Myra Breckinridge – Myron

Pub. 1968.
Pub. In Britain in 1968 (with over 200 excisions – according to Gore Vidal, Palimpsest, p. 189).
The sequel, Myron, was published 1974.

Myra B. married to the late Myron Breckinridge (who committed suicide/film critic)
Three wills and one marriage certificate gives her a claim to half of Buck Loner’s estate.

Then we discover Myra is, or rather was, Myron plus surgery (or should that be Myron minus surgery?).

Buck Loner – an aging cowboy style film star now running an acting academy in Hollywood.

Sequence: Myron (homosexual/passive)- via surgery becomes Myra (the new woman) – then with an accident becomes Myron II (straight/Chinese caterer with wife and dogs).
But in Myron the sequence is alternating; different typeface (smaller for Myra). But at times is also simultaneous. Both seem to be writing journals in the same book. (Some relation to the journal of Annais Nin?). The Mryon sees Myra’s writings as in code, originally upside down and back to front).

“The novel is dead” – replaced by the journal? Movies? Television? (The French who will not and the American who cannot – sarcasm). Many comments made on writing/cinema/television/education. But both books are definitely novels!

Many caustic comments on the ordinary John Q. Citizen (repres. By Myron II). 
And many wonderful comments on the American political scene. Wonderful satire on Nixon (who of course never did all those horrible things said about him by the press). Also Johnson/Vietnam and the Kennedys.

A mine of movie information from the great 1940’s movies. But the Siren of Babylon is not a real movie. There is a movie made by Maria Montez in 1948 call the Siren of Atlantis. Similarly Bruce Cabot never made a movie with the name Siren of Babylon.

Fluid sexuality: Can we believe the transformations/transitions undergone by the protagonist? Do the characters believe that themselves?
Myron II’s comments on Myra is that she is demented. This is stated in M.B. p.203.
Gore Vidal has been criticized as clever. Many early reviews pan these two novels but now well read.

Should we not take the point of view that fluid sexuality as a concept is parodied rather than seriously entertained? Certainly Gore Vidal seems to be on the ground floor of postmodernism’s concerns with such a topic/the epidemic (or semantic contagion) of such ideas as multiple selves (especially in the context of child abuse?)?

Personally think his satire spot on, with the finger on the cultural pulse so to speak. And by making these extremes more extreme exposes them for what they are – mere cultural fashions?

Use of violence quite disturbing!

We have two major violation scenes. In MB with Rusty who becomes a complete homosexual. This has been hinted at in the text. ‘Not like other guys’ says his girlfriend, ‘so gentle’. When he moves in to share with a male friend/fellow actor note the surname of the other guy is ‘Jane’ (Tarzan and Jane?).  The transition for Rusty is violent hetero-sex with Letetia.

The parallel violation is with the red head Steve Dude (who looks like he really did get the chop when we read the very funny last page. Also this scene is pre-mirrored by the contretemp with the Half-Cherookee. And, later, a rapid vasectomy is also carried out. (Loved the passage when Myra puts the very sharp sword prop in his belt near his own genitalia having started planning to re-lop it off). Did you like the perfect way to send a billet-doux? But, then, if you can pass on a message that way you probably don’t need to send such a message in the first place I would suspect!

Every section is around a point and often highlighted by puns, mixed metaphor, jokes, satire, irony, sarcasm, caustic comments on American culture, etc., (e.g., discuss the ‘in and outs of’…./might lay Myra, p.24.) (Funniest tape-dictation section must be p.125).

Altogether a very delicate balancing game. Nice feature is the falling into the character and merging. And thereby escaping the two weeks of filming the Siren of Babylon that was being repeated ad nauseum. Myra was hilarious. Myron got a bit bogged down in the second quarter but picked up with the added tension generated by her own planned castration (of Myron)/the envisaged castration of others. A much faster pace in the last quarter of the sequel brings the novel to a very clever, witty and funny conclusion.

As an ordinary bloke; as a sane, decent, moral conservative, english-speaking person, I don’t think this book at all successfully promotes healthy, wholesome family values, and, therefore, I would suggest that it best be only be read as an example of the type of degenerate literature that we must expect to come from the United States of America given the lack of values so obviously evident in that culture as presented by these books. If it must be read in the fine schools of this country it should be under strict supervision. The full nuances of this uneven text should be exposed, especially when it does set out to present its final thesis, that proper perspective on life, as advertised  by Myron, albeit Myron II, when he sings ‘the praises of the happily, married lifestyle between a man and a woman’. I am also heartened in one more respect, namely, that at least in the sequel Myron, I found no offensive language detailing parts of our more private anatomy - such expressions are best left unmentioned. I must confess some of his vocabulary is rather strange and obviously something I yet to come to grips with - what a rehnquist is or what father hills are I have yet to fathom? And what were those two nice straight boys doing on page 147 in M.B. I don’t know, could some one show me? Finally, what a flower arranger, like myself, would do with a single rosebud I just don’t know? I guess properly looked after they should open up and bloom like all picked flower? But, then, surely a room filled with roses would look much more interesting…?