May 29
Burr, Gore Vidal (1973)

My reading so far this year is much more heavily tilted toward new books than usual. In past years I was just as likely to reread a familiar book as read a new one. I'm not sure if that's attributable to my new habit of documenting my reading here, a different pattern of library use, or something else entirely.

I like revisiting a favorite book. I find it relaxing and comforting. I like to read, but sometimes I grow weary of always reading something new -- particularly now that I've fallen into this pattern of reading so many books on contemporary politics. (I need to do something about that....)

A couple months ago, at the Seattle Arboretum's annual book sale -- why the Arboretum has an annual book sale, I don't know, but it was a lot like a library surplus sale -- I picked up a cheap paperback copy of Washington D.C., the only historical novel by Gore Vidal I haven't read. Vidal's historical novels set in America are separate stories loosely connected by a familial continuity of the fictional protagonists. (Lincoln is a partial exception, being much less connected than the others.) Vidal wrote the books in almost chronological order. Lincoln again is slightly out of pattern, but the larger exception is Washington D.C. which has the most recent setting (the 1940s, I think) but was written first.

Glancing at the first few pages of Washington D.C., I didn't find it very inviting, so I decided to lead up to it by reading all the others in order, starting with Burr.

Burr is marvelous, by far the best of the lot, in my opinion. If I ever get around to compiling my long-contemplated list of history books to recommend to the general reader who doesn't usually read history, it's the only novel that might have a chance at the top ten. That's because the characters are such familiar ones -- Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton. I don't think the typical reader is going to gain much from a wry second look at, say, William McKinley, because the typical reader, even an educated one, probably doesn't have much of a first opinion about McKinley that needs to be challenged.

The Founding Fathers, on the other hand, are so wrapped in myth that it's good to take a second look at them. To that end, Vidal makes use of Aaron Burr, the third vice-president of the United States. This singular individual was among the inner circle who created our nation-state, but owing to having been politically disgraced later in his career he became the black sheep of the Founding Family, his portrait omitted from history books and money. (I think he did appear on a couple of postage stamps, but not nearly as often as the others.) Vidal portrays him as a likable rogue who in his old age observes with bemused cynicism how the events of his youth are misrepresented.

Aaron Burr lived to be 80 years old, which makes possible the structure of Vidal's novel. The immediate setting is the 1830s. Andrew Jackson is in his second term and there is much political maneuvering to determine whether he will be succeeded by Vice President Van Buren or by someone else. Because old Burr is a political liability, all of the leading politicians of the day -- or at least their partisans -- are trying to hide their own connections to Burr while uncovering that of their opponents. At the center of this political intrigue is the narrator, a young journalist to whom Burr is dictating his memoirs so that he might write a biography. By this ingenious device, Vidal is able to cover two eras in history, hopping back and forth between the frame story and episodes from earlier times as Burr recollects them. (The frame story, too, is presented as a series of diary entries, leading me to reflect that if it were a blog, the reader would be expected to experience it in backward order.)

Not covered is the period from about 1808 (when Burr left America for Europe) to 1832, one of the two gaps in American history where I wish Vidal would squeeze in yet another novel, perhaps centered around the four-candidate election of 1824, in which Jackson had the most votes but lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams, only to come back and defeat him in 1828. The other gap, which I'd like even more to see filled, is between Burr and Lincoln, the era of Polk, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun.

I didn't take notes for this one, since I wasn't really intending to "review" it properly, and anyway nothing is making a first impression on me (though the discussion of the treason trial was freshly interesting, with all the current talk about what constitutes aiding and abetting the nation's enemies). I did, however, mark one paragraph I particularly enjoyed, which is a fine example of the character of the book:

Hamilton delivered this oft-quoted metaphor in the New York debate over ratification of the U.S. Constitution. It's on the Web somewhere. Do a search and it will turn up.

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