The Zenner Trophy.

Someone slated to teach essay writing in the fall to undergrads at MIT recently confessed to never having read any Gore Vidal.  Wow.

I suspect the bright MIT undergrads will catch on to the charade -- the author himself is more an oral "dictator" than a writer it seems, and sometimes doesn't fully edit what the programs spill back.  I can't help him with the summer homework necessary to teach a broad depth of essay writing, but I can help introduce him to Vidal's work*, as others have done for me...

(Not directly: I just read reviews, all sorts of news, and go to the source material myself for insight...)

Try The Zenner Trophy, for starters.  Not an essay, but one of the short stories found in The City and the Pillar.  (Vidal's father Eugene, was an athlete himself, an early pioneer in flight, who passed on his physical genes to his son.  Being a strong physical guy, it mattered in his approach to life, I think.)

It's an easy read, and perhaps conveys more than you know about the young Vidal's attitude, which consequently led to those well-written, and challenging, essays.  He knew the political class of his time, inside and out.  He was honest enough to share too.  Read it, even if you don't think WASPs of 1950 have anything to teach you today?  You might just surprise yourself, and grow your mind beyond its self-imposed boundaries.

Yep, even struggling black men.
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* (... You're welcome.)