Myra Breckinridge

The outrageous and immortal, gender-bending and polymorphously perverse, over-the-top, and utterly on-target comic masterpiece from the bestselling author of Burr, Lincoln, and the National Book Award-winning United States, with a new introduction by Camille Paglia

“I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess.”

So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. 

Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent (“Has literary decency fallen so low?” asked Time), Myra Breckinridge's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.

“A comic masterpiece.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A quarter of a century later, Myra’s imperishable star still endures.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“A masterpiece of bad taste.” —The Observer (London)

“Falling somewhere between the realms of Henry Adams and all of Monty Python, Gore Vidal has for many years served as America’s own Tiresias—a seer and a scourge, as well as an entertainer of the highest order.” —Jay McInerney

“Truly this is a tale for all tastes, satiric and philosophical, gay and mystical, gossipy and pornographical.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“After many readings, Myra Breckinridge continues to give wicked pleasure, and still seems to have fixed the limit beyond which the most advanced aesthetic neopornography ever can go.” —The New York Review of Books

“With Myra Breckinridge, Vidal knows how to be devastating and at the same time irresistibly comical.” —Mario Praz Vida

“[Myra Breckinridge] speaks to our present condition with a rare nerviness, humor and brio. Reading [it] in 2018 is a reminder that in many ways America’s conversations about sex, power and celebrity—and the resistance to those conversations—have stubbornly persisted for fifty years.” —Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times

“Brutally witty.” —The New York Times