Rating: 
Summary: Less-than-first-rate Vidal
Review: Gore Vidal is a national treasure and one of my favorite authors, but this is the most disappointing of his novels that I have read. The first hundred pages or so consist of Washington cocktail-party chatter circa 1940, and it doesn't get much better as it goes along. The characters seem oddly detached from the epochal events unfolding around them, and as a result the reader cares little about them. There is much to be said about the machinations of the ruling powers during the period covered in this book; perhaps a work of fiction, although based on fact, is not the proper forum to explore them, as master essayist Vidal must himself have known before finishing this dramatically unsatisfying work. Perhaps he needed the advance to pay the mortgage on his Italian villa? Authors have to eat, too.
Rating: 
Summary: I love Vidal, but I have to somewhat agree...
Review: Gore Vidal is perhaps the most enlightened writer of 'inside' American politics, ever. His works "Burr", "1876", Lincoln", and "Empire" are sweeping in their scope and devastating in their laying-waste to 'average' American concepts of the myths which make up our "history" as a country. All written with great wit and insight...all 5-star are all of those mentioned. "Hollywood", the penultimate novel in the series, suffered only a little from, I feel, an inferior political plot-line. "The Golden Age" can not be said to suffer that way; in fact, I think Vidal's notions of true American history are completely 'on the mark' in this novel. Unfortunately, it is his writing style that seems to come down a notch here. Perhaps like a family too long followed, the ideas seem to be losing steam along with it...or maybe just the way they're presented. That is very sad, since the points in this last (?) one are so very important to the whole series. Lest anyone think that Vidal has lost the touch, a quick read of the first essay in the recently released "Cheny-Bush Junta..." pamphlet shows that he is still in fine form as a writer. I truly hope Vidal will take one more crack...at a post 1960 historical fiction perhaps. Sometimes brilliance skips a generation...but Gore Vidal is no less brilliant, as his essays continue to show.
Rating: 
Summary: To Be Golden, An Age Must Have Its Gore
Review: Gore Vidal's "The Golden Age" is a magnificent book by our greatest living author and man of letters. As the capstone on his historical novelization of the rise and decline of the American Empire, it is a fitting end to a series which enlightens and entertains. For Vidal strips away the myth of America that neo-conservatism seeks at virtually all cost to perpetuate, be it the myth of a noble "Founding," the myth of a saintly and simple Abraham Lincoln, the myth of a noble empire bent on enlightening the world out of sheer altruism, the myth that we fought World War II because we were attacked without provocation, or the myth that our actions at the beginning of the Cold War were entirely in reaction to those of the Soviet Union. This is Vidal's great theme. Over the course of his work, the main line of character development lies, not so much in Vidal's people, as in the country and then the nation itself. Vidal grew up surrounded by the men who became the ghosts that haunt our history; which is why, I suppose, that the end of this book is so fitting and so beautiful a finale to what has become a monumental work.
Rating:
Summary: To Be Golden, An Age Must Have Its Gore
Review: Gore Vidal's "The Golden Age" is a magnificent book by our greatest living author and man of letters. As the capstone on his historical novelization of the rise and decline of the American Empire, it is a fitting end to a series which enlightens and entertains. For Vidal strips away the myth of America that neo-conservatism seeks at virtually all cost to perpetuate, be it the myth of a noble "Founding," the myth of a saintly and simple Abraham Lincoln, the myth of a noble empire bent on enlightening the world out of sheer altruism, the myth that we fought World War II because we were attacked without provocation, or the myth that our actions at the beginning of the Cold War were entirely in reaction to those of the Soviet Union. This is Vidal's great theme. Over the course of his work, the main line of character development lies, not so much in Vidal's people, as in the country and then the nation itself. Vidal grew up surrounded by the men who became the ghosts that haunt our history; which is why, I suppose, that the end of this book is so fitting and so beautiful a finale to what has become a monumental work.
Rating:
Summary: Gore Vidal's homecoming
Review: Having been a fan of Gore Vidal for 30 years, it's sad to report that gossip has finally overtaken literary ambition. I confess: Vidal is a literary hero of mine, along with Scott Fitzgerald and Elmore Leonard, so I take no pleasure in this at all. But unfortunately, Gore has finally subsumed literary integrity to personal memoir. Burr and 1876 remain his best novels (with Julian and Messiah not far behind) because the plot drives the books along even as the gossip intrigues and entertains you. In The Golden Age, as in Hollywood and Lincoln, the stories of the rich and famous that we don't (or do) want to hear begin to take centre stage. Gore has always had his finger on the pulse of American politics - as a Brit, my understanding of the American psyche, for better or worse, has been formed by his writing (and latterly by Michael Moore, from a different sphere, and your satirical crime writers like Carl Hiassen and Laurence Shames) - and it's almost as if the later books have been attempts to recapitulate stuff that he's been writing for the last forty years or so. The sad fact is, and what makes him so valuable, is that I have the sense that - as someone said - those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it, and Gore's notion that the rise and fall of the Roman empire is recapitulated in American history is something that needs to be repeated ad nauseam for a young audience who can't find their [butt] without a roadmap. I'm sorry this is a confused review. I love Gore Vidal and would have several of his essays and novels engraved on my eyeballs as I venture across the river Styx. But latterly (except for in Palimpsest) the need to publish seems to have outweighed the need to consider what was being published, and in what form. So for me Gore remains one of the foundation writers of the last forty years - but if you're going to read anything (especially in these Bush/Gore days) read 1876 - it was all foretold. (And incidentally, if you're worried about the rise of fundamentalism etc., read Messiah. What a treat you have in store.)
Rating:
Summary: An Infuriating, but entertaining book
Review: I must confess I enjoyed this book. It has some marvelous moments about the dearly departed. Aside from Franklin and Eleanor (who at one point refers to her husband as a "fat ass") there is William Randolph Hearst and a whole hoard of Hollywood types. The Sanfords Kate and Blaise are back with their families and hangers on as well. This is a much better book than Washington DC which was meant to be the conclusion of Vidal's series. I would have thought that Vidal might have "pulled a Henry James" and revised Washington DC so that it is the kind of book that it might have been had not so many of the people mentioned in it required "the names to have been changed to protect the guilty." While there is a great deal of good in this book, I found conspiracy theories tiresome. The evils of Harry Truman (who also gets a walk on here) are aired (he is the "mad haberdasser" There is also FDR's ability, all by himself to spin a web so that the "hapless" (not the term I would expect most veterans of WWII would describe them) Japanese will blunder into war with the US and thereby enable us to have rich spoils in Asia. I think ultimately these rants, while sometimes entertaining will do Vidal's reputation little good.
Rating: 
Summary: more an argument, less a novel
Review: I must confess that I feel ambivalent about this book. I greatly admire the other volumes of the series, not only for their value as iconoclastic evocations of American history, but as novels in themselves with vibrant and fascinating characters. Vidal is, simply put, one of America's greatest living artists. His voice is unique and unmistakable. In other volumes, his personal views are hidden and cryptic, which is great fun as the reader is kept guessing. Alas, in this one, I found his views to be baldly plain and that the characters were used as vehicles to serve these ideas. This terribly weakens its value as a work of art. Instead, it often reads like one of his essays.
In my reading, Vidal is arguing that FDR saw WWII as the only way to stay in power, a life-saving decision as there was nothing else of intimate value in his life. To do so, he took a giant step in creating the "national security state," which upon his death in office an unwitting Truman completed. Now in my view, this is a simplistic reading of a bewilderingly complex period, a watershed if you will.
Nonetheless, Vidal succeeded in getting me to question my assumptions, and that I think is of the greatest value and the unique contribution that an historical novel can relate. That saved the reading experience for me, which was more wooden than Vidal's previous accomplishments. Perhaps it is Vidal's talent that got him to create this as a crucial moment in American foreign policy, in which our involvement in such places as Irak are under scrutiny and our ideals are distrusted by the very allies that are supposed to benefit from them. It is an age of the most profound disillusionment and Vidal is providing the art that reflects this period.
Finally, the swansong machinations of the Sanfords are wonderful to follow. Also, the fate of Clay - the JFK-like villain of "Washington, DC" - is also advanced. It is a fitting conclusion to one of the great cycles of novels of this age. There are, of course, many hilarious moments in which the manners of the ruling class are dissected and exposed for questioning. In his hands, their vanities are so human, and this is a good thing.
Warmly - and this time cerebrally - recommended.
Rating:
Summary: What am I missing?
Review: Some of Gore Vidal's work has entertained me a lot (Julian), but this book wasn't one of them. Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to ride with it. The guy is obviously a great writer, but I found 'Golden Age' to be just a string of gossipy dialogue sprinkled with some major historical facts, not enough of a plot to keep me hooked. If you like the kind of chatty Hollywood-style writing, you'll like it. If you like something more narrative, you probably won't.
Rating: 
Summary: Skip it -- Vidal is out of steam
Review: Some of the entries in Vidal's history series are genuine novels -- LINCOLN, BURR. The others are nimble confections, with 1876 and EMPIRE perhaps the most engaging. But this one is just a dull thud. In all of these books Vidal has inserted a fictional character as a stand-in for himself, with a detached, eternally ironic perspective on surrounding events. The problem in this one is that he has no fewer than three such figures colliding in the same book -- Caroline Sanford, best fleshed out in HOLLYWOOD, and now her nephew Peter and filmmaker Tim Farrell. And then on top of this Vidal has HIMSELF walk on here and there in the same mode. The result becomes less a novel than Vidal in assorted guises just walking us through the 40s and 50s spouting his usual observations to the tune of America being run by an elitist conspiracy with no regard for its inhabitants. But first of all, Vidal's position here is, while having a grain of truth and then some, overblown and facile. Whether FDR goaded the Japanese into attack is a thorny and subtle issue, hardly the closed case Vidal makes it out to be. And too often in this book, Vidal has real-life figures coming right out and admitting to the conspiratorial notions he suspects, in ways that one cannot help questioning the veracity of. In LINCOLN, one sensed that the significant things figures were saying had historical backing. But did FDR's Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins really sit in bed openly crowing that he and FDR were seeking to render America the king of the world despite what the public wanted? This is not historical fiction -- it's Vidal recruiting historical figures as paper dolls parroting his political beliefs. And that is not exactly large work. Nor is it a novel. Scene after scene consists of parties or gatherings where people stand around having witty but guarded thrust-parry conversations about the issues of the day, no one ever quite giving away their hand. This was cute in EMPIRE and HOLLYWOOD, because it passed as a depiction of a manner of socializing in vogue at the time, or at least that we THINK was in vogue because authors like Henry James wrote that way. But in THE GOLDEN AGE, this device is overused and becomes tiresome -- nothing is HAPPENING at these soirees, and since no one ever actually says much of anything, by the seventh or eighth such episode one starts to lose interest, especially since Vidal has almost all actual happenings recounted briefly and after the fact. This includes bombings, romantic affairs, marriages, deaths, etc. This is a narrative? And of course there is also the problem that this book overlaps in time with the period covered by WASHINGTON, DC, so if you have followed the series then we have been here before -- again and again we are reminded of events regarding Clay Overbury and wife Enid, etc. which we already experienced in the other novel on this very era. Which only reinforces the sense that Vidal just wanted to sound off on his favorite issues, this time inserting himself into the narrative. At the end, he goes as far as to switch to first-person narration and have himself interviewed in tandem with the closest thing to a precise Vidal stand-in in the book, the interviewer being an Aaron Burr descendant and stand-in, and the theme being the mythic quality of historiography. Nice, but why not base a book on this, something fresh and original? It would make the loving descriptions of Vidal's Italian residence make more sense, dovetail with his recent PALIMPSEST, and be much more worth reading. But instead we get a formulaic trudge where characters have elliptical conversations about issues of the day, their utterances constantly interrupted with brief observations of how they eat or, as they age, creeping indications of bodily breakdown (this is a Vidal tic, vastly overused here). Overall this is an unengaging lecture disguised as a novel. It's fitting that the book's physical design departs from the one used for all the previous entries in the series, as I will consider the run to have ended with HOLLYWOOD. This one is, rather like Lucille Ball's brief final sitcom in the 1980s, a separate and unfortunate footnote.
Rating:
Summary: HURRAH FOR VIDAL'S LAST HURRAH
Review: 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.
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