Burr : A Novel (The American Chronicle Series)

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining History
Review: Burr is an excellent story chronicle of the birth of our country from an alternative perspective. Most literature covering this era favors the characters of Jefferson, Washington, Adams etc...but Gore Vidal paints the picture with attention to the flaws of our 'Founding Fathers.'

Not only does Vidal enlighten the reader by presenting mostly factual information pertaining to the early part of the nineteenth century, but he also allows the reader to identify with the characters by highlighting personality traits that are still recognizable today.

Even though it was centuries ago, I feel like Vidal, on a certain level, brought Aaron Burr into the present.

I am a person who finds straightforward factual history boring and laborious, but I was truly entertained and enlightened by this novel. The secret to Vidal's success is his ability to weave together education and emotion, making all of his writings revealing, shocking, and entertaining.

(If you love drama, I recommend this book for you. The ending will shock you. Also, if you enjoyed Vidal's Lincoln, you'll enjoy Burr even more, for it is an easier read.)

Rating:
Summary: Wicked Fun
Review: Burr is the story of America's birth told by one of its supposed biggest villians. Aaron Burr is known as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton, the father of out financial system. Many still consider Burr a traitor on par with Benedict Arnold.
But In Gore Vidal's book Burr is the prototypical American: a bawdy, entrepreneurial, thoughtful man of immense appetites.
The book is one-sided in favor of Burr, but remember the man has been getting bad PR for two centuries. Told though Charles Schuyler, a young law clerk with literary ambitions, Burr tells his side of the story with a vengence. His tale comes at the expense of the 'Virginia Junta' and its two gods, Washington and Jefferson. While Washington comes off as merely a buffoon, Jefferson comes off as pure evil, a power mad tyrant ready to trample the very bill of rights he drafted in order to settle a score or serve his own ends.
While the book may not convince the world that Jefferson was a scoundrel, it has taken a layer or two of infamy off the name of Aaron Burr. If the gossip of the book is to be believed, Hamilton had it coming -- he spread rumors that Burr was sleeping with his own daughter.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Entertaining, and Informative
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Historical Fiction at its Best
Review: Gore Vidal does a tremendous job putting a face on a potential turning point in American History. By one vote in the US House of Represenatives who knows what would have been the result in American politics and even land area. This time of American History is usually a footnote in books: Burr killed Hamilton. Much more than that!

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I can't say enough good things about this Gore Vidal novel. It's certainly the best fiction book I've read in some time. It's so good that there were numerous times while reading the book that I forgot that it was fiction! This is a historical fiction novel, so the characters in the story actually existed. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton all make appearances. I've never read any of Gore Vidal's writings before picking up this book, mainly due to some preconceived notions...

The book's main character is Charlie Schuyler, a law clerk and budding journalist in the employ of the aging Aaron Burr, who is still living down his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. The story is set in the 1830's, well after the American Revolution and towards the end of Burr's life. Schuyler has some powerful friends that want him to get Aaron Burr to admit that he is the father of Martin Van Buren, who is running for president. They hope to discredit Van Buren by linking him to the hated Burr, as well as painting Van Buren as a bastard. The whole book is Burr's recollections to Charlie about his life in the American Revolution, as vice-president to Thomas Jefferson, and his supposed attempt to split the United States and make himself emperor of Mexico. These recollections are interspersed with Charlie's relationship with Burr and with Helen Jewett, a prostitute that Charlie wants to marry.

The brilliance of this book is definitely it's grand writing style. Vidal writes with passion and humor, and he paints our founding fathers in acidic language. Washington is revealed to be an ineffectual general and a somber figure that does whatever it takes to put his own interests and goals over everyone else. Jefferson comes off as a humorless schemer who wouldn't mind suspending the Constitution if it would suit his political interests. These descriptions would probably be insulting to many people if they didn't come across as being so realistic. Remember, these people were politicians, and had as much of a vested interest in power as do politicians of our own time. The end of the book is nothing short of phenomenal, and I actually shouted out loud as I read the last page. I still can't believe how it ended. I never saw it coming! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: I don't know american history in its details, so when I saw what "Burr" was about I was very interested in reading it. Burr's life, his participation in the independence of the US, the fact that he killed Alexander hamilton in a duel, the suspicion that he was father to future (past now) president Martin van Buren, all this makes Aaron Burr's life an interesting subject for a book. I don't really like proper biographies, I rather enjoy them if they're fictionalized.

Vidal, although he thinks of himself much more than he is, is an extremely able writer. He takes the reader, through the eyes of a fictional character, the lawyer/jornalist Charlie Schuyler, for a tour in Washington DC and New York from the early ninteenth century. Costumes, people, politics are described in a light and amusing tone.

"Burr" is lighter and easier to read than "Lincoln", for example; this may happen because of the nature of the main character. Lincoln is taciturn, introspective, while Burr is expansive and talkative.

Among Vidal's american chronicles I think "Burr" is the best book.

Grade 8.3/10

Rating:
Summary: hall of mirrors reflecting America's mythic founding fathers
Review: I just re-read this book, which I read about 20 years ago, and I must say that it passed the test - there were wonderful and hilarious things in it that I didn't remember and it held my interest the whole time. You get a near-totally jaundiced view of our American mythology and sense of uniqueness, all from the point of view of our so-called greatest scoundrel since Benedict Arnold. This perspective is so funny and enlightening that just that alone is enough to recommend the book. (Vidal describes George Washington as having the "hips and bosom" of a woman, portraying his poor soldiering and yet brilliant engineering of his public image; Jefferson is a shifty though shrewd hypocrit and manipulator of genius; and Hamilton is a monarchist and proto-Napoleon.)

But this novel is even better than that kind of satire: I studied its structure and characters in far greater detail this time around, and came to believe that the historical details obscure a truly masterful performance by a modern writer. The narrative moves on two levels, including the present when a young writer begins to take down Burr's memoires and of course the past career of the charming and much vilified man. In many ways, the characters are more multi-dimentional than in many of his other novels. And this novel is also the start of a kind of longitudinal Balzacian literary experiment in which the reader sees characters and their descendants re-appear to make their mark over 150 years. After all these years of being a fan, I realise that I have perhaps under-estimated Vidal as a writer! I am now prepared to go back to the others in the series for a second read. It is so rare to meet a contemporary American novelist whose work ages so well.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: History sans accountability
Review: I loved this book but alas, I am in the midst of writing a real work of history about the march to Quebec in 1775 that requires documentation of primary sources for any allegations made by the writer. Vidal avoids this tediousness, and I see why. He says as much in his afterward. As a satirical work of historical art this account has no peer and the detail of his research is self-evident, and I fully understand I'm writing about a legend in literature. As for the real story, I'm headed for the history section of the L.A. Public Library to read the "Private Journal of Aaron Burr." No offense, Mr. Vidal, but I need to hear from it from the "horse's mouth."

Rating:
Summary: A fun and intelligent romp through history
Review: The Founding Fathers of our country were long overdue for a send-up when bad boy Gore Vidal found the perfect perspective from which to view them, namely: Aaron Burr -- former Vice President, duellist, and indicted conspirator. Every schoolboy knows that Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel; and many know that Thomas Jefferson accused him of a vast conspiracy to separate the new American West from the fledgling United States.

But did you know that, except for a minor skirmish at Trenton, George Washington never won a military battle (though he excelled in winning political conflicts)? Did you know that Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all died deep in debt? Finally, did you know that Martin Van Buren was probably Burr's illegitimate offspring? Through Burr's eyes, we see Thomas Jefferson as a bumbling would-be inventor who has dangerous tendencies toward absolutism, irrespective of his contributions to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This is a lot of material to cover, and Vidal does it well by creating a framing story consisting of the last three years of Burr's life, roughly 1835-37. The story is told by one Charlie Schuyler, a would-be writer, journalist, and lawyer who takes up with the Black Sheep of American History and works at writing his biography from papers loaned to him by Burr. We read these papers ourselves, interspersed through the current-day narrative.

Gore Vidal has that greatest of narrative gifts, of always being able to answer "What happened next?" to the satisfaction of his readers. He is comfortable with complicated skeins of narrative material and works it into a unified whole so that it almost reads as a history of the republic from 1776-1808, with a coda set some 30 years later in the waning days of Jackson's administration.

I have always shied away from reading about the birth of our country because I was put off by the haloes attached to our country's founders. Vidal knocks those haloes awry while yet exhibiting a sense of wonder that, somehow, it all worked out. I am reminded of D. H. Lawrence's STUDIES IN CLASSICAL AMERICAN LITERATURE -- another bad-boy attack on the good, grey early days of our republic.

You can still love your country knowing that George Washington used so much powder in his wig that he walked with a nimbus around his head and considerable fall-out on his shoulders.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff!
Review: The unfortunate thing about Gore Vidal's historical novels is that, once you've read one of them, you've pretty much read 'em all. That is to say, he tends to use the same plot devices and character voices over and over again. As a result, I find it best to let several years pass between reading his books, so that the sense of repetition is less annoying.

My other critique of Gore Vidal would be his obvious lack of respect for/interest in women. Female characters in his book exist to nag, scheme (in order to gain prestige, money, or both) or are prostitutes. He is seemingly incapable of writing a 3-dimensional female character.

Having said all that, the wonderful thing about his books is how well he conveys a sense of time/place and the sheer amount of information he manages to pack into a reasonably entertaining novel. "Burr" is my favorite of his books, although that may be because it was the first of his books that I read and so it didn't suffer from the sense of "Been here, done this" that I later experienced with his other books.

He definitely makes an interesting case for Aaron Burr and the story reads quickly. Very good stuff.