminal Justice System in India". He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India. Early career

Litigation and advocacy
S<mask> began his law practice in Chennai in September 1984.He qualified as a Company Secretary in December 1985. In July 1987 he shifted his practice to Delhi where he initially worked as a junior lawyer to the then Additional Solicitor General G Ramaswamy, who would later become the Attorney General for India. <mask> primarily practiced in the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court. He qualified the Advocate-on-Record Examination in 1990 securing the first position in merit and was awarded the Mukesh Goswami Memorial Prize. He was also active as a lawyer for the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee and later was its member for two terms. His pro bono work included the cases for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, cases involving the deplorable conditions in which persons alleged to be mentally ill were locked up in Jail and cases involving those displaced by the dams on the Narmada. He was appointed amicus curiae by the Supreme Court in several Public Interest Litigation cases and in cases involving convicts on death row.<mask> was counsel for the National Human Rights Commission and the Election Commission of India and a part-time member of the Law Commission from December 2002 till May 2006. Judgeship

Appointment
Justice <mask> was appointed as a Judge of High Court of Delhi on 29 May 2006. During his almost 14-year stint as a Judge of the High Court of Delhi, he pronounced various landmark judgments dealing with a variety of issues. He was later transferred as a Judge to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana where he was sworn in on 6 March 2020. As a judge he had deprecated the use of "my lord" and "your lordship" as a form of address in Court and had directed the Court's registry to append a note to the daily causelist for his Court requesting lawyers "to try and avoid addressing the judges as My Lord and Your Lordship”. Controversy surrounding "Transfer"
The Collegium of the Supreme Court of India headed by Chief Justice of India S. A. Bobde in its meeting held on 12 February 2020 recommended the transfer of Justice Dr. S<mask> from the High Court of Delhi to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana. The President of India accepted the recommendation of the Collegium of the Supreme Court of India and the transfer was notified on the night of 26 February 2020.The hurried "midnight" transfer of Justice Dr. S<mask> was widely panned by lawyers, former judges, civil society members and the media across the country, and was considered to be a punitive measure by the government for the hearings conducted by the Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi headed by <mask> into the inaction of police during the 2020 Delhi riots. During the Full Court Reference given by the High Court of Delhi on 5 March 2020 <mask> spoke on the transfer giving details of the sequence of events. Elevation as Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court
On 15 December 2020, news reports broke about the Collegium of the Supreme Court of India headed by Chief Justice of India S. A. Bobde recommending <mask> for elevation as the Chief Justice of Orissa High Court. He was appointed as Chief Justice of Orissa High Court on 31 December 2020 and took oath on 4 January 2021. High Court jurisprudence
Sharing his views on "Judges" and "the act of judging" he had expressed that he doesn't subscribe to the view that "Judges perform a divine function" and that "jettisoning the prefix Lordship and even ‘Hon’ble’ is not a fetish. It is an acknowledgement of how mortal, temporal, and, if I may venture to add, fallible we are." He also has stated that he viewed the act of judging to take place in a "space that is both mediative and meditative" and that though there is a distinction between neutrality and impartiality, they are not antithetical.While he acknowledged that impartiality is an essential attribute and non-compromisable for a judge, he viewed neutrality, as per the Constitution, to require "the judge at all levels to be able to discern the weak from the strong litigant in terms of their capacities to access justice and lean on the side of the vulnerable in order to attempt to achieve equality of arms." He viewed Courts as "not merely places where law is practised and produced" but also as "spaces where the constitutional values are tested." Gender discrimination and reproductive Health
Justice Muralidhar authored the judgment in Rajendra Grover v. Air India Ltd. (2007) which dealt with gender discrimination in service conditions of cabin crew, where he held that "this Court also finds nothing arbitrary, unreasonable or irrational in the pre-1997 male cabin crew being asked to serve on a flight which has their female colleague" as an In-Flight Supervisor and observed that this has "enabled its female cabin crew to break the 'glass ceiling'." He also dealt with issue of reproductive health in Laxmi Mandal v. Deen Dayal Harinagar Hospital (2010)  which highlighted the deficiencies in the implementation of a cluster of schemes, funded by the Government of India, which were meant to reduce infant and maternal mortality, and the resultant systemic failure that lead to the denial of benefits to two mothers below the poverty line (BPL) during their pregnancy and immediately thereafter. In this judgement he deprecated the practice where "instead of making it easier for poor persons to avail of the benefits, the efforts at present seem to be to insist upon documentation to prove their status as 'poor' and 'disadvantaged'" and that "this onerous burden on them to prove that they are the persons in need of urgent medical assistance constitutes a major barrier to their availing of the services". He opined that "when it comes to the question of public health, no woman, more so a pregnant woman should be denied the facility of treatment at any stage irrespective of her social and economic background. This is the primary function in the public health services.This is where the inalienable right to health which is so inherent to the right to life gets enforced." Housing rights and urban planning
In <mask> <mask> v. Government of Delhi (2010) which dealt with resettlement of jhuggi (hutments) inhabitants, he was a part of the Division Bench which held that the decision of the government that jhuggi (hutments) inhabitants "are on the 'Right of Way' and are, therefore, not entitled to relocation" as "illegal and unconstitutional". The Court further directed that the "State agencies will ensure that basic civic amenities, consistent with the rights to life and dignity of each of the citizens in the jhuggies, are available at the site of relocation". Similarly, in Ajay Maken & Ors. vs Union Of India (2019), a PIL which dealt with the forced eviction of 5,000 jhuggi (hutments) dwellers in 2015, he authored the judgment on behalf of the Division Bench which held that "a Court approached by persons complaining against forced eviction" should not view them as "encroachers" and illegal occupants of land, but rather to "require the agencies to first determine if the dwellers are eligible for rehabilitation in terms of the extant law and policy. Forced eviction of jhuggi dwellers, unannounced, in co-ordination with the other agencies, and without compliance with the above steps, would be contrary to the law". It was also held that "the right to housing is a bundle of rights not limited to a bare shelter over one's head.It includes the right to livelihood, right to health, right to education and right to food, including right to clean drinking water, sewerage and transport facilities." The Court further acknowledged that "the right to adequate housing is a right to access several facets that preserve the capability of a person to enjoy the freedom to live in the city. They recognise such persons as rights bearers whose full panoply of constitutional guarantees require recognition, protection and enforcement." Criminal law
He also authored the Judgement in Kulwinder v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2018), where the High Court set aside the trial court verdict and held that the Mirchpur Dalit killng incident of 2010 was "an instance of caste based violence" where there was "deliberate targeting" of setting houses on fire in a "pre-planned and carefully orchestrated manner", and thus a case of murder. In State v. Bharat <mask> (2014) which dealt with death penalty and in particular sentencing guidelines, he held that when the State has failed to place materials on the aspect of whether the accused is capable of being reformed and rehabilitated before it, the Courts can also call for a report from the Probation Officer and thereafter examine whether the accused is likely to indulge in criminal activity or whether there is any probability of the accused being reformed or rehabilitated. Thus he opined that "for the purposes of reference proceedings for confirmation of the death sentence under Section 366 of the CrPC, the criminal Court would include the High Courts as well". Consequently the High Court proceeded to direct the appointment of a Probation Officer with specific guidelines for inquiry.Constitutional law
In Naz Foundation v. NCT of Delhi (2009) he was part of the Division Bench which held that "Section 377 IPC, insofar as it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution". He was also part of the Full Bench in Secretary General, Supreme Court v. <mask> Chandra Agarwal (2010), where the Court ruled in favour of an RTI activist who had sought supply of information concerning declaration of personal assets by the Judges of the Supreme Court by holding that such "information does not warrant the protection granted by Section 8(1)(j)" of the Right to Information Act. He authored the judgment in Makemytrip (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India which dealt with questions involving the powers of tax officials of arrest, investigation and assessment of service tax under the provisions of the Finance Act,1994, where he held that "the decision to arrest a person must not be taken on whimsical grounds; it must be based on 'credible material'." He also held that an officer whether of the Central Excise department or another agency like the DGCEI, authorised to exercise powers under the Central Excise Act and/or the Finance Act "will have to be conscious of the constitutional limitations on the exercise of such power." He also authored the judgement on behalf of the Division Bench in Gautam Navlakha v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2018),  where the Court quashed the transit warrant issued by a Delhi Magistrate for the arrest of Gautam Navlakha by the Maharashtra police in relation to the  Bhima Koregaon case. There the Court held that "requirement of Article 22 (1), Article 22 (2) of the Constitution and Section 167 read with Section 57 and 41 (1) (ba) of the CrPC" are mandatory.International law
During a discussion with <mask> on her book Comparative Human Rights Law, <mask> expressed his views on the need for linkage of International Covenants, particularly those ratified by India, in the context of Indian cases and that he endeavored to express these linkages in his judgments. While authoring the judgement on behalf of the Division Bench in Zulfikar Nasir v. State Of Uttar Pradesh (2018), which dealt with the Hashimpura Massacre of 1987 where the High Court convicted 16 personnel of the PAC and sentenced them to life imprisonment by overturning the trial court verdict, he referred to the "General Comment on the Right to Truth in relation to enforced disappearances" put out by the "United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances" in relation to the "right of the victim to know the truth". Similarly in State through CBI v. <mask> Kumar (2018), he authored the Judgment on behalf of the Division Bench which reversed the acquittal of <mask> Kumar for his role during the 1984 Sikh Massacre. The High Court went on to hold that the such cases were in fact "crimes against humanity" and require a different approach to be adopted by the Courts. Further the Court observed that this calls for "strengthening the legal system as neither 'crimes against humanity' nor 'genocide' is part of our domestic law of crime. This loophole needs to be addressed urgently". Other notable cases

Arbitration

 Intertoll ICS Cecons O & M Co. Pvt.Ltd. v. National Highways Authority of India (2013)
 M/S. Lanco-Rani (JV) v. NHAI (2016)
 Gulshan Khatri v. Google Inc.(2017)

Administrative law

 Prakash Atlanta JV v. NHAI (2010)
 CCI v. Grasim Industries (2019)

Intellectual property law

 Banyan Tree Holding (P) Limited v. A. Murali Krishna Reddy (2009)
 F. Hoffmann-LA Roche Ltd. v. Cipla Ltd. (2009)
 Bayer Corporation v. Union of India (2010)
 Nippon Steel Corporation v. Union of India (2011)

Service and labour law

 Builders Association of India v. Union of India (2007)
 National Campaign for Dignity and Rights of Sewerage and Allied Workers v. MCD (2008)
 Dev Sharma v. Union of India (2019)
 Shambhu Sharma v. High Court of Delhi (2019)

Taxation

 CIT v. Kabul Chawla (2015)
 Carlsberg India Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India (2016)
 CIT v. Janata Party (2016)
CIT v. Indian National Congress (2016)
 DIT (Exemptions) v. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (2017)
 On Quest Merchandising India Pvt. Ltd. v. GNCTD (2017)

Personal life
S. <mask> is married to Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher. Publications
 Law, Poverty and Legal Aid: Access to Criminal Justice, a book published by LexisNexis Butterworths in August 2004. The Case of Agra Protective Home. Amita Dhanda & Archana Parasher (eds), Engendering Law: Essays in Honour of Lotika Sarkar, 1999, Eastern Book Company, pp 291–320.Justice to Scavengers. Labour File, Vol 3/6, November–December 2005, pp 25–28. The Right to Water: An Overview of Indian Legal Regime. Eibe Riedel & Peter Rothen (eds), The Human Right to Water, Berliner WissenschaftsVerlag, 2006, pp 65–81. Implementation of Court orders in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: An overview of the experience of the Indian Judiciary. Delhi Law Review, Vol XXIV, 2002, pp 113–122. Economic, Social & Cultural Rights: An Indian Response to the Justiciability Debate.Yash Ghai & Jill Cottrell (eds), Economic, Social & Cultural Rights in Practice: The Role of Judges in Implementing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Interights, 2004, pp 23–32. Unsettling Truths, Untold tales the Bhopal Gas Disaster Victims 'Twenty years' of Courtroom Struggles for Justice. International Environmental Law Research Centre Working Paper, 2004/5. Judicial Enforcement of Economic and Social Rights:The Indian Scenario. Fons Coomans (ed), Justiciability of Economic and Social Rights: Experiences from Domestic Systems, Intersentia, 2006, pp 237–267. India: The Expectations and Challenges of Judicial Enforcement of Social Rights. Malcolm Langford (ed), Social Rights Jurisprudence: Emerging Trends in International and Comparative Law,Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp 102–124.Public Interest Litigation: Prospects and Problems (with Ashok Desai). BN Kirpal et al. (eds), Supreme But Not Infallible : Essays in Honour of the Supreme Court of India, OUP, 2000, pp 159–192. Trials, Errors and Hope: Indian Experiments with Access to Justice. Journal of National Judicial Academy, Vol 1:2005, pp 350–389. Access to Criminal Justice: Challenges and Prospects. Kamala <mask> & Uljwal <mask> (eds), Towards Legal Literacy: An Introduction to Law in India, OUP, 2008, pp 45–60.Hang Them Now, Hang Them Not: lndia's Travails with Death Penalty. Journal of the Indian Law Institute, Vol 40, 1998, pp 143–173. Rights of victims in the Indian Criminal Justice system. Journal of the NHRC, Vol. 2, 2003, pp 88–104. Legal vs. Commercial Liability - Motor lnsurance and the Law. IRDA Journal, Vol.II, No.3, February 2004, pp 22–24. Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace. Indian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol 6, 2010, pp 1–42. Crime, Punishment and Justice in India: The Trajectories of Criminal Law. Annual Lecture Series in Criminal Law, 2018, Project 39A, National Law University Delhi. References

1961 births
Living people
Chief Justices of the Orissa High Court
Judges of the Delhi High Court

masks:
. Muralidhar
. Muralidhar
. Muralidhar
. Muralidhar
Muralidhar
Muralidhar
Muralidhar
. Muralidhar
. Muralidhar
Justice Muralidhar
Justice Muralidhar
Justice Muralidhar
Sudama
Singh
Singh
Subhash
Sandra Fredman
Justice Muralidhar
Sajjan
Sajjan
Muralidhar
Sankaran
Kumar Singh


title: Thomas J. J. Altizer

type: original

texts:
<mask> (May 28, 1927 – November 28, 2018) was an American university professor, religious scholar, and theologian, noted for his incorporation of Death of God theology and Hegelian dialectical philosophy into his body of work. He regarded his philosophical theology as also being grounded in the works of William Blake and considered his theology to have come into its own with his extended study of Blake's radical visionary thinking: The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (1967); indeed he regarded himself as the first and only fully Blakean theologian. <mask> was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 28, 1927, and grew up with two sisters in Charleston, West Virginia. He attended St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and the University of Chicago, from which he received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. His 1951 master's thesis examined the concepts of nature and grace in Augustine of Hippo. His doctoral dissertation in 1955, under the direction by historian of religions <mask>, examined <mask>'s understanding of religion. After receiving his doctoral degree, he sought ordination as an Episcopal priest, but failed the psychiatric test.He relates that shortly before this, he had a terrifying experience: "I suddenly awoke and became truly possessed and experienced an epiphany of Satan which I have never been able fully to deny, an experience in which I could actually feel Satan consuming me, absorbing me into his very being, as though this was the deepest possible initiation and bonding, and the deepest and yet most horrible union." He adds that it was perhaps the deepest experience of his life, and one that he believes "profoundly affected my vocation as a theologian, and even my theological work itself." He was assistant professor of religion at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, from 1954 to 1956. He went on to become an associate professor of Bible and religion at Emory University from 1956 to 1968. He was professor of Religious Studies at the Stony Brook University from 1968 to 1996. Until his death in 2018, he was Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the university. "Death of God" controversy
During <mask>'s time at Emory, two Time magazine articles featured his religious views—in the October 1965 and April 1966 issues.The latter issue, published at Easter time, put the question on its cover in bold red letters on a plain black background: "Is God Dead?" <mask> repeatedly claimed that the scorn, outcry, and even death threats he subsequently received were misplaced. <mask>'s religious proclamation viewed God's death (really a self-extinction) as a process that began at the world's creation and came to an end through <mask>—whose crucifixion in reality poured out God's full spirit into this world. In developing his position <mask> drew upon the dialectical thought of Hegel, the visionary writings of William Blake, the anthroposophical thought of Owen Barfield, and aspects of Mircea Eliade's studies of the sacred and the profane. In the mid-1960s <mask> was drawn into discussions about his views with other radical Christian theologians such as Gabriel Vahanian, William Hamilton, and Paul Van Buren, and also the rabbi Richard Rubenstein. Those religious scholars collectively formed a loose network of thinkers who held different versions of the death of God. <mask> also entered into formal critical debates with the orthodox Lutheran <mask> Montgomery, and the Christian countercult movement apologist Walter Martin.The conservative theologians faulted <mask> on philosophical, methodological and theological questions, such as his reliance on Hegelian dialectical thought, his idiosyncratic semantic use of theological words, and the interpretative principles he used in understanding biblical literature. In Godhead and the Nothing (2003), <mask> examined the notion of evil. He presented evil as the absence of will, but not separate from God. Orthodox Christianity—considered nihilistic by Nietzsche—named evil and separated it from good without thoroughly examining its nature. However, the immanence of the spirit (after <mask> Christ) within the world embraces everything created. The immanence of the spirit is the answer to the nihilistic state that Christianity, according to Nietzsche, was leading the world into. Through the introduction of God in the material world (immanence), the emptying of meaning would cease.No longer would followers be able to dismiss the present world for a transcendent world. They would have to embrace the present completely, and keep meaning in the here and now. Beginning in 1996 <mask> lived in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania. His 2006 memoir is entitled Living the Death of God. See also
 Christian atheism

Critical assessment

 The Death of the Death of God [audiotapes], debate between <mask> and <mask>. Montgomery at the Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago, February 24, 1967. Schoonenberg, Piet, "The Transcendence of God, Part I," Transcendence and Immanence, Reconstruction in the Light of Process Thinking, Festschrift in Honour of <mask>, ed. <mask>, St. Meinrad: The Abbey Press, 1972: 157–166.Schoonenberg, Piet, "From Transcendence to Immanence, Part II," Wisdom and Knowledge, Essays in Honour of <mask>, ed. <mask>, Villanova University Press, 1976: 273–282. Bibliography
 Oriental Mysticism and Biblical Eschatology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961). Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963; Westport: Greenwood, 1975). Radical Theology and the Death of God, co-authored with William Hamilton (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966). The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967; Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2000).Toward A New Christianity: Readings in the Death of God, ed. <mask> (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967). The Descent into Hell (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970). The Self-Embodiment of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today (New York: Seabury, 1980). History as Apocalypse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985). Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990).The Genesis of God (Louisville: Westminster/<mask> Knox, 1993). The Contemporary Jesus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). The New Gospel of Christian Atheism (Aurora: Davies Group, 2002). Godhead and the Nothing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). The Call to Radical Theology, ed. Lissa McCullough (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012).The Apocalyptic Trinity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). <mask> J. J. Altizer Comprehensive Bibliography — Listing books, articles, essays, book reviews, and related writings. Thomas J. J. Altizer Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries — The Thomas J. J. Altizer Papers contain correspondence (1960–1970); typescript books and page proofs; published articles and essays; three audio tapes; and four scrapbooks. Much of the correspondence pertains to the "death of God" movement of the 1960s, of which <mask> was a leader. Arranged in four series: Audiotape recordings: three tapes with recordings of appearances at colleges and on radio programs. Correspondence: primarily responses to <mask>'s "death of God" theology representing a wide variety of opinions from grade-school children to learned theologians. Printed material: essays and miscellany.Writings: books, essays, and magazine articles by <mask>. There are no access restrictions on this material. See also
 Theodicy#Essential kenosis

References

External links

 Excerpt from Radical Theology and the Death of God
 <mask>, "Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking", Journal for Christian Theological Research 2, no. 2 (1997). "The Revolutionary," Emory Magazine, Autumn 2006. "God is Dead Controversy", Emory History. The God is Dead Movement, Time Magazine, October 22, 1965.
 Review Gospel of Christian Atheism
 Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology: <mask>. J<mask> (1927-).Archived on June 16 2020 from the Wayback Machine

1927 births
2018 deaths
American Christian theologians
American memoirists
Atheist theologians
Death of God theologians
Emory University faculty
Lay theologians
St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) alumni
Stony Brook University faculty
20th-century American theologians
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American theologians
University of Chicago alumni
Wabash College faculty
Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts
Deaths from cerebrovascular disease

masks:
Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer
Education Altizer
Joachim Wach
Carl Gustav Jung
Altizer
Altizer
Altizer
Jesus Christ
Altizer
Altizer
Altizer
John Warwick
Altizer
Altizer
Jesus
Altizer
Thomas Alltizer
John W
Joseph Papin
Joseph Armenti
Joseph Papin
Joseph Armenti
Altizer
John
Thomas
Altizer
Altizer
Altizer
Thomas Altizer
Thomas J
. Altizer


title: Gore Vidal

texts:
<mask> (; born <mask>, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. <mask> was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, <mask> was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California). A grandson of a U.S. Senator, <mask> was born into an upper-class political family. As a political commentator and essayist, <mask>'s primary focus was the history and society of the United States, especially how a militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire.His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazines. As a public intellectual, <mask>'s topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. As a novelist, <mask> explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His style of narration evoked the time and place of his stories, and delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, <mask> recreated the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–63) in Julian (1964). Julian was the Roman emperor who attempted to re-establish Roman polytheism to counter Christianity.In social satire, Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability of gender roles and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. In Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), each protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States. Early life
<mask> was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther <mask> (1895–1969) and Nina S<mask> (1903–1978). <mask> was born there because his father, a U.S. Army officer, was then serving as the first aeronautics instructor at the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), <mask> said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis <mask>': this was changed to Eugene Luther <mask> Jr.; then <mask> was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names." <mask> was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of St. Albans school, where <mask> attended preparatory school.The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed [into the Episcopal faith]" at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther <mask>". He later said that, although the surname "<mask>" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him [maternal grandfather Thomas Pryor <mask>], although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, <mask> dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader ... I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. I didn't want to use the 'Jr. His father, Eugene Luther <mask>, Sr. was director (1933–1937) of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, and was also the great love of the aviator Amelia Earhart. At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic <mask> Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team; and an all-American basketball player.Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon, and coach of the U.S. pentathlon). In the 1920s and the 1930s, <mask> Sr. was a founder or executive of three airline companies:  the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines), Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines), Northeast Airlines. <mask>'s great-grandfather Eugen Fidel <mask> was born in Feldkirch, Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to the U.S. with <mask>'s Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann. <mask>'s mother, <mask>, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther <mask>, Sr., and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. <mask> <mask> then was married two more times; to Hugh D. Auchincloss and to Robert Olds. She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor Clark Gable.As <mask> Auchincloss, <mask>'s mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention. The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for <mask> – <mask>, <mask>, <mask> Auchincloss, and <mask> Auchincloss – one step brother, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III from his mother's second marriage to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and four step-brothers including Robin Olds from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina. Through Auchincloss <mask> also was the step-brother once removed of Jacqueline Kennedy. The nephews of <mask> include Burr Steers, a writer and film director, and Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), a figurative painter. Raised in Washington, D.C., <mask> attended the Sidwell Friends School and St. Albans School. Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor <mask>, of Oklahoma, <mask> read aloud to him, and was his Senate page, and his seeing-eye guide. In 1939, during his summer holiday, <mask> went with some colleagues and professor from St. Albans School on his first European trip, to visit Italy and France.He visited for the first time Rome, the city which came to be "at the center of <mask>'s literary imagination", and Paris. When the Second World War began in early September, the group was forced to an early return home; on his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, and they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joe Kennedy (the father of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, later the President of the United States of America). In 1940 he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School and later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he contributed to the Exonian, the school newspaper. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, rather than attend university, <mask> enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 and was assigned to work as an office clerk in the USAAF. Later, <mask> passed the examinations necessary to become a maritime warrant officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps, and subsequently served as first mate of the F.S. 35th, a US Army Freight and Supply (FS) ship berthed at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.After three years in service, <mask> suffered hypothermia, developed rheumatoid arthritis and, consequently, was reassigned to duty as a mess officer. Literary career
The literary works of <mask> were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity, Petronius (d. AD 66), Juvenal (AD 60–140), and Apuleius (fl. c. AD 155); and from the post-Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), and George Meredith (1828–1909). More recent literary influences included Marcel Proust (1871–1922), Henry James (1843–1916), and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966). The cultural critic Harold Bloom has written that <mask> believed that his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the literary community in the United States. Bloom himself contends that such limited recognition more resulted from <mask>'s "best fictions" being "distinguished historical novels", a subgenre "no longer available for canonization".Fiction

The literary career of <mask> began with the success of the military novel Williwaw, a men-at-war story derived from his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty during the Second World War. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality. The novel was dedicated to "J. T."; decades later, <mask> confirmed that the initials were those of his boyhood friend and St. Albans classmate, James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, and that Trimble was the only person he ever loved. Critics railed against <mask>'s presentation of homosexuality in the novel as natural, a life viewed generally at the time as unnatural and immoral. <mask> claimed that New York Times critic Orville Prescott was so offended by it that he refused to review or to permit other critics to review any book by <mask>. <mask> said that upon publication of the book, an editor at E. P. Dutton told him "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now, you will still be attacked for it".Today, <mask> is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation. <mask> took the pseudonym "Edgar Box" and wrote the mystery novels Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death before Bedtime (1953) and Death Likes it Hot (1954) featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well and earned black-listed <mask> a secret living. That mystery-novel success led <mask> to write in other genres and he produced the stage play The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960) and the television play Visit to a Small Planet (1957). Two early teleplays were A Sense of Justice (1955) and Honor. He also wrote the pulp novel Thieves Fall Out under the pseudonym "Cameron Kay" but refused to have it reprinted under his real name during his life. In the 1960s, <mask> published Julian (1964), about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstate polytheistic paganism when Julian viewed that Christianity threatened the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire; Washington, D.C. (1967), about political life during the presidential era of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945); and Myra Breckinridge (1968), a satire of the American movie business, by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by a transsexual woman, the eponymous anti-heroine.After publishing the plays Weekend (1968) and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972) and the novel Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1970), <mask> concentrated upon the essay and developed two types of fiction. The first type is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics. The New York Times, quoting critic Harold Bloom about those historical novels, said that <mask>'s imagination of American politics "is so powerful as to compel awe." The historical novels formed the seven-book series Narratives of Empire: (i) Burr (1973), (ii) Lincoln (1984), (iii) 1876 (1976), (iv) Empire (1987), (v) Hollywood (1990), (vi) Washington, D.C. (1967) and (vii) The Golden Age (2000). Besides U.S. history, <mask> also explored and analyzed the history of the ancient world, specifically the Axial Age (800–200 B.C. ), with the novel Creation (1981). The novel was published without four chapters that were part of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher; years later, <mask> restored the chapters to the text and re-published the novel Creation in 2002.The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as Myron (1974), the sequel to Myra Breckinridge; Kalki (1978), about the end of the world and the consequent ennui; Duluth (1983), an alternate universe story; Live from Golgotha (1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity; and The Smithsonian Institution (1998), a time-travel story. Non-fiction

In the United States, <mask> is often considered an essayist rather than a novelist. Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as Martin Amis, admitted that "Essays are what he is good at ... [<mask>] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating." For six decades, <mask> applied himself to socio-political, sexual, historical and literary subjects. In the essay anthology Armageddon (1987) he explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary United States. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. president,

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 Ronald Reagan, as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and that of his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the world in the late twentieth century.In 1993, <mask> won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology United States: Essays 1952–92 (1993). In 2000, <mask> published the collection of essays The Last Empire, then such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta and Imperial America, critiques of American expansionism, the military–industrial complex, the national security state and the George W. Bush administration. <mask> also wrote a historical essay about the U.S. founding fathers, Inventing a Nation. In 1995, he published a memoir, Palimpsest, and in 2006 its follow-up volume, Point to Point Navigation. Earlier that year, <mask> had published Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories. In 2009, he won the annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture". In the same year, the Man of Letters <mask> was named honorary president of the American Humanist Association.Hollywood

In 1956, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired <mask> as a screenplay writer with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the director William Wyler required a script doctor to rewrite the screenplay for Ben-Hur (1959), originally written by Karl Tunberg. As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, <mask> rewrote significant portions of the script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewriting the Ben-Hur screenplay, on location in Italy, <mask> negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his four-year contract with MGM. Thirty-six years later, in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995), <mask> explained that Messala's failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd). <mask> said that Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenwriter agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene. In turn, on learning of that script-doctor explanation, Charlton Heston said that <mask> had contributed little to the script of Ben-Hur.Despite <mask>'s script-doctor resolution of the character's motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the "original author" of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay. Two plays, The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960, made into a film in 1964) and Visit to a Small Planet (1955), were theater and movie successes. <mask> occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. Billy the Kid (1989) is one, about William H. Bonney, a gunman in the New Mexico territory Lincoln County War (1878), and later an outlaw in the U.S. Western frontier. Another is 1979's Caligula (based upon the life of the Roman Emperor Caligula), from which <mask> had his screenwriter credit removed because the producer, Bob Guccione, the director, Tinto Brass, and the leading actor, Malcolm McDowell, rewrote the script to add extra sex and violence to increase its commercial success. In the 1960s, <mask> migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director Federico Fellini, for whom he appeared in a cameo role in the film Roma (1972). He also acted in the films Bob Roberts (1992), a serio-comedy about a reactionary populist politician who manipulates youth culture to win votes; With Honors (1994), an Ivy league comedy-drama; Gattaca (1997), a science-fiction drama about genetic engineering; and Igby Goes Down (2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew, Burr Steers.Politics

Political campaigns

<mask> began to drift towards the political left after he received his first paycheck, and realized how much money the government took in tax. He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, then it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education. As a public intellectual, <mask> was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the old Democratic Party. In 1960, <mask> was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 29th Congressional District of New York, a usually Republican district on the Hudson River but lost to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. Campaigning under the slogan of You'll get more with <mask>, <mask> received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in fifty years. Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, friends who spoke on his behalf. In 1982, he campaigned against Jerry Brown, the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate; <mask> forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate would win the election.That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film <mask>: The Man Who Said No (1983), directed by Gary Conklin. In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", <mask> undertook to discover why domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the First Iraq War, 1990–91) had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as an act of revenge for the FBI's Waco massacre (1993) at the Branch Davidian Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis. In concluding the Vanity Fair article, <mask> refers to McVeigh as an "unlikely sole mover," and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved. <mask> was very much against any kind of military intervention in the world. In Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002), <mask> drew parallels about how the United States enters wars and said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked Imperial Japan to attack the U.S. in order to justify the American entry to the Second World War (1939–45). He contended that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the dawn-raid attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941).In the documentary Why We Fight (2005), <mask> said that, during the final months of the war, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but Truman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs ... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the balance of power in the world. To declare war on communism. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war". Criticism of George W. Bush

As a public intellectual, <mask> criticized what he viewed as political harm to the nation and the voiding of the citizen's rights through the passage of the USA Patriot Act (2001) during the George W. Bush administration (2001–2009). He described Bush as "the stupidest man in the United States" and said that Bush's foreign policy was explicitly expansionist.He contended that the Bush Administration and their oil-business sponsors, aimed to control the petroleum of Central Asia, after having gained hegemony over the petroleum of the Persian Gulf in 1991. <mask> became a member of the board of advisors of The World Can't Wait, a political organization which sought to publicly repudiate the foreign-policy program of the Bush Administration (2001–2009) and advocated Bush's impeachment for war crimes, such as the Second Iraq War (2003–2011) and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law. In May 2007, while discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories that might explain the "who?" and the "why?" of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., <mask> said

Political philosophy

In the American Conservative article "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that <mask>'s favorite American politician, during his lifetime, was Huey Long (1893–1935), the populist Governor (1928–32) and Senator (1932–35) from Louisiana, who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics and who was assassinated by a lone gunman. Despite that, <mask> said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards the United States. "My family helped start [this country] ... and we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country".Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972, <mask> was a chairman of the People's Party of the United States. In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader for U.S. president in the 1972 election. In 2004, he endorsed Democrat Dennis Kucinich in his candidacy for the U.S. presidency (in 2004), because Kucinich was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates, from either the Republican or the Democratic parties and that Kucinich was "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain". In a September 30, 2009 interview with The Times of London, <mask> said that there soon would be a dictatorship in the United States. The newspaper emphasized that <mask>, described as "the Grand Old Man of American belles-lettres", claimed that America is rotting away – and to not expect Barack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In this interview, he also updated his views of his life, the United States, and other political subjects. <mask> had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the United States in his essay "The State of the Union" (1975),

Feuds

The Capote–<mask> feud
In 1975 <mask> sued Truman Capote for slander over the accusation that he had once been thrown out of the White House for being drunk, putting his arm around the first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and then insulting her mother.Said Capote of <mask> at the time: "I'm always sad about <mask>—very sad that he has to breathe every day." Mutual friend George Plimpton observed: "There's no venom like Capote's when he's on the prowl—and <mask>'s too, I don't know what division the feud should be in." The suit was settled in <mask>'s favor when Lee Radziwill refused to testify on Capote's behalf, telling columnist Liz Smith, "Oh, Liz, what do we care; they're just a couple of fags! They're disgusting." The <mask> feud

In 1968, the ABC television network hired the liberal <mask> and the conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. as political analysts of the presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. After days of bickering, their debates degraded to vitriolic ad hominem attacks. Discussing the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, the public intellectuals argued about freedom of speech, namely, the legality of protesters to display a Viet Cong flag in America, <mask> told Buckley to "shut up a minute."Buckley had likened violent left wing protesters to German National Socialists. <mask> stated, "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro-crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself." Buckley replied, "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered." ABC's Howard K. Smith interjected, and the debate resumed without violence. Later, Buckley said he regretted having called <mask> a "queer," but still expressed some distaste for <mask> when he said that he was an "evangelist for bisexuality." In 1969, in Esquire magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with <mask> in the essay "On Experiencing <mask>idal" (August 1969), in which he portrayed <mask> as an apologist for homosexuality; Buckley said, "The man who, in his essays, proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly.The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher." The essay is collected in The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings from the time. <mask> riposted in Esquire with the September 1969 essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." and said that Buckley was "anti-black," "anti-semitic" and a "warmonger." Buckley sued <mask>

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 for libel. The feud continued in Esquire, where <mask> implied that in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized a Protestant church in Sharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown) after the wife of a pastor had sold a house to a Jewish family. Buckley again sued <mask> and Esquire for libel and <mask> filed a counterclaim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of Myra Breckinridge (1968) as a pornographic novel. The court dismissed <mask>'s counterclaim.Buckley accepted a money settlement of $115,000 to pay the fee of his attorney and an editorial apology from Esquire, in which the publisher and the editors said that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of <mask>'s assertions. In a letter to Newsweek magazine, the publisher of Esquire said that "the settlement of Buckley's suit against us" was not "a 'disavowal' of <mask>'s article. On the contrary, it clearly states that we published that article because we believed that <mask> had a right to assert his opinions, even though we did not share them." In <mask>: A Biography (1999), Fred Kaplan said that, "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against Esquire ... [that] the court had 'not' ruled that <mask>'s article was 'defamatory.' It had ruled that the case would have to go to trial in order to determine, as a matter of fact, whether or not it was defamatory. The cash value of the settlement with Esquire represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses." In 2003, Buckley resumed his complaint of having been libeled by <mask>, this time with the publication of the anthology Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing (2003), which included <mask>'s essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." Again, the offended Buckley filed lawsuit for libel and Esquire magazine again settled Buckley's claim with $55,000–65,000 for the fees of his attorney and $10,000 for personal damages suffered by Buckley.In the obituary "RIP WFB – in Hell" (March 20, 2008), <mask> remembered Buckley, who had died on February 27, 2008. Later, in the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for <mask>" (June 15, 2008), New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon asked <mask>, "How did you feel, when you heard that Buckley died this year?" <mask> responded:

The Mailer–<mask> feud
On December 15, 1971, during the recording of The Dick Cavett Show, with Janet Flanner, Norman Mailer allegedly head-butted <mask> when they were backstage. When a reporter asked <mask> why Mailer had knocked heads with him, <mask> said, "Once again, words failed Norman Mailer." During the recording of the talk show, <mask> and Mailer insulted each other, over what <mask> had written about him, prompting Mailer to say, "I've had to smell your works from time to time." Apparently, Mailer's umbrage resulted from <mask>'s reference to Mailer having stabbed his wife of the time. Views

Polanski rape case

In The Atlantic magazine interview "A Conversation with <mask>" (October 2009), by John Meroney, <mask> spoke about topical and cultural matters of U.S. society.Asked his opinion about the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski, in Switzerland, in September 2009, in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities, for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in Hollywood, <mask> said, "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?" Asked for elaboration, <mask> explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s:

Asked to explain the term "American values," <mask> replied, "Lying and cheating. There's nothing better." In response to <mask>'s opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, a spokeswoman for the organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Barbara Dorris, said, "People should express their outrage, by refusing to buy any of his books," called <mask> a "mean-spirited buffoon" and said that, although "a boycott wouldn't hurt <mask> financially," it would "cause anyone else, with such callous views, to keep his mouth shut, and [so] avoid rubbing salt into the already deep [psychological] wounds of (the victims)" of sexual abuse. Scientology
In 1997, <mask> was one of thirty-four public intellectuals and celebrities who joined a publicity campaign waged by Scientologists against the German government, signing an open letter addressed to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published in the International Herald Tribune, alleging that Scientologists in Germany were treated "in the same way that the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews". Scientologists are free to operate in Germany; the Church of Scientology, however, is not recognized as a religious body but as a business with political goals and thus monitored by the German domestic intelligence service.Despite signing the letter, <mask> was critical of Scientology as a religion. Sexuality
In 1967, <mask> appeared in the CBS documentary CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, in which he expressed his views on homosexuality in the arts. Commenting on his life's work and his life, he described his style as "Knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn." <mask> often rebutted the label of "gay." He maintained that it referred to sexual acts rather than sexuality. <mask> did not express a public stance on the HIV-AIDS crisis. According to <mask>'s close friend Jay Parini, "<mask> didn’t think of himself as a gay guy.It makes him self-hating. How could he despise gays as much as he did? In my company he always used the term 'fags.' He was uncomfortable with being gay. Then again, he was wildly courageous." Biographer Fred Kaplan concluded: "He was not interested in making a difference for gay people, or being an advocate for gay rights. There was no such thing as 'straight' or 'gay' for him, just the body and sex."In the September 1969 edition of Esquire, <mask> wrote:

Personal life

In the multi-volume memoir The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–74), Anaïs Nin said she had a love affair with <mask>, who denied her claim in his memoir Palimpsest (1995). In the online article "<mask>'s Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anaïs Nin" (2013), author Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from <mask> to Nin, which contradicts his denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the love letter while researching Mirages, the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword. <mask> would cruise the streets and bars of New York City and other locales and wrote in his memoir that by age twenty-five, he had had more than a thousand sexual encounters. <mask> also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter. He was briefly engaged to the actress Joanne Woodward before she married the actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with <mask> in Los Angeles. <mask> enjoyed telling his sexual exploits to friends.<mask> claimed to have slept with Fred Astaire when he first moved to Hollywood and also with a young Dennis Hopper. In 1950, <mask> met Howard Austen, who became his partner for the next 53 years, until Austen's death. He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other: "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does." In Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews (1995), by Judy Wiedner, <mask> said that he refused to call himself "gay" because he was not an adjective, adding "to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim ... I've said—a thousand times?—in print and on TV, that everyone is bisexual."In the course of his life, <mask> lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail with age, he sold his Italian villa La Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest) on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno and he and Austen returned to live in their 1929 villa in Outpost Estates, Los Angeles. Howard Austen died in November 2003 and in February 2005 his remains were re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot that <mask> had purchased for himself and Austen. Death
In 2010, <mask> began to suffer from Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, a neurological disorder. On July 31, 2012, <mask> died of pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 86. A memorial service was held for him at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City on August 23, 2012. He was buried next to Howard Austen in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C. Vidal said he chose his grave site because it is between the graves of two people who were important in his life: Henry Adams, the historian and writer, whose work <mask> admired; and his boyhood friend Jimmie Trimble who was killed in World War II, a tragedy that haunted <mask> for the rest of his life.Legacy
Postmortem opinions and assessments of <mask> as a writer varied. The New York Times described him as "an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile, or gotten more mileage from their talent." The Los Angeles Times said that he was a literary juggernaut whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language." The Washington Post described him as a "major writer of the modern era ... [an] astonishingly versatile man of letters." The Guardian said that "<mask>'s critics disparaged his tendency to formulate an aphorism, rather than to argue, finding in his work an underlying note of contempt for those who did not agree with him. His fans, on the other hand, delighted in his unflagging wit and elegant style."The Daily Telegraph described the writer as "an icy iconoclast" who "delighted in chronicling what he perceived as the disintegration of civilisation around him." The BBC News said that he was "one of the finest post-war American writers ... an indefatigable critic of the whole American system ... <mask> saw himself as the last of the breed of literary figures who became celebrities in their own right. Never a stranger to chat shows; his wry and witty opinions were sought after as much as his writing." In "The Culture of the United States Laments the Death of <mask>," the Spanish on-line magazine Ideal said that <mask>'s death was a loss to the "culture of the United States," and described him as a "great American novelist and essayist." In The Writer <mask> is Dead in Los Angeles, the online edition of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera described the novelist as "the enfant terrible of American culture" and that he was "one of the giants of American literature". In <mask>idal: The Killjoy of America, the French newspaper Le Figaro said that the public intellectual <mask> was "the killjoy of America" but that he also was an "outstanding polemicist" who used words "like high-precision weapons." On August 23, 2012, in the program a Memorial for <mask> in Manhattan, the life and works of the writer <mask> were celebrated at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, with a revival of The Best Man: A Play About Politics (1960).The writer and comedian Dick Cavett was host of the Vidalian celebration, which featured personal reminiscences about and performances of excerpts from the works of <mask> by friends and colleagues, such as Elizabeth Ashley, Candice Bergen, Hillary Clinton, Alan Cumming, James Earl Jones, Elaine May, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd and Liz Smith. In popular culture
In the 1960s, the weekly American sketch comedy television program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In featured a running-joke sketch about <mask>; the telephone operator Ernestine (Lily Tomlin) would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedul, this is the Phone Company calling! (snort! snort!)." The sketch, titled "Mr. Veedle", also appeared in Tomlin's comedy record album This Is a Recording (1972). <mask> provided his own voice for the animated-cartoon version of himself in The Simpsons episode "Moe'N'a Lisa". He also voices his animated-cartoon version in Family Guy.He was interviewed in the Da Ali G Show; the Ali G character mistakes him for <mask> Sassoon, a famous hairdresser. The <mask> debates, their aftermath and cultural significance, were the focus of a 2015 documentary film called Best of Enemies, as well as a 2021 play by James Graham, inspired by the film. A Netflix biopic titled <mask>, directed and co-written by Michael Hoffman, based on Jay Parini’s book Empire of Self, A Life of <mask>idal, starring Kevin Spacey was filmed in 2017, but after sexual misconduct allegations were made against Spacey, the film was cancelled and remains

masks:
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Gore Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
Gore Vidal
Vidal
Vidal
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Gore Vidal
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Gore Vidal
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Gore V
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Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
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Buckley Vidal
Gore
Gore V


title: Jim Brochu

texts:
<mask> (born August 16, 1946) is an American actor, writer, director, and playwright. Born in Brooklyn, he studied at Carnegie-Mellon University and received his B.A. from St. Francis College. His stage debut was in a production of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. A friend of Lucille Ball, he is known as the author of the unauthorized biography Lucy in the Afternoon, and in this capacity, appeared on an episode of MythBusters. He co-wrote the musical The Big Voice: God or Merman with Steve Schalchlin. <mask> wrote and starred Off-Broadway in Zero Hour in 2009–2010, a one-person play about the life and career of actor and comedian Zero Mostel.He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for this performance. Biography

<mask> is the only actor in America to win the New York Drama Desk Award, the Washington, DC Helen Hayes Award, the Los Angeles Ovation Award and the South Florida Carbonell Award as Best Actor in a Play, the play in question being Zero Hour about the actor/painter Zero Mostel. <mask> spent much of 2008 in New York City, starring in his Off-Broadway play, The Big Voice: God or Merman? which the New York Times called, "Triumphant - a hilarious and utterly enthralling evening of musical theatre." In 2005, he was nominated by the Los Angeles Ovation Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for The Big Voice, an honor he won from both the Palm Springs Desert Star Awards and the Valley Theatre League ADA Awards. The Big Voice: God or Merman? was also given the Ovation Award as Best Musical, presented to himself and composer-partner, Steve Schalchlin, by the legendary Jerry Herman.A native of Brooklyn, <mask> produced his first show, a charity revue featuring the Bay Ridge neighborhood kids, at the age of thirteen and four years later was working on Broadway - selling orange drink at the back of the St. James Theatre during intermissions of Hello, Dolly! After studying drama at Carnegie-Mellon University, where his classmate was Stephen Schwartz, he returned to New York, got his BA in English from St. Francis College (Brooklyn) and made his Broadway debut (on stage at Town Hall) as Christopher Sly in a very bad revival of The Taming Of The Shrew. His off-Broadway credits include Berkeley Square with Christopher Reeve at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Robert Lowell's Endicott And The Red Cross at the American Place Theatre, Ephraim Kishon's Unfair To Goliath at the Cherry Lane, Skye at Lincoln Center and Frank Loesser's Greenwillow for the Equity Library Theatre. While working as a stage actor, he appeared in two legendary television commercials - first as a dancing raisin for Post Raisin Bran and then as the "Lemon from Outer space" with Madge the Manicurist for Palmolive. His television work includes regular stints as Father James on All My Children, Judge Julius Weyburn on The Young and The Restless, Officer Jerry Chandler on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the befuddled bailiff on NBC's Sirota's Court with Michael Constantine. He made his motion picture debut in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight opposite another newcomer, Robert De Niro. His acting career has taken him to regional stages all over the United States, including the Washington Theatre Club in D.C., the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, two seasons at the Goodspeed Opera House where he originated the role of Flint in Something's Afoot, Theatre Building Chicago, Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, the Trinity Arts Center in Dallas and the DejaVu Theatre in Los Angeles where he won the Backstage West Award as Best Actor for his performance as Marvin in Robert Patrick's T-Shirts.While playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof at the Waldo Astoria Dinner Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri he wrote his first play, Cookin' With Gus, which was published by Samuel French. It has since been performed across the United States and has been translated into several languages for productions around the world. A huge hit in Quebec, Canada, it was taped in French by HBO. One play led to another and soon <mask> was writing full-time. For the theatre, he has written the comedies The Lucky O'Learys with Kathleen Freeman, Fat Chance with Virginia Capers, The Lady Of The House with Rue McClanahan and the off-Broadway smash hit musical, The Last Session, which he also directed. After The Last Session'''s New York run (for which he received Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations), the show was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the ten best plays of the 1998-1999 Los Angeles season, garnering him the Oscar Wilde Award and the GLAAD Media Award. <mask> won another Backstage West Award for his direction of the show, along with the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle Award as playwright.In 1988 <mask> got a call from his idol, Lucille Ball, who had read The Lucky O'Learys and thought it would be perfect for herself and Audrey Meadows. By the time he finished writing the pilot for 20th Century Fox, however, Ball was not up to doing the project and it never developed. However, Ball and <mask> formed a close friendship that resulted in them spending almost every afternoon together until she died in 1989. <mask> chronicled Ball's life as she told it to him in his book, Lucy In The Afternoon, published by William Morrow and named as an alternate selection by The Literary Guild Book Club. <mask> lives in New York, where, between theatrical assignments, he travels on cruise ships around the world lecturing about Broadway, Hollywood and the stars with whom he has worked. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, Actors Equity Association and has been called by the New York Times a true "Man Of The Theatre". He has toured Zero Hour, in which he portrays Zero Mostel; one Los Angeles critic called it the best performance of the 2006 season.Zero Hour'' was also awarded the Best Play of 2006 by the L.A. Ovations. His caricature hangs on the wall of Sardi's restaurant in New York. Selected filmography

References

External links

Official site
Plays by <mask> at doollee.com
"<mask> at the Internet Off-Broadway Database listing

1946 births
Carnegie Mellon University alumni
Male actors from New York City
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male stage actors
St. Francis College alumni
Living people

masks:
Jim Brochu
Brochu
Jim Brochu
Brochu
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Jim Brochu


title: Nikolai Kibalchich

texts:
<mask> (, ,, Mykola Ivanovych Kybalchych; 19 October 1853 – April 3, 1881) was a Russian revolutionary of Ukrainian-Serbian origin who took part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II as the main explosive expert for Narodnaya Volya (the People's Will), and was also a rocket pioneer. He was a distant cousin of revolutionary Victor Serge. Early life
Born in Korop, Krolevetsky Uyezd, Chernigov Governorate (present-day Ukraine) in 1853 into a clerical family, Kibalchich was the son of an Orthodox parish priest. He entered a gymnasium in 1864 but was later admitted to a seminary. But he returned to secondary school and finishing it with a silver medal several years later. In 1871 he entered St Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers and in 1873 he entered Saint Petersburg Emperor Military Medical Academy to study medicine and worked on experiments into pulsed rocket propulsion. Biography
In October 1875, Kibalchich was arrested for lending a prohibited book to a peasant.He spent 3 years in prison before being sentenced to 2 months imprisonment. He went on to join Narodnaya Volya in 1878, becoming their main explosives expert. In March 1881, he was charged with taking part in the assassination of Alexander II. All through the night from February 28 to March 1, Mykolaj and his assistants - the Fleet Lieutenant Sukhnanov and Mikhail Grachvesky – worked without rest preparing the missile shells. The Peoples Will members had to be quick. Andrei Zhelyabov, who was to direct the missile throwers in an attempt on the life of the Emperor Alexander II, had been arrested on 27 February. If the Tsar survived the explosion, Zhelyabov was to kill him with a dagger.Zhelyabov's arrest on the eve of the assassination attempt came as a complete surprise, although alarming rumors had appeared in February that the police were up to something. The plan was in jeopardy. There was no one to warn the Narodnaya-Volya people. <mask>, assistant to the file clerk of the Third (Security) Department, bearer of a Saint Stanislav Order, who had often warned the Narodniks about the gathering dangers, had been arrested at the end of January. By the morning of March 1 four projectiles were ready. One of them killed Alexander II on March 1, 1881, on the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal in Saint Petersburg. <mask> was arrested on March 17."When his men came to see Kibalchich as his appointed counsel for the defense," said V.N Gerard in his statement to the special committee of the senate, "I was surprised above all by the fact that his mind was occupied with completely different things with no bearing on the present trial. He seems to be immersed in research on some aeronautic missile; he thirsted for a possibility to write down his mathematical calculations involved in the discovery. He wrote them down and submitted them to the authorities." In a note written in his prison cell, Kibalchich proposed a manned jet air-navigating apparatus. He examined the design of powder rocket engine, controlling the flight by changing engines angle, the pro note is dated March 23. He produced this scientific work truly at death's door. On March 26, General Komarov, Chief of the Gendarmery Department, informed the Police Department: "Pursuant to the request from <mask>, the son of the priest, who is accused of high treason, I have the honor to present hereby his design of an aeronautic device."The brief written in the report said: "To be filed with the March 1 dossier and to give this to
scientists for consideration now would hardly be expedient since this can only give rise to a lot of wanton talk. Kibalchich’s design was put in an envelope, sealed and filed. The inventor was told that his design would be handed over to scientists for examination. Kibalchich awaited for their answer. The month of March was at an end, with two days left before execution. On March 31 Kibalchich wrote this solicitation address to the Minister of Interior: “By instruction of your Excellency my design of an aeronautic apparatus has been submitted for the consideration of technical committee; could your Excellency direct that I be allowed to meet with any of the committee members on the matter of this design not later than tomorrow morning or at least to receive a written answer from the experts who have examined my design, also no longer than tomorrow. I also ask your Excellency for permission for me, before I die, to meet with all my comrades
in the trial or at least with Zhelyabov and Perovskaya."All the requests were ignored. Execution and legacy

At 7:50 am on the sunny spring morning of April 3 two “chariots of shame” with the
condemned prisoners rode out of the house of the detention to Shpalernaya Street. Zhelyabov was
in the first, and by his side was Rysakov, who had tossed the first bomb at the coach of
Alexander II and then betrayed his comrades during the interrogation. <mask>, Perovskaya and Mikhailov were in the second. The hands and feet of the condemned were tied to the seats. Each had on his chest a black plaque with the white colored inscription: “A regicide”. At 9:21 am the executioner removed the foot stool from under the feet of Kibalchich.Mikhailov, Perovskaya, Zhelyabov and Rysakov were executed after him. Thus, Kybalchych and other Narodnaya Volya plotters including Sophia Perovskaya, Andrei Zhelyabov, <mask> and Timofei Mikhailov were hanged on April 3, 1881. The fate of the invention, mentioned in Kybalchych's last letter, proved to be as tragic as that of its 27-year-old creator. <mask>'s
design was buried in the archives of Police Department, but the tsar authorities failed to consign
the name of the inventor and his idea to oblivion. The trial and execution of the Narodniks had wide
repercussions around the world. Much was said and written about Kibalchich's design abroad and all
kinds of conjectures were made about the essence of the invention and its subsequent fate. In 1917, <mask> rediscovered the manuscript in the archives and published an account of it 1918 in the historic magazine Byloye (Былое, The Past).In 1891, similar ideas were developed independently by the German engineer Hermann Ganswindt. After WWII, Stanislaw Ulam proposed a nuclear pulse propulsion scheme which was studied in Project ORION. The International Astronomical Union honoured the rocketry pioneer by naming a crater on the moon Kibalchich's crater(Kibal'chich). Located at 3.0° N 146.5° W, the Moon's far side. Final letter

The Dream of a propulsive device by a Scientist that was stolen by death

"I, <mask>, am writing down this design in prison with several days to go before my
execution. I believed in the practicability of my idea and this belief sustains me in my appalling situation by scientists and specialists who show my idea to be practicable, I will feel happy in the knowledge that I have rendered an immense service to my country and mankind. I will then calmly meet death, knowing that my idea will not die with me but will remain with mankind for which I prepared to sacrifice my life.That is why I pray to those scientists who will examine my design that they treat it with the utmost seriousness and good faith and let me know their answer as soon as possible. First and foremost I need it necessary to note that, when at large, I did not have time to
elaborate my design in details and prove its feasibility mathematically. Now it is, of course
impossible for me to obtain the materials necessary for that. Consequently, this task that of
substantiating my design with mathematical calculation will have to be done by those experts
into whose hands my design will find its way. Besides, I am not familiar with the mass of similar design which have, appeared lately; that is
to say I am aware of the idea behind those designs but I am not familiar with the way whereby the inventors hope to carry them out. As far as I know, however my idea has not yet been proposed by anyone else. In my thought about an aeronautic machine I have concentrated mainly on this question: what force has to be applied in order to set such machine in motion?In my opinion it is slowly burning explosive substances that can provide such a force. In fact, the combustion of explosive substance results with a comparative rapidity in large
quantity of gases possessing a huge energy at the instance of their formation. But can one use
the energy of gases, formed by explosive ignition, to perform work of any duration? This is
possible only if the huge energy of explosive combustion, rather than last instantaneously,
will be generated during a more or less prolonged period of time." Legacy
In the April 1918 issue of the Byloye magazine, <mask>
published <mask>'s description of a manned, rocket-propelled ship, from his final letter. The letter had been filed in police archives until Rynin fished it out, after hearing rumors of the design. References

External links

 Croft, Lee B. <mask> Kibalchich: Terrorist Rocket Pioneer.IIHS. 2006. .
 Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Spaceflight
 Nikolai Rynin Interplanetary Flight and Communication Vol.2 No.4 pp36. Washington, D.C.: NASA and NSF, 1971
 Суд над цареубийцами. Дело 1-го марта 1881 года. Под редакцией В.В.Разбегаева. Изд. им.Н.И.Новикова. С-Пб том 1 и 2. 2014.,

1853 births
1881 deaths
People from Korop
People from Krolevetsky Uyezd
Narodniks
Narodnaya Volya
Russian scientists
Russian inventors
Early rocketry
Early spaceflight scientists
Executed Russian people
Executed revolutionaries
People executed by the Russian Empire by hanging
Russian people of Serbian descent

masks:
Nikolai Ivanovich Kibalchich
Nikolai Kletochnikov
Kibalchich
Nikolai Kibalchich
Kibalchich
Nikolai Rysakov
Kibalchich
Nikolai Rynin
Nikolai Kibalchich
Nikolai Rynin
Kibalchich
Nikolai Ivanovich