One of 1968's "shocking" bestsellers that is now a bit of a slog. (As Couples is to Updike; interestingly, the longueurs of both novels are attempts at Joycean stream of consciousness.) But Myra's voice is memorable, and that counts for something.

Imagine having written a book in the 1960s and been criticized over being queer, and then someone reading your book in this day and age and calling you homophobic. What's the phrase I'm looking for... "Can't win for losing?" Yeah. That's it. For the record, Gore Vidal was an intellectual who believed sex was a tool of the weak-minded. He didn't care much for love or physical relationships, and this book, above all else, shows that. To his credit, Gore Vidal hated everyone equally, because everyo...

This starts out as a really funny, satirical look at Hollywood in the throes of the sexual revolution, but it just becomes tedious, pointless and mean-spirited, like pretty much all of Vidal's books, which for some reason I keep reading. Maybe that says something about me.

"I have no clear idea as to my ultimate identity once every fantasy has been acted out with living flesh. All that I do know is that I shall be freed of obsession and, in this at least, be like no one else who ever lived." Thus is the admirable if impossible goal of Vidal's self-titled anti-heroine/hero(?)... It's probably no surprise that the pursuit of it, and the methods employed, lead into directions not anticipated. And as a result, the rewards are unexpected. From cynicism a kind of tender...

Transphobic, misogynistic, anti-semitic, smug. The transsexual woman as insane, murderous rapist is a fairly tiresome & offensive storyline - especially when the ending involves Myra "recovering" from her insanity to return to life as Myron. Despite Gore Vidal's obvious pleasure with himself as some kind of subversive, the majority of the characters and storylines are actually fairly shallow & undeveloped. It appears that the success of the book relies on the reader responding with shock & disgu...

If I had to choose one book that sums up what you might call ‘the gay sensibility’ it would be this, the story of a power-hungry transsexual rampaging her way through a dismal American college, ravishing hot jocks and referencing 40s films on every page. I was so obsessed by Myra Breckinridge in my 20s that I actually started writing my own diary in her voice. The sequel, Myron, is just as good. I was absolutely horrified when, after Vidal’s death, serious literary commentators suggested that he...

A short, depraved, outrageous farce that amuses and bemuses. Both funny and unsettling. Comedy and tragedy collide.Gore Vidal manages to pour scorn on everyone and everything, especially the culture of late 1960's Southern California and everything that went into making it what it was. The central character, Myra, is a seductive anti-heroine whom we may simultaneously root for and despise. The farce is apparent early when we see Myra as alternately a mouthpiece for Vidal and an object for his sc...

Let's face it: sometimes we all feel the physical need to behave like dirty bastards and say something terrible. When the dark spell of bad taste overwhelms us, nothing is beyond us. We're capable of just anything, like bursting out laughing in a fancy restaurant and - once we've caught the attention of as many people as possible:"Hey, guys: a nigger, a kike and a wop meet in the changing room of a massage parlor. The nigger pulls down his pants and the wop says ..." It's a compulsion, something...

I had watched the film version with Raquel Welch and Mae West and found it absolutely incoherent. When I found the book in the Free Books section of my public library, I decided, "Why not? Maybe I can get a little something extra out of it."True, it is every bit misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, and pro-rape as everyone says it is. There we go, five things I already dislike. Despite all of this, however, I'm ashamed to say that I actually *really* enjoyed this one, though I'm no...

I fully intend to walk around saying, "I am Myra Breckenridge whom no man will ever possess." Look, its politics are a bit...outmoded. Particularly the pit-pat resolution (I won't spoil this one), which seems to reiterate a normative gender system and narrative structure. The plot is a bit flimsy, or rather, is stretched for quite a long time, when it could easily have been told as a novella. But these things shouldn't keep you from reading it, because it's also ridiculously fun & offensive, & M...

When last we left Gore Vidal, we were worried about his politics. He was long considered a lion of the left for his sexual dissidence and his resistance to the religious right and to neoconservative imperialism; but worldwide events since his death in 2012 have put his fiercely atheist-pagan religious outlook, as well as his endorsement of economic populism and military isolationism, in a different and more troubling light, just as his cynicism about sexual ethics (not to mention rumors about hi...

I can't remember anymore if I actually read this book in its entirety or just stood there in the library browsing it at length like some old raincoat-clad pervert. But I should be able to remember it better, even if it did happen in the late '70s when I was in junior high, because I clearly remember that 10 years earlier the first Playboy I ever saw had a pictorial in it from the awful movie they made shortly after Myra Breckinridge's publication. I've never seen the movie in its entirety either...

I want to resurrect Vidal and ask him, really? Really? This was worth your time?It's a pretty weird book. If you know anything about it, you know why. I imagine it was rather shocking for its time, but now it feels as though it was written merely to shock.

Writing does not get better than this, but it's definitely not for everyone. It's sick and twisted, but hilarious and beautifully written. Myra Breckinridge is the most powerful female character in books thanks to the voice given to her by Vidal. I could "listen" to her talk all day.

I'm going ahead and giving this little piece of madness 5 stars. Much of it is brilliant, hilarious, and bitchily delightful (I think I just created that adverb). A lot of it is also horrifying. Vidal takes the concept of the unreliable narrator to the next level in Myra. And there are things that simply wouldn't fly today--a lot of outmoded language and casual attitudes that made my jaw literally drop. But it is satire and it was published in 1968. Keeping that in mind, it's pretty revolutionar...

Reading any work by Gore Vidal, I am always amazed at how well it stands the test of time. Many of the references in Myra Breckinridge are dated (and certainly would have been at the time of its publication as well), and yet the themes of the story still ring eerily true today. Sexual politics, gender roles, the nature of celebrity – all of these ideas play out today much as they play out in the novel. In particular, the quest for celebrity in the book calls to mind reality television stars of t...

In the TLS of February 23 2018, Daniel Culpan ("a writer based in London") published a wide-ranging retrospective of Gore Vidal as novelist and critic that includes a convincing account of Myra Breckinridge's "comic nihilism": In it Vidal anticipates the sour, slackening coda of the great countercultural dream: "free love" being replaced by pornography; the avant-garde being killed by Warhol's embrace of consumerist Pop Art; [Vidal's] own adored Golden Age Hollywood cannibalized by reality telev...

If I was going to read one Gore Vidal book (why), I'd decided, it was going to be The City and the Pillar. It's a landmark in English-language, certainly American, gay fiction, it's short - and, whilst a novel from 1948 was likely to contain a few things unacceptable in the 2010s, it wouldn't be the minefield that is Myra Breckinridge.I'd also kind-of conflated the notoriously bad film of Myra with the novel. But a longtime GR friend, who's read a lot more Vidal than most people, when I asked hi...

I'm a bit baffled by all the people who are offended by the retrograde gender politics of this book. Is it transphobic? Sure, at times. It's also (at times) equally misogynistic as it is man-hating, homophobic as it is radically queer, elitist as it is populist, anti-hippie as it is anti-East Coast elite. The contradictions and topics to take offense at are limitless. This is a true satire, lashing out at all who stand in Myra's path (including Myra herself). Everyone and everything is so comple...

There is maybe only one word to be said about this book: bizarre! I listen to this book in the audible format while partially following along with the Kindle edition. This is another one of those books that I have heard about for a long time but I have to admit I don’t think I ever really understood what it was all about. This book was published at a time when transsexual was definitely not understood. Not that it has broken through into any understanding really these days yet. And the attitude