MESSIAH
BY
GORE VIDAL
E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.
NEW YORK 1954
An aging narrator recalls helping to create and later to question a modern messianic movement, tracing how publicity, ritual, and political ambition turn an ordinary individual into a highly photographed, commodified object of worship. The narrative satirizes the manufacturing of belief through media spectacle, probes the ethical ambiguity of those who engineer mass followings, and examines the tension between private memory and public myth. Shifting between intimate reminiscence and broader social commentary, it interrogates truth, spectacle, and the moral compromises that underlie the rise and maintenance of mass movements.
BY
GORE VIDAL
E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.
NEW YORK 1954