Gore Vidal was born to Eugene Luther Vidal and Nina Gore at West Point in New York. Born in 1925, Vidal rarely had any kind words for his nation, often referring to the United States as a decadent empire ruled by a militaristic dictatorship. Gore Vidal was an American author who was best known for his political commentary and television appearances. Paths of Resistance (With: Isabel Allende,Charles McCarry)īuckley vs. The Second American Revolution and Other Essays, 1976-1982 Next on that pile is Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin.The Decline and Fall of the American Empire This was my top unread non-genre fiction book.
Also it shoudl be said that Vidal does not give the women of Burr’s story much voice. I enjoyed this, and I would positively recommend it as an expansion of the Hamilton universe not so much to readers who are not interested in early American politics. But there are some nicely done twists at the end which remind us that Burr, like everyone else, is an unreliable narrator.
The Burr defensive account of the election of 1800 is of course revisionist.
Going back a bit, I was interested by the reflections on the Revolutionary War, particularly the story of the Arnold/Montgomery invasion of Canada and the general critique of Washington’s leadership. For me the most insteresting nuance was Andrew Jackson, the president of the day in 1836, who had come to power as a revolutionary and failed to really deliver much more than patronage for his friends Burr remembers him as a young and fairly mainstream political actor, who only later decided that it suited him to be anti-establishment. I’m sure that Watergate was in Vidal’s mind, and I have seen contemprary reviews complaining that he portrays Washington and Jefferson as less than heroic. When this was published in 1973, it was seen as commentary on Watergate. The book is rather long, but there is a lot of story here, including also young Schuyler’s ultimately doomed relationship with a sex worker.
It’s a nice alternate take on the received version of America’s founding story (which has been reinforced by Hamilton), rather like his novel about Julian the Apostate (who has however had rather better historiography than Aaron Burr). Gore Vidal tells the story of Aaron Burr through a young journalist, Charlie Schuyler (“not one of the Schuylers”), who downloads Burr’s version of his career in the months before his death in 1836. This turned out to be a surprisingly timely read. Yes, I am trying to be a journalist, mentioning all facts. The newly wed couple had departed at dawn in Madame's yellow coach with six horses to visit the Colonel's nephew, Governor Edwards, at Hartford, Connecticut. NwhyteSecond paragraph of third chapter: ‘Too long?’ I had given him a straighforward two-page description of the wedding, scribbled on the ride back to New York.
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