Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories

By Gore Vidal

Book Overview

Celebrated for more than fifty years as a world-renowned novelist, essayist, and political figure and commentator, Gore Vidal is less known for the exquisitely crafted short fiction he wrote as a young man. Like the work of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, his stories have been overshadowed by the author's triumphs writing in other genres. Still, Vidal's short fiction offers us a portrait of the young artist in the 1940s and 1950s. His subtle and comic tales often center on adolescence and homosexual themes. In Three Stratagems, a middle-aged gay man encounters a male prostitute while vacationing in Key West. In The Zenner Trophy, the star athlete at an elite boys school is expelled for sexual relations with a classmate. These stories were gathered along with five others into a 1956 volume, A Thirsty Evil, and for decades were thought to comprise Vidal's complete short fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786718102
• ISBN13: 9780786718108
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.5" x 5.5"