Myra Breckinridge  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Myra Breckinridge (1968) is a satirical novel by Gore Vidal written in the form of a diary. It was made into a movie in 1970. (see Myra Breckinridge (film)) Described by the critic Dennis Altman as "part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality which swept the western world in the late 1960s and early 1970s," the book's major themes are feminism, transsexuality, American expressions of machismo and patriarchy, and so-called deviant sexual practices, as filtered through an aggressively camp sensibility. Set in Hollywood in the 1960s, the novel also contains candid and irreverent glimpses into the machinations within the film industry.

Dismissed by some of the era's more conservative critics as pornographic at the time of its first publication in February 1968, the book immediately became a worldwide bestseller and has since come to be considered a classic in some circles. "It is tempting to argue that Vidal said more to subvert the dominant rules of sex and gender in Myra than is contained in a shelf of queer theory treatises," wrote Dennis Altman. In 1974 Vidal published a sequel, Myron, in which the story of Myra Breckinridge is continued.

See also

• Myra