Burr (Narratives of a Golden Age) [Paperback]

Gore Vidal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 1994 | Series: Narratives of a Golden Age

In 1804, Colonel Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Three years later, on the order of President Thomas Jefferson, he was tried for treason: for plotting to dismember the United States. Gore Vidal, romping iconoclastically through American history, debunks, in this historical novel of Burr's life, the common and casually held notion of the man as a scoundrel and an adventurer. Instead he appears as one of the 'host of choice spirits' forced to live among coarse, materialistic, hypocritical people ? among them Jefferson and Hamilton. Here, the latter appears as a power-hungry 'parvenu' from the West Indies and the former as a semi-literate slave-owning tyrant. American politics, suggests Vidal, had a penchant for the vulgar. Even then. Veering backwards to the revolution and the early days of the republic, stopping at dinner-parties on the way, and reaching forward to the future, BURR is a novel about treason, both the particular and in general. For what, asks Vidal, really belongs to whom? What properly belongs to the Constitution, to the nation, to the family ?even to novelists and historians?

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Fascinating reading ... the story is as many-sided as the American continent itself' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Intensely readable; artfully constructed; often touching; sometimes very funny ... written with great skill, wit and elegance' OBSERVER 'Magnificent' Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From the Inside Flap

"An extraordinarily intelligent and entertaining novel!"
NEWSWEEK
Brilliantly realized, enormously readable, Gore Vidal's #1 best seller paints a fascinating portrait of Aaron Burr, who lived out his long life partly as a suspected traitor and partly as one of the most heroic and colorful of the founding fathers.
A fictional memoir based on actual facts, BURR describes the early struggles and endless intrigues of the United States. Vidal writes with so much drama and vigor that history comes alive, and the concerns of a new nation read like today's headlines. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Abacus Books (April 21, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0349105316
• ISBN-13: 978-0349105314
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,003,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Entertaining, and Informative, January 11, 2003

By 

J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burr: A Novel (Paperback)

Burr was my first introduction to Gore Vidal's panoramic vision of American history, and I have to admit that the first time I picked up the book I drifted off and put it down, disappointed by the early focus on elderly Aaron Burr's marriage to a wealthy widow. I wanted an inside account (albeit fictionalized) of the revolutionary years, intimate portraits of men like Jefferson, Washington, Arnold and Hamilton, as well as accounts of the famous duel and Burr's subsuquent political travails and treason trial.

Alas, I should have given the book a little more time. When it picks up and the mythical autobiographical journal of Burr begins, this novel becomes entertainment of the highest order. Burr, through Vidal, writes a wickedly amusing first-hand account of many of the seminal points in our nation's young history, from the winter at Valley Forge to Benedict Arnold's early success as a general. In telling his story, Burr never passes up an opportunity to point out George Washington's ineptitude as a field general or his plumpness, Jefferson's lack of military duty and his resemblance to the mulatto children living at Monticello, Ethan Allen's lack of popularity with his superiors, etc. Nobody is spared, nothing is sacred in a Gore Vidal novel.

As for the historical accuracy, Vidal points out in an afterword that with a couple of very minor anachronisms (which he details), every character in the book acts as he or she did in real life - their speech and writings are borrowed from actual correspondence, and the historical events depicted are painstakingly researched (Vidal took 10 years to write the book). Even narrator Charlie Schuyler's girlfriend, the prostitute Helen Jewitt, is based upon a real life character. So while some graduate students might object to a phrase or two, and perhaps some Jeffersonians will object to the two-faced opportunist Jefferson portrayed here, for most of us with a casual interest in history the book educates as it entertains.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History for Pleasure, February 2, 2000

By 

michael a. willhoite - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burr (Mass Market Paperback)

For years I've enjoyed Gore Vidal's essays. Nobody alive shows more mastery over this most vital of literary forms. Although I have read an occasional Vidal novel I've tended to give his fiction short shrift. After reading Burr, it's clear I have some catching up to do. I read Lincoln independently, but now that I've devoured Burr with mounting excitement, I've decided to read his entire historical cycle in sequence.

I don't quite see how Vidal is going to top Burr, for in his choice of protagonist he found a worthy successor to Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost. Before reading this novel, I only knew that Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and that he served as Jefferson's Vice President. But set firmly in his time, and seen through the eyes of Charley Schuyler, Burr acquires a wonderful depth. By the time this novel was drawing to a close, I was reading it as slowly as I dared, reluctant to give up its pleasures. In my lust for fiction, I must say this doesn't happen very often.

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars gore the great, May 6, 2000

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burr: A Novel (Paperback)

I ignored Gore Vidal for most of my life. He was always way too media for my tastes. Especially after that encounter with Mailer on the Cavett show those many years ago. I had a friend who was in the movie version of Myra Breckenridge, so I saw that film in a Manhatten cinema and wished I hadn't. It just confirmed my prejudices towards Vidal. What I discovered after reading this book was that I'd been doing myself a disservice. Gore Vidal is the wittiest, and thankfully not the most lugubriously erudite, historian we have. Burr and Schuyler come across as three-dimensional characters, much more so than Washington or Jefferson ever have. Yes, this is biased, not to mention jaundiced, history. We must remind ourselves that it is an historical novel, not purporting to keep strictly to the facts. Washington comes across as a militarily incompetent, but poticially shrewd egomaniac. Jefferson is not treated too reverentially either. Burr, whom we know from American History classes only because he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, comes across as a witty and urbane statesman who perhaps didn't display the greatest amount of common sense in that murky New Orleans business. This novel opened my eyes about Vidal and I promptly went on a Vidal tear, reading five of his other books. I'd stick to the American History novels (particularly Lincoln), however. I found Julian to be a lot more contrived than his other works (and I love Byzantine/medieval history). If you want a good picture of Byzantium, stick to Procopius.