Burr
Gore Vidal, 1973
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375708732
Summary
Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.
Burr is a portrait of perhaps the most complex and misunderstood of the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he retains much of his political influence if not the respect of all.
And he is determined to tell his own story. As his amanuensis, he chooses Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, a young New York City journalist, and together they explore both Burr's past and the continuing political intrigues of the still young United States. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Also named—Edgar Box (mystery writer)
• Birth—October 03, 1925
• Where—West Point, New York, USA
• Education—Phillips Exeter Academy (Prep school)
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award, 1982; National
Book Award, 1993
• Currently—lives in Ravello, Italy; Los Angeles, California
As a prominent post-WWII novelist, socialite and public figure, Gore Vidal has lived a life of incredible variety. Throughout his career, he has rubbed shoulders and crossed swords with many of the foremost cultural and political figures of our century: from Jack Kennedy to Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote to William F. Buckley.
From his early arrival on the literary scene, Vidal's fascinations with politics, power and public figures have informed his writing. He takes his first name from his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, a populist Senator from Oklahoma for whom neither blindness nor feuds with FDR could prevent a long, distinguished career (Incidentally, T.P. Gore belonged to the same political dynasty into which Al Gore was born).
Vidal's best-received historical fictions, like Julian, Burr, and Lincoln, re-imagine the personal and political lives of powerful figures in history. In his essays, he frequently chooses political subjects, as he did with his damaging assessment of Robert Kennedy-for-President in an Esquire article in 1963.
At the same time, Vidal's assets as a writer have made him a dangerous public figure in his own right. His sharp wit has discomposed the unrufflable (William F. Buckley) and the frequently ruffled (Norman Mailer) alike, and did so terrify his congressional campaign opponent J. Ernest Wharton that the latter refused to engage Vidal in debate. Even since he's left his aspirations as a politician behind, Vidal's attraction to controversial political issues continues in his provocative essays and public appearances. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[W]hat a tour de force...! How close Mr. Vidal has managed to stick to the actual historical record.... [y]et for all this documentary authenticity, how alive and immediate everything seems! What a clever piece of machinery is Mr. Vidal's complicated plot! By setting the present- tense of his story in the 1830's and having Aaron Burr recall in his lively old age his memories of the Revolutionary War, the early history of the Republic, and his famous contests with Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson (as if these mythic events had happened only yesterday)—what a telescoping of the legendary past Mr. Vidal achieves, and what leverage it gives him to tear that past to tatters.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
A tragedy, a comedy, a vibrant, leg-kicking life. . . . All of this and much, much more is told in a highly engaging book that teems with bon mots, aphorisms and ironic comments on the political process. . . . Enlightening, fresh and fun.
Boston Globe
A novel of Stendhalian proportions.... It is probably impossible to be an American and not be fascinated and impressed by Vidal's telescoping of our early history.... Always absorbing.
The New Yorker
The novel is masterfully constructed, right down to a shocking but logical surprise on the last page. ... The familiar figures and stock scenes when we encounter them here are fresh, new, and utterly absorbing. Vidal has made a century and a half seem but a heartbeat from today.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Burr:
1. His infamous duel with Hamilton—and rumors of dubious political activities in later years—sullied Burr's reputation among Americans for 200 years. Has reading Vidal's book changed your views of Burr? How does Vidal portray Burr— what character traits does Burr exhibit? Vidal uses Burr as his point of view—and a narrator usually gains readers' sympathy. Do you find Burr sympathetic? Why or why not? Do you think Vidal wants us to find him sympathetic?
2. What do you think of Burr's descriptions of America's most exalted heroes: Washington, Jefferson, and of course Hamilton. Are his snipes, quips, observations trustworthy, to be believed, taken at face value? Or not.
3. Some of the book's characters are fictional, in particular Charles Schuyler. Do you find him a fully-developed, three-dimensional character? Is he more fleshed-out than Washington and some of the other historical figures? What purpose might Vidal had in doing so?
4. Does Vidal make the era's history come alive for you, especially the political intrigue and players? Did you learn something about the young republic's beginnings—a clearer understanding, perhaps, of the Federalists and their role in the early republic? Was there anything that surprised you about America's early development?
5. Some have compared the shenanigans going on in Burr to the vitriol and deception in Washington during the Watergate scandal—which was precisely when Burr was published. For those familiar with the era (i.e., OLD enough to remember), do you see any parallels? Are there parallels in Burr with the present national political climate?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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