Myron - Gore Vidal

 Myron is not as good as Myra Breckinridge for two reasons.   Firstly, it's more about Myra and her attempts from Myron, and secondly, the second joke is rarely better than the first, especially when your first sally is as good as Myra Breckinridge.   That said, Vidal upends expectations.  We assume Myron is a prequel but it is actually a sequel.   The original pre-Myra Myron was a cinema geek, an intellectual, whereas this Myron, following Myra's car crash and surgery is a dull-as-ditchwater middleclass Californian in the Chinese Food business.   Time, of course, has moved on and we find ourselves in 1973 at the height of the Watergate scandal.   Myron, meanwhile, finds himself (with a stroke of Swiftian brio) stuck on the set of the MGM movie Siren of Babylon in the summer of 1948.   Here, it is always the summer of 1948.  When the movie finishes shooting, they simply start shooting again.  Out-of-towners like Myron, who have somehow time-slipped here, stay at the Thalberg Hotel, largely unnoticed by the locals.   When they try and speak of their situation, it comes out as meaningless gibberish.

In these circumstances Myra, deeply and firmly supressed by Myron, starts to re-emerge.  Being herself a made-up character she registers better with the locals.   Among the out-of-towners at the Thalberg is Maude, a gay hairdressers with a sideline in drag, who helps Myra regain her looks.   Myra makes it her mission to save MGM, to make transgender eunuchs ubiquitous and thus prevent overpopulation and the various geopolitical crises which she knows will make the western world the ghastly place it is in 1973.

Chaos and further slippages ensue.   It is all great fun but cannot  quite equal the gobsmacking transgression that was Breckinridge. 

Myra Breckinridge - Gore Vidal

 Myra, the young and extremely nubile widow of the late Myron Breckinridge, pitches up in Hollywood, a girl with a plan.  Her plan is to claim her widow's mite - a half share in Buck Loner's acting academy.  Uncle Buck was the brother of Myron's equally deceased mother.  Gertrude and Buck inherited a then worthless orange grove from their father.  When his career in cowboy movies began to tail off, Buck decided to build an academy for Hollywood hopefuls.  Gertrude let him do so, without ever relinquishing her entitlement to half of the land.

While Buck does everything in his power to keep hold of his money, Myra starts teaching at the academy.  She is popular with the students and soon singles out a pair of likely stars, the mean and moody Rudy Godowski and the sweet as apple pie singer Mary Ann Pringle.  The trouble is, they are a couple.  Myra, "whom no man will ever possess", is only interested in Mary Ann - which means Rudy must be broken, dispatched, and otherwise got rid of.

In the end Rudy is gifted to Hollywood super agent Letitia Van Allen, who has an unquenchable taste for masochistic sex.  She turns Rudy into a star.  Myra and Letitia between them turn him into a promiscuous homosexual.

Meanwhile Buck Loner's legal team of Flagler and Flagler come up earn their fee.  Not only is there no trace of a marriage between Myra and Myron, but there is no evidence Myron is even dead.  There is a reason for that and, in the novel's most famous scene, Myra shows them.   Buck instantly hands over the cheque.  It looks like everything will turn out hunky dory, until----

Myra Breckinridge is an American classic and a great one, in its way every bit as reflective of its period (late Sixites) as The Great Gatsby was of its.  Vidal was a genius who could have his off-days (this wasn't one) but who was never ever dull.  My edition of Myra comes as a double bill with Myron.  I can't wait.