An excerpt: Notoriously indifferent to kids, Gore was nevertheless so often asked to act as godfather, he had honed a line he would reprise for generations. 'Always a godfather, never a god." He bestowed a thin smile on Sean. 'Aren't you a pretty little girl." "I'm a boy," Sean protested. "Well, then, aren't you a pretty little boy." "Gore Vee-doll," Sean chirped. Pleased that a child knew his name, Gore leaned down to the pretty little boy, who declaimed in clearly enunciated syllables, "I want to eat you." The reaction . . . There was none. Everybody froze. At a loss for words, reduced to dumb miming, Gore wiggled his ears, then per-formed a trick that made it appear that he had detached the last joint from his thumb. This set Sean giggling, and the rest of us joined in, laughing in relief. While Linda bundled Sean off to bed, I poured Gore a glass of white wine and Howard a vodka on the rocks. Gore surprised me, saying he too wanted vodka. Had Sean's remark rattled him that badly? At dinner, Donald Stewart urged Mary Lee Settle to tell us about the National Book Award. Tall and striking, she had once been a model and still carried herself at sixty with a stylish panache. Strolling with me through Trastevere, she had sidestepped thundering motor scooters, delighted that the drivers all shot her admiring glances. In my eagerness not to get run over, I hadn't noticed this. Mary Lee was later quoted as claiming that winning the Na-tional Book Award was "one of the most unpleasant experiences I have ever had." But that night she was ebullient and explained that Blood Tie had at first been published to near-total silence. Few re-views, paltry sales. Then Anatole Broyard had written an enthusiastic notice in the daily New York Times, and Settle's good friend Vance Bourjaily, a member of the fiction jury, used the review to persuade the other National Book Award judges to vote for her. "It was a miracle," Mary Lee marveled. "The New York Times hadn't reviewed me for thirteen years."
"That's the way of the Great Gray Goose," said Gore, gulping down a second vodka. 'After The City and the Pillar, the Times re-fused to review my next six books." He recited their titles like the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary—The Season of Comfort, A Search for the King, Dark Green, Bright Red, The Judgment of Paris, Messiah, A Thirsty Era. From the way he talked, you'd never know that his taboo-breaking novel had had its advocates. Thomas Mann had hailed it as "a noble work." Howard, hyperalert to trouble, urged Gore to switch to wine. Gore insisted on more vodka. "It's interesting how alcohol affects different writers," he said, as if that were what we had been discussing—alcohol and authors. "Whenever I read Faulkner and he rambles on about 'the ancient avatar of the evening sun slipping down the crepuscular sky,' I know he was hitting the sauce. On the other hand, your sainted father," he said, nodding to Teresa Waugh D'Arms, "became meaner and more concise the drunker he got. Every sentence had a dagger in it." When Mary Lee Settle began waxing sentimental about their days on the Hudson River, Gore brought up the names of several men at Bard College and asked if she had slept with them after he had. "Time to go home," Howard broke in. With no protest, Gore pitched unsteadily to his feet, and the two of them departed. The next day he phoned to deliver a line that he doubtlessly wished he had thought of when Sean said he wanted to eat him. "Who was that dwarf you hired to get the evening off to such a
rousing start?"
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