In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.

Vidal is criticizing an American cultural marketplace in which visibility and self-promotion often count more than quiet excellence. “The loud, the solemn, the hustler” suggests that public performance—confidence, moral posturing, relentless networking—wins attention and rewards. The second sentence turns the critique into advice: if acclaim depends partly on assertion, the writer who refuses to advertise their own greatness may be overlooked. The remark also carries Vidal’s characteristic irony: he both mocks the need for self-assertion and acknowledges it as a practical tactic in a competitive, media-driven literary culture.