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Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
The first paperback edition to combine Gore Vidal's brilliant and energetic fantasy Myra Breckinridge with its sequel, Myron. "A moral masterpiece."--The Times (London) 10,000 print.
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| Myra vs. Myron: the ultimate battle of the sexes |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Once again out of print, "Myra Breckinridge" is a novel of its time, a post-Lolita send-up of Sixties sexual mores and American hang-ups, with a Swiftian prose meant to shatter the tranquility of tradition. The novel has perhaps lost its edge in a culture that celebrates the movies of John Waters and Gus van Sant and that mourns the death of an androgynous Michael Jackson to an excess once reserved for sexual icons like Elvis and Marilyn. But its underlying spite still has the ability to shock (particularly in the book's most infamous scenes of sadism). And forty years on, the title character--a domineering vixen who invades a film school and disrupts the lives of its patriarchal director and his wholesome if untalented students--hasn't lost her nefarious magnetism, either.
The lesser but still readable sequel, "Myron," while sometimes more focused in its parody, features a lead character who falls into his TV set, lands on the soundstage of the movie he was watching, and finds himself trapped in the summer of 1948. Wordplay and satire aside, the plot device gets a little tiresome but is somewhat redeemed by the twists of the final chapters.
But what does it all mean? The most obvious target of Vidal's satire is the idea of sexual identity. Influenced by the Kinseyian concept of universal bisexuality, Vidal has long argued that notions of sexuality should be applied to actions rather than to persons and (less controversially) that gender identities are fluid constructs that are socially determined rather than intrinsic to character. Such ideas play out in both books. In the first novel, Myra introduces the wholesome, all-American couple Rusty and Mary-Ann to their own suppressed same-sex desires, while in "Myron" sexual inhibitions crumble on the set of a Westworld-like fantasyland where various shades of masculinity are parodied in the characters of "out-of-towners" who resemble Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, and Normal Mailer.
Yet, in both novels, gender identity is just as often an either-or proposition; by presenting extremes of masculinity and femininity, Vidal mocks our obsession with them. Whenever Myra and her "husband" Myron switch roles, Vidal depicts them not as a single person with a fluid identity but as a Sybil-like schizophrenic with separate, stereotypical personalities--a man-hating woman vs. a closeted gay man--battling over a single body. (As Myra boasts, "Certainly my work is superior to that of Joanne Woodward whose performance in 'Three Faces of Eve' is but the palest carbon of my own story.") Myra could never be like Myron, and vice versa--and a battle of the sexes ensues. Several critics have argued that Myra serves as Vidal's mouthpiece, but I'm not so sure: Is Myra's rigid, mad view of sexual politics a burlesque of the past or a vision of the future?
Another theme running through both novels is the circularity of life and art: we model our lives on what we see in the movies (or on television), and Hollywood in turn seeks to depict fantasy-enhanced representations of our lives. In "Myron," Vidal takes this intersection of fact and fiction to its literal extreme; not only do Myra and Myron alter "Siren of Babylon," the book's fictional B-movie, but by changing the film and rescuing the MGM studio from its decline, Myra hopes to prolong the "golden age of the movies" and salvage "everything, in fact, that made America great, that made it possible for our boys to destroy Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo." Vidal has been unsparing in his attacks on the masses, for which "book-reading, never a favorite pastime of the brave at home, has been replaced by Viewing"; the irony here is that few Americans have mastered, retained, and idolized even the lowliest of Golden Age-era movies as thoroughly as he has.
The LSD-fueled zaniness of the plots and Vidal's acidic cultural observations make both novels seem like period pieces with a quasi-sci-fi husk. What may have seemed shocking and wacky and slightly sadistic four decades ago has now been relegated to the trite category of "camp classics," of interest mostly to literary scholars and cultural critics. Vidal blames the decline in these novels' reputation on the (admittedly atrocious) movie made from the first book, but it's not unfair to say that Vidal doeth protest too much. Today his views of sexuality often seem just as quaint and stodgy as those he attacks (as Myra notes of the future, represented by her young students, "sex does not appear to be the hangup with this crowd"). In truth, Vidal's little soda-pop "inventions" (to use his term) lost most of their fizz almost as soon as they were published, but that doesn't make them any less fun to read.
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| Beast, What Is Thy Sex? |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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The fact that Gore Vidal's highly original 'Myra Breckinridge' (1968) and its sequel, 'Myron' (1974), have been published together in one edition by Penguin Books strongly suggests that the novels are in the process of becoming accepted as part of the canon of American Literature. This is extraordinary, since 'Myra Breckinridge' is a genuinely radical and subversive novel that strikes forcibly at the very heart of traditional American values, particularly at the country's conservative sexual mores, though most readers seem to miss the 'unacceptable truth' that the book shrewdly exposes. Oddly, the disastrous film version of 1970, presently in constant rotation on multiple cable channels, made the same point more clearly, which was perhaps somewhat responsible for its critical and box office failure.
On the basis of its tone alone, 'Myra Breckinridge' may be difficult for many readers to read comfortably, which was doubtlessly Vidal's intention. Told in first person through a series of journal entries, Myra's often hilarious commentary is a litany of keen perception, self-hatred, sniping mania, arrogant sarcasm, brittle irony, continuous domineering combativeness, and camp-laden neurosis.
Cultural critic Camille Paglia has championed the novel, and as critic Reed Woodhouse has suggested, Myra's voice is often comparable to Paglia at her acerbic, devil-may-care, 'the truth must out' best. As Paglia would also begin to do with the publication of Sexual Personae in 1991, 'Myra Breckinridge' is additionally a scathing attack on the then-untouchable decorous High WASP values and social mores of the first half of the Twentieth Century. The book's genius lies in Vidal's ability to make the reader first sympathize with and then champion the marauding sociopathic Myra, who is a liar, an extortionist, a sadist, a rapist and, ultimately, something of a phantasm.
The unmentionable--and entirely unacceptable--'ugly truth' that the novel subtly declares is that self-identified heterosexual men can, in fact, be converted to full-blown homosexual desire if they can be made to be the passive partner in homosexual intercourse on at least one occasion. Using an artificial phallus, Myra rapes the hyper-masculine but brainless Rusty (whose buttocks she refers to as "a cannibal banquet"), who then abandons his longtime girlfriend, brutally transfers his rage to aging nymphomaniac Letitia Van Allen, and settles into a life of active, willfully chosen homosexuality as the novel closes.
"We are furnaces inside," says Myra, who has introduced Rusty to an internal furnace he hadn't know he had. Thus Myra, "goddess enthroned and all-powerful," has achieved one of her primary goals: "that is woman's role, to make the wound and then heal it." Myra, who has been reborn several times herself, provides Rusty with a reawakening and second birth, one that would very likely never have occurred without her sadistic intervention.
Curiously, Vidal seems to have lost his nerve as the novel draws to a close. Myra is run over by an automobile driven by one of her enemies, awakens badly injured in a hospital, and, via a process never made clear to the reader, psychically reverts back to Myron Breckinridge, the man she was before physically altering genders via an operation in Denmark.
But while the original Myron was an effeminate if sadomasochistic homosexual male, the post-Myra Myron is a docile, heterosexually-identified house-husband married to Rusty's former girlfriend, Mary-Ann. Lifting a syrupy message from The Wizard of Oz (1939), the novel closes with Myron stating that "it is a proven fact that happiness, like the proverbial bluebird, is to be found in your own backyard if you just know where to look."
While Myron's advice, which violates absolutely everything which has come before, is intended to be ironic, it's odd that Vidal chose to brutally punish--and even physically dismember ("where are my breasts?")--social terrorist Myra for her all-out, hubristic assault on American values, beliefs, manners, and gender roles. Perhaps Myra's failure was an inevitability, since her broad goals are consistently inconsistent: while she zealously worships the depiction of manhood and masculinity reflected in Hollywood films of the Thirties and Forties, she simultaneously desires to figuratively but aggressively reduce every man she encounters to a submissive, quivering eunuch, a position which oddly mirrors her own transsexual status. Whether this confusion is Myra's or Vidal's is difficult to assess, but the book's tepid conclusion suggests that Vidal became unexpectedly mired in his theme and simply lost his way.
The unfunny, grossly overlong 'Myron' is more a parody of its predecessor than a genuine thematic sequel, revealing a Vidal even further removed from the first book's disturbing origins and motivators. Here, Myron, who has had radical reconstructive surgery, continues as a mousy heterosexual house-husband living comfortably in the San Fernando Valley circa 1973, where he runs a Chinese catering business and remains happily married to Mary-Ann.
Though Myron hopes to "block out that awful period" of his life, the now repressed Myra struggles to liberate herself and take control of Myron's "mutilated body." To this end, Myra, "the arch-creatrix herself," supernaturally inserts Myron into a telecast of the fictional 'Siren of Babylon,' after which he finds he is "caught inside the movie" while it is being filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1948. 'Myron' reduces Myra to the back lot B-movie heroine she has continually threatened to degenerate into.
While 'Myra Breckinridge' has sharp and potentially deadly teeth, 'Myron,' sadly overladen with third-rate, 'naughty' gay camp humor, has none. However, it's likely that admirers of the first book will want to follow the further adventures of Vidal's dangerous, dazzling creation.
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| Myra, psychotic superhero |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I don't like to know too much about a story before i start reading it. This was the case with this book. Not only i had no idea about the subject matter, i didn't even know too much about Gore Vidal.
There was something really strange about the main character, Myra. She was way too arrogant and full of herself. At first, i thought that was due to the writing. What does Gore Vidal know about women? I remember how surprised i was with She's Come Undone. After reading that book, it was hard for me to believe that Wally Lamb is a man!
But this Myra sure was weird. She was recently widowed, and traveled to Hollywood to collect on her husband's inheritance, which until then had been in the hands of Uncle Buck, an old movie star who now ran an acting school. Uncle Buck decides to keep Myra close by while his lawyers investigate her alleged marriage to his nephew, so he offers her a job in the acting school.
Myra keeps a diary which she is planning to share with her shrink back in NYC. While at the school, she becomes obsessed with a very handsome young man and his girlfriend. She in fact starts planning some unclear revenge, with the handsome guy as the victim.
This was one of those novels that kept me entertained even when i wasn't reading it. It was during one of those moments, when i was thinking about a small detail that did not make sense, that i was able to finally figure out what was going on with Myra. And then i smacked my forehead, because it was sort of obvious.
Not for the faint of heart, because there are some XXX moments, but this was a very fun ride. I enjoyed Myra's self-righteousness after a while, as well as the great movie commentaries throughout the book. There were two points that particularly resonated with me:
1: Myra's praise for the commercial as an art form. I love commercials and the incredible creativity they can concentrate in such a few seconds.
2: "But then the pedestrian is not favored hereabouts. In fact, the police are quick to stop and question anyone found on foot in a residential district since it is part of California folklore that only the queer or criminal walk; the good drive cars that fill the air with the foul odor of burning fossils, and so day by day our lungs fill up with the stuff of great ferns and dinosaurs who thus revenge themselves upon their successors, causing us to wither and die prematurely".
And i have just found out that there is a movie based on the book, so bad that is good.
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| Two unforgettable novels with one amazing, twisted character |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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MYRA BRECKINRIDGE moves to Hollywood in order to collect the inheritance left by her husband Myron. The one problem is Uncle Buck Loner who stands between her and the property - a profitable school for would be actors run by Buck. Myra is certain that everything will turn out her way, as she is the New American Woman. Every man wants her, but none may have her. However, there is a twist to Myra that will throw her plans into turmoil if anyone finds out.
This is a darkly comic book with one of the most intriguing of characters in Myra Breckinridge. She is self-confidant (perhaps overly so), knows how to control and manipulate both men and women to fulfill her wishes, and determined not to let anything stop her. She is ready to change the world to suit her. In other words, a force to be reckoned with. I also liked that she patterned herself after movie heroines and relates to people as though they were characters in a movie, shown for her benefit.
The novel itself is written as a series of diary entries, written by Myra as events happen. This gives an immediacy to the story and makes the reader feel as though he/she is a part of the action. The twist in the story is definitely a shocking one; I admit that it threw me for a loop. I can only imagine its impact when the book was published in 1968 with the sexual revolution just underway. An incredible book.
MYRON: This sequel to "Myra Breckinridge" follows poor Myron as he battles against Myra, only this time they've somehow become stuck in the 1948 movie "Siren of Babylon." It's a strange world, the Hollywood of 1948, and Myron tries frantically to return to 1973 and his beloved Richard M. Nixon while Myra has plans of her own to both bring back the glory of MG Studios by fixing "Siren" and to curb the human population growth by re-forming man in her image - strong, sterile Amazonian woman. Her one problem: Myron and how to keep him from escaping the film.
It's a totally bizarre and wonderfully campy look at Hollywood of the 1940s but seen through the eyes of the 1970s. And, like its predecessor, is written in journal entries so you're in the action as it happens from the characters' perspectives. A great piece of fantasy fiction.
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| Most provocative, insightful & hilarious book I ever read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The incomparable Gore Vidal wrote this book in the middle of the sexual revolution of the late sixties. He managed to write a book that is a profound statement on the women's movement on the brink of political madness; revealing the madness of patriarchal society during the Vietnam years while it began to embody the intimate criminal mentality of its enemy at the edge of its success. This book is still, more than thirty-five years later, ahead of its time. Myra Breckinridge is a symbol of America at this tumultuous time--a time that has not only not ended but is being ignored for the benefit of going backward to the Commie-hunter fifties culture, where it is seemingly safe from critical scrutiny. The sexuality, the artistry, the marketplace, the spirituality, and the narcissism that goes from the ridiculous to the sublime--defining the time in which is what written--is all here in this novel, in a way that is not only brilliantly entertaining but non-stop funny. Vidal was the favorite writer of my baby-boomer parents when I was a child. And like my grandfather, who can tell me all the dirty little secrets of my parents generation without them even being aware, Vidal, with his unmatched artistry and biting wit, reveals all, with a talent for weaving stories that has been unmatched. Who is Myra Breckinridge? A better question would be who ISN'T? An incredible novel.
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