The Golden Age: An American Chronicle Novel (Paperback)

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Since 1967, when he published Washington, D.C., Gore Vidal has been assembling an artful, acidic history of the United States. The Golden Age represents the seventh and final installment of this national epic, covering the years from 1939 to 1954 (with a valedictory fast-forward, in its final pages, to the end of the millennium). As Vidal did in the earlier books, the author sticks pretty rigorously to the facts. Real-life figures--in this case, the likes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman and that ardent cold warrior Dean Acheson--do what they are recorded to have done. The author also ushers on a cast of invented characters, who are free to paddle in the historical backwash and comment upon their so-called contemporaries. It's here, of course, that fact and fiction begin to blur. But Vidal himself has often cited Tolstoy's famous jab--"History would be an excellent thing if it only were true"--and his reconstruction of FDR's wartime machinations, and the brief interval of Pax Americana, seem persuasively, even alarmingly plausible.

There's one key difference between this book and its predecessors, however. Vidal was alive and kicking in 1939, and thanks to his role as Senator Thomas Pryor Gore's grandson (and occasional seeing-eye dog), he met or at least observed many of The Golden Age's dramatis personae. This fact turns out to have a double edge. On one hand, it gives his portraits of the high and mighty an extra ounce of verisimilitude. Here (the invented) Caroline Sanford observes her old friend FDR at an informal White House mixer:

She felt for an instant that she should curtsey in the awesome presence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a figure who towered even when seated in his wheelchair. It was the head and neck that did the trick, she decided, with a professional actor's eye. The neck was especially thick while the famous head seemed half again larger than average, its thinning gray hair combed severely back from a high rounded forehead.

Like all of Vidal's politicians, FDR is a more or less gifted illusionist, and The Golden Age is one more chapter in the convergence of theater and politics, of Hollywood and Washington, D.C. But the very vividness of these historical actors (in every sense of the phrase) makes the author's invented cast seem a little pale and lifeless. No matter. Even in its occasional longueurs, Vidal's concluding volume is packed with ironic insight and world-class gossip, much of it undoubtedly true. And in the surprisingly metafictional finale, he signs off with a fine display of Heraclitean fireworks, not to mention an encore appearance from his rakish progenitor Aaron Burr--which makes you wonder exactly who created whom. --James Marcus

From Publishers Weekly

The newest entry in Vidal's "narratives of empire" series (which includes Burr, Lincoln and 1876) is a densely plotted, hugely ambitious novel that manages to impress and infuriate in equal measure. A series of historical essays masquerading as a historical novel, it endeavors to present Vidal's philosophy regarding our nation's ascent to global-empire status, from 1939 into the 1950s. The protagonists are Peter Sanford, a prescient young intellectual from a well-to-do family, who helps to found the American Idea, a politically radical journal; his aunt, Caroline Sanford, a former film star who has returned to her D.C. newspaper publishing roots; and Timothy X. Farrell, Caroline's half-brother and an acclaimed documentary filmmaker on the rise in Hollywood. The narrative carries its myriad charactersAincluding FDR, William Randolph Hearst, Tennessee Williams and Vidal himselfAthrough the political machinations that culminate in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the economic boom engendered by WWII, even the dark years of McCarthyism and the Korean War. However, it is in the misadventures of the cynical yet idealistic Peter Sanford that Vidal advances his powerful (if rather familiar) central thesis. Events include Sanford's brush with politically motivated murder at the 1940 Republican Convention, and a bitter clash with golden-boy politico and bogus war hero Clay Overbury years later. In Vidal's view, the U.S. has been manipulated by a dangerously insular governing class for most of the past century, a self-serving and inbred elite determined to use incessant war (be it against drugs, terrorists or other nations) to keep the real decision-making power out of the hands of the masses. Vidal's historical savvy and insider's understanding of the psychodynamics of Washington's power players is constantly in evidence; a feel for the humanity of his characters is not. His protagonists are an arrogant, bloodless lot, and his narrative meanders. Accordingly, what could have been the crowning achievement of Vidal's long career feels incomplete, a philosophical treatise in desperate need of a more human literary framework to stabilize it. Major ad promo; author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385500750
• ISBN-13: 978-0385500753
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,200,919 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HURRAH FOR VIDAL'S LAST HURRAH, November 10, 2000

By	Edward Garea "Edward Garea" (Branchville, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is an old saying that when it's time to go out, go out with a bang. This is exactly what Gore Vidal does in this, the last novel in his "American Chronicles" series. An updating and rewriting of his earlier novel, "Washington, D.C.," "The Golden Age" shifts its focus to the nation as a whole and the chain of events that involved us in World War 2 and the Cold War. Gossipy and inclusive rather than pedantic and exclusive (as many historical novels tend to be), Vidal gives the reader the view of an insider, partially because he had grown up on the fringes of that inside. Among the many historical character the reader meets in the pages of the novel is none other than Gore Vidal himself. This should be no surprise as Vidal is one of the most autobiographical of American authors, his memoir "Palimpsest" reading almost like a novel. Non-Vidal fans may not like the Calvino-esque ending, but those among us who love Vidal's writings will feel more than a touch of sadness at the end. More entertaining than "Empire" or "Hollywood," "The Golden Age" belongs on the shelf of all serious readers.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars American History--Gore Style, November 21, 2000

By A Customer

In his historical novels, Gore Vidal brings the solemn marble statues of American history to brilliant life by letting them talk. And talk. His books are long, sometimes lacivious conversations, and his characters distinguish themselves -- sometimes extinguishing themselves to the reader-- through their own words.

For instance, in The Golden Age, a large helping of World War II era spilled beans, a young man at a New York party responds to the idea that America needs a new civilization to go with its new global ascendancy by saying, ''Do we really want a civilization?... We've done awfully well as the hayseeds of the Western world. Why spoil it?... No, we've got to stay dumb.''

Yes, that signature cynicism is uttered by the author himself, making a brief cameo. So if you won't find gore, you will find Gore in this 100 percent action free wartime novel, the seventh and last in the linked sequence of American history novels that begins chronologically with ''Burr'' (although Vidal wrote what's now volume 6, ''Washington, D.C.,'' way back in 1967) and adds up to a talkative masterpiece.

Also in captivity, among a mob of mid century American potentates, are Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, Cary Grant, and Tennessee Williams.

As usual, the conversation's good. Vidal's animated historical figures aren't farcically pompous, but they are, like Vidal himself, trenchant, sporadically wise, and routinely malicious. He delivers verbal stilettos to just about every eminent back that appears.

The more ominous conversations are about America's backing into the war and its lurching role in the postwar world. If you've been following the story through previous novels like ''Empire'' and ''Hollywood,'' you know the anti imperialist gospel according to Gore.

Here, Vidal's FDR sees involvement in the Nazi launched European war as a winnable shot at an American administered worldwide New Deal, and -- craftily and charmingly -- he goes for it mainly (in what has been the novel's most controversial assertion) by provoking the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. The global war produces, in Vidal's version, a new America that loses its republican innocence and becomes a Cold War garrison state.

In other words, we should have stayed dumb, or played dumb. One of Vidal's mostly marginal fictional characters, wandering in from the earlier novels, launches a magazine and declares, ''I intend to create... America's Golden Age.'' For Vidal, it was that brief parenthesis of national elation, between war and Cold War, that was a Golden Age, followed by fool's gold -- we're now stuck in a congested ''technological Calcutta'' of a planet.

Wherever you shelve its populist isolationist politics, ''The Golden Age'' works as a mordant evocation of historical personalities and turning points, and above all, as monumental past tense gossip.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VINTAGE VIDAL: EXPOSITORY AND ENTERTAINING, September 23, 2000

By	Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The Golden Age (Audio Cassette)

Following on the heels of "Burr," Lincoln," "Empire," and "Washington, D.C.," among others, we now have another fictional take on American history from one whom some have dubbed the penultimate curmudgeon. Whether that sobriquet is true or not, one thing is for sure - he is always entertaining and enlightening. He does make us think!

However, this audiobook is even more than entertaining and enlightening - it's a terrific listen as rendered by Broadway actress Kathryn Walker. Her inflections are perfect, and she has those Gore-isms down pat. She not only reads with skill but also with understanding.

A particularly delicious reading occurs in the section in which Vidal places himself in his own saga. All in all, a topnotch tale offered by an A-one performer.