“Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'… Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln.”

—  Gore Vidal

"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'… Also, 'more than half…" by Gore Vidal?
Gore Vidal photo
Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012

Related quotes

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo

“I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

James E. Lovelock photo

“Life has to be a planetary phenomenon. You could no more have a partially occupied planet than you could half a cat or half a dog.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

"The Man Who Named the World" (1990)

Richard Burton photo
John Adams photo

“I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. … The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (28 December 1794), Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
1790s
Source: Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

Tom Odell photo

“I'd like to say that maybe we could work it out
But I know that it's no use
If I ever find anyone half as good as you
I think maybe that will do”

Tom Odell (1990) British singer-songwriter

Half As Good As You
Lyrics, Jubilee Road

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Richard Wright photo
Gertrude Stein photo

“And so I am an American and I have lived half my life in Paris, not the half that made me but the half in which I made what I made.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

An American and France (1936)

Marco Polo quote: “I have not told half of what I saw.”
Marco Polo photo

“I have not told half of what I saw.”

Marco Polo (1254–1324) Venetian explorer and merchant noted for travel to central and eastern Asia

Non ho scritto neppure la metà delle cose che ho visto.
On his death-bed, when urged to retract "some of the seemingly incredible statements he made in his book", as quoted in The travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian (J. M. Dent, 1926), p. xxiv. Quote in Italian from Imago mundi seu Chronica (c. 1330) by Jacopo d'Acqui, as reported in the bibliographic note to Marco Polo: Storia del mercante che capì la Cina (2009) by Vito Bianchi.

Related topics