To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the American culture's obsession with masculinity and heterosexuality.
Gore Vidal highlights how American men often feel the need to publicly affirm their heterosexuality in a way that appears exaggerated and anxious. In contrast, he notes that men from other cultures, like Italy, do not feel the same compulsion to validate their masculinity through overt compliments about their heterosexuality, suggesting a different attitude towards gender and sexuality in those cultures.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about gender norms in American society.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
I don't believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you're spending your time doing something worthwhile.
Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator.
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
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