Collect Burr Chronicled By Gore Vidal Visible In Softcover

one of the great minds of our age is a master of historical fiction, This novel brings the earlyth century to life, and provides a sober yet amusing perspective on the famous and the modest alike.


Burr was not an especially nice person, but he had the charm that can ease a meglomaniac's way, Really this novel is worth studying if you're writing yourself, for Vidal's truly unique style and his unparalleled underpainting, This is a very good "historical novel" fiction based on fact about a lessknown figure in American history, Fromto, Aaron Burr was Thomas Jefferson's vicepresident, Burr is one of a series of novels written by Gore Vidal with a background in American history, Unbelievable from start to finish! Aaron Burr, remembered in history primarily for killing Alexander Hamilton has a rich history that spans the revolutionary war all the through the Andrew Jackson presidency.
All of these characters, especially Thomas Jefferson, are brought to light through Burr's perspective, Gore does an incredible job of separating his own politics and how he views these men, as he mentions in the afterward, from how Burr viewed them.
This historical novel not a biography is a fun way to visit the past and is the reason the term "page turner" exists.
Having read biographies of six of the Founding Fathers in the last year, including Ron Chernow's splendid Alexander Hamilton, there are a lot of recurring characters weaving through all their lives, as they all wove through each other's lives.
It was a pretty small society everyone knew each other,

One character who figures significantly throughout the early Republic is Aaron Burr,



The third Vice President, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and was later accused of trying to take Mexico from Spain and create his own empire, tried for treason for allegedly planning to take part of

the United States with him, a rascal and a rake who was the toast of Southerners who hated Hamilton, the toast of ladies throughout Europe, later remarried and then was divorced by a rich widow who was represented by one of Hamilton's sons, he has seemed in all the biographies I've read to be an interesting man.


But he's always described as more or less a villain, Whatever his charming qualities he's often mentioned being genuinely beneficent towards poor ladies, very little else good is said about Aaron Burr, Ron Chernow calls him a murderer, and in describing his duel with Hamilton, goes over all the claims made by partisans on both sides but is clearly more sympathetic to Hamilton's version.
Biographers of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all describe a man who was a political weathercock, devoid of any genuine principals except selfinterest.
He switched between the Republicans and the Federalists whenever it was convenient, all with the ultimate goal of becoming president himself, and when that didn't work out, he tried to raise an army to take over Mexico.


I could not help wondering whether Aaron Burr was being portrayed fairly, After all, to have held so much influence for as long as he did there was an electoral path that could easily have made him president instead of Jefferson, had things worked out just a little bit differently, he must have had friends.
Surely Burr felt justified in his reasons for dueling Hamilton they had once been friends, Did he just decide he wanted to murder a political rival out of spite

There are biographies written of Burr, including some that appear to be sympathetic.
He definitely has his defenders, Yet to get another view of the man, I ended up reading a work of historical fiction, by the late author Gore Vidal, whom I have never read before.


Burr is the first in a series of books Vidal wrote about the American empire, In the author's preface, he comes off as a little pretentious, and seems to think he invented the idea of historical fiction, But this novel was truly a fantastic experience, and Vidal absolutely researched the hell out of his subject, Every scene, from major historical events to minor anecdotes from the lives of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, I recognized from the biographies of those men.


The Aaron Burr that Vidal brings us in this book is a fictional character, yet it's a compelling and believable version of him.
This Aaron Burr is wry, witty, and oh yes, he was always right and all the others, from Washington to Hamilton, were the real scoundrels, who constantly took advantage of Aaron Burr's good and principled nature.


This may not be the truth, and it may not even be how the real Burr would have told his own story.
But let's say it's a version of the truth,

The device Vidal uses to tell Burr's story is the one fictional character he introduces: a young journalist named Charles Schuyler not one of those Schuylers, as he has to tell people, who's hired to do a hit piece on the elderly former senator and vice president.
The election ofis looming, Martin Van Buren is the heir apparent, and the antiVan Buren faction wants to torpedo his election by digging up evidence that longwhispered rumors of Van Buren being Aaron Burr's illegitimate son are true.
This, like all the other details in Vidal's novel, was based on historical fact: it really was a rumor that followed them around.
So young Charles Schuyler ingratiates himself with Aaron Burr, and ends up having his entire life history dictated to him, including the "real" story about everything from the Revolutionary War and Washington's generalship terrible, according to Burr, and again, historians actually agree that Washington was pretty bad as a military strategist to that fatal duel with Hamilton in one of the few clearly fictional embellishments or is it Vidal has Schuyler learn of Hamilton's real reason for challenging Hamilton to a duel, a reason that is plausible but, as far as I can tell, not actually mentioned in any historical records.


Along the way, Burr absolutely trashes every other Founding Father, His description of George Washington "He had the hips, buttocks and bosom of a woman" is of a dullard whose stoic, presidential demeanor was a veneer over his greed and ego.
According to Burr, they'd have captured Canada if Washington had listened to him,

Thomas Jefferson was a sleazy little sneak who considered the Constitution to be just words that meant whatever was convenient for him more or less true, in my readings of biographies of Jefferson and others.
Vidal's Burr gives a very believable version of Jefferson's doubledealing and selling out his own vice president, and later trying to have him convicted of treason over a plan that Jefferson himself supported.
Again, it's a narrative that might not actually be true, but it fits the historical facts,

James Madison was a brilliant but sad little incel until Burr hooked him up with Dolly, Again, a harsh version of the story, but not far from the truth, James Monroe actually hated Washington, all the way back to serving under him during the war, True Monroe's biographers don't say this, but on the other hand, the men did have a break, Monroe was pissed at Washington over a lot of things, and we don't know for certain that Monroe ever actually liked him, so Burr's description of Monroe as constantly sneering at an oblivious Washington is, if not true, not unbelievable.


In Burr, Aaron Burr is marvelously bitchy and cynical, As he takes down America's founding fathers while narrating his story to Charles Schuyler, Schuyler's own ambitions and unfortunate love life forms the only definitely madeup part of the novel though even here, Vidal uses real people, like having Schuyler fall in love with a prostitute named sitelinkHelen Jewett.


I really enjoyed Burr, Gore Vidal wrote an Aaron Burr who is definitely the hero of his own story, and while it may or may not be true to the real Burr, it at least presents a believable version of the man who wasn't just Jefferson's foil and Hamilton's killer.
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