Gore Vidal Books

Empire is fun to read, and informative. I trust Vidal's history, and in fact, his scrupulousness may be reflected in the book's major fault. The historical characters are very static: it seems Vidal does not wish to use his imagination to embroider on the actual historical record, so that by the end of the book I began to grow tired of Hays and Adams and even Theodore Roosevelt (contrast to Max Byrd's "Jackson"). Of the two prominent fictional characters, Carolyn Sanford, the more important, is engaging, interesting and well developed. The writing is witty, often droll. No citizen, after reading this novel, will long for the "good old days" of politics.

Although Vidal provides a shotgun approach to character development, Empire is best viewed in the perspective of two primary conflicts; one among fictional characters (Caroline and Blaise Sanford) and the other among two historical players (Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst). Only through fictional characters could Vidal create narrators capable of such convoluted and impossibly rich experiences that they could come into critical conversations with so many historical characters. Caroline and Blaise are half-siblings who rival for the same fortune and unravel a dark secret regarding their respective dead mothers.

McKinley and Roosevelt both have imperialistic aims with racist purpose. Both want America to fill the power vacuum created by the decline of the British Empire; both feel it is the duty of the civilized Americans to be stewards for the primitive races of the Asian, Caribbean and Pacific Islands. To the regnant aristocracy, war is the natural state of man. Hearst, McKinley and Roosevelt are portrayed as not only making war inevitable, but also desirable. The respectable and intellectual few, best exemplified by John Hay and the Five Hearts, are more conscientious, but remain low key compared to the dashing and charismatic politicians bent on imperialism and self-promotion.

Hearst is an antihero similar to Satan in Milton's "Paradise Lost." Clearly, Hearst is a manipulative megalomaniac, but he is much more interesting character than the prudent McKinley or the bellicose Teddy Roosevelt. Although the Hearst who instigated the Spanish-American war of 1898 and incited the assassination of McKinley connotes horror and repulsion, Vidal clearly enjoys Hearst's vapidity and ingenuity. Hearst is a cad to the American nobles, but he is able to history on his own terms and to suit his own purposes. Using inaccurate and biased propaganda, Hearst is flamboyant and irresponsible, exploiting the indifferent American masses while inventing heroes to lead them. To Vidal, Hearst created public opinion, while Roosevelt simply rode public opinion. Therefore, Hearst is the inventor of the modern world while Roosevelt simply followed his lead.

This historical novel takes place roughly between the years 1898 and 1906. The novel is seen through the eyes of three characters: one who actually existed, William McKinnley's and Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State John Hay; and the other two are purely fictious, the aristocratic half-siblings Caroline and Blaise Sanford. Vidal uses his immense knowledge of the intricacies of all the political controversies, large and small of the period, and personal conflicts among the elite Americans described here.

Those elite Americans who make frequent appearances in this book include Henry Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Randolph Hearst. However, many of the other prominent characters of the period also make appearances: Mark Hanna, Henry James, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, etc. Vidal portrays James, one of his favorite novelists, in a funny way in that James speaks in that long winded wordy way that he wrote most of his novels.

Blaise is a chief lieutenant of Hearst before he strikes out on his own. For most of the novel he is in legal battle with Caroline over the disbursement of their late father's estate. Caroline herself can probably be said to be the main character of this book. She manages to make a modest success as the publisher of the Washington Tribune. However, she gets herself into trouble when she starts an affair with a disconcertingly good looking married freshman congressman named James Burden Day. This affair starts when Caroline is 25 and is her first sexual experience.

The part of the book describing the first sexual encounter between Caroline and the Congressman is probably the worst written part of the book. We see Jim and Caroline at a party in the midst of other aristocrats; then they are talking; then Vidal through the thoughts of Caroline, heaves tedious lengthy metaphors about food and Greek gods at the reader in the midst of which Jim's hand is sneaking towards Caroline's [...]; then we have Jim asking why, if Caroline is a virgin, there is no blood coming out of her frontal private area. Then we have the news that Jim pays a visit to Caroline's home every Sunday for a session in Caroline's bath tub and bed.

Vidal has the tendency to put his own intelligent observations and metaphors about certain characters into the minds of his characters, which makes the latter seem not always 100 percent plausible. When I was reading the book I thought the dialogue between the characters was sometimes a bit wooden but then I when I finished the book I thought maybe it was plausible enough. One or two of the scenes of lofty philosophical conversation between Caroline and Henry Adams, in the latter intellectual giant's drawing room, seemed somewhat implausible and maybe a little pointless for the novel's purpose.

Vidal's fiction is always a pleasure to read. In this book, he demonstrates his usual genius mastery in describing the buildings, people, streets and other details in the historical epoch in which the novel takes place. His prose is always clear and graceful, sometimes really extraordinarily so. The way he portrays American politics at the turn of the Century is really quite effective. The American people were restless under the extreme corruption and brutality of the big businessmen who controlled politics. Vidal effectively shows the sordidness of all this towards the end of the novel, with the conflict between William Randolph Hearst and Theodore Roosevelt. Hearst, who is excluded from the drawing rooms of most aristocrats because of his uncouth journalistic practices, finds solace in posing as a champion of ordinary people, a reformer and progressive. Of course, what he really wants is political power and he is willing to make alliances with anybody, including the bosses of New York's Tammany Hall, to whom he is theoretically in opposition. Theodore Roosevelt similarly poses as a Progressive, but his substantive gestures towards seriously regulating corporate power and political corruption are not much. The climax comes when Roosevelt gets wind that Hearst has obtained copies of numerous letters from the man who disperses bribes for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil to politicians, to those politicians. A letter from this man to Theodore Roosevelt is in this file but its meaning is unclear. Hearst wants to print these letters in his newspapers at politically opportune times during his own quest for political offices such as New York governor and President. The last scene in the novel is a meeting between WRH and TR at the White House where each man gives to the other, very unflattering opinions about the other. Vidal says at the end of the novel that WRH and TR really did have a meeting at the White House relating to Standard Oil corruption and Roosevelt's link to it, but no one one really knows for sure what was said in it. Nonetheless, the dialogue Vidal places in the mouths of the men, are accurate renditions of what they really thought, he explains.

I realize that I'm supposed to think "Empire" is brilliant, because it's Gore Vidal, but it is a major bore. Nothing actually happens; its just 400+ pages of dialogue. A well-written conventional history of the period would be more enjoyable and more informative. This is a total snooze-fest.

Faced with a long and dreary winter? 'Empire' may be just the antidote. Gore Vidal's 1987 epic makes for educational, if sometimes tedious, fireside reading. 'Empire' is a tough one to plow through in one sitting, let alone one month, but in the end it rewards the reader with an informative narration of turn-of-the-century America. The fourth in Vidal's five-part series, 'Empire' features both historical and fictitious characters, who share the plot in equal dollops throughout the novel. A cursory knowledge of early 20th-century American history -- McKinley, Roosevelt, Hay, etc. -- enhances the reading experience. But even without this knowledge, the book is well worth the read. The closing dialogue alone justifies the effort.

The political writings of Gore Vidal are timeless.

Originally published in 1950, the novel is set in a mythical South American country that has resources to plunder and a multi-national corporation willing to do the bidding for U.S. government interests. In the mix is the deposed president - who firmly believes that his powerful "friends" will help him and his son regain power - and a former U.S. Army officer with tacit knowledge that a handshake from some is actually a death sentence.

The former president is playing a game that he feels he has the cards to win. It is much too late when he realizes that he was just another puppet on a string who will be remembered as only a footnote in the history of his nation.

Set the scene in another location, tweak the characters a bit and the reader is drawn into yet another conflict that benefits the few, while leaving a bloody trail under the guise of fighting for freedom and democracy.

Dark Green, Bright Red by Gore Vidal was his second novel, written when he was in his early twenties. This story of a planned revolution in a mythical South American country was probably unbelievable in its day, dealing as it did does with the involvement of the U.S. governemnt, the United Fruit Company (under another name) and an up front assumption that Uncle Sam calls the shots in Central and South America. Unfortunately Vidal does not go all the way with this story. The 'hero', a former American Army officer who has left the service under a cloud of suspicion, 'retires' to the mythical country that is the setting for the story, because his good friend from WWII is the former President's son. Soon he is caught up in a plot to bring the former president to power once more, and also involved in an affair with the former president's daughter. Obviously no good can come of this, and of course it doesn't. The conclusion is to be expected and the main character leaves the story having experienced much but seemingly having learned little.There is a lot of interest here, especially the clear view that Vidal has of the role played in Latin American relations by entities such as the United Fruit Company and the willingness of the U.S. Government to go to great lenghts to support them. It would be decades before the public at large would recognize this as true. For this alone the book is worth reading.

There were a ton of great political movies made in the early and mid 1960's and this is the basis for one of the best. Originally a Broadway play, it was made into a movie starting Henry Fonda and a young Cliff Robertson. (I highly recommend the movie.)

It's the story of two very different men vying for the nomination of their party for President. One is moral and intellectual and the other, well, not so much. The dialogue is outstanding and has certain expectations of the reader. Younger readers may have to keep Google on stand-by. But it flows well and builds towards a great surprise ending.

One caveat: It is a play, not a novel.

When the planes hit the twin towers in New York on 9/11, I was in shock, like most people, but once I realized there was not a terrorist around every corner, or anthrax in my mailbox, I stopped checking my computer to see if we were on yellow, orange, or red (terrorist) alert and began looking into government and politics. I wanted to know the answer to that famous question, "why do they hate us so much?"

I read books, watched documentaries, looked for articles on the Internet and asked questions. The more I learned, the less I trusted Bush, and by the time we were bombing Iraq, I was so angry with him that I could no longer be silent.

Our soldiers were dying and the civilian casualties in Iraq were horrifying. I saw pictures on the Internet of dead babies and small children with missing limbs, and I could not comprehend how a Christian could order such a massacre.

I referred to my Bible, which told me to respect and pray for our leaders, but I could only muster prayer, not respect, for Bush. The fruits of his labor looked rotten to me. Where was his compassion? Where was his love for others? What about God's command, "thou shalt not kill"? What kind of role models kill to show that killing is unacceptable?

All I could see was Bush's lust for war and it made me sick. I could not believe the man had the support of so many Christians. No matter how I looked at it--Bush was wrong to take us to war, and we were wrong to let him. Could others not see this, too? Obviously not, he was re-elected in 2004. Either God's people are in absolute denial, or the election was a set up. I'm not sure which, but I do know one thing--life as we know it became surreal somewhere along the way. It truly is, as Saul Landau's book title reads, A Bush & Botox World. God help us!

Vidal, excellently uses the medium of historical fiction to skillfully craft his view of American Society at the turn of the century (and perhaps with further reaching implications). Centering around the life of Caroline Sanford-the descendant of Aaron Burr-a soon to be wealthy heiress. Sanford, along with her half-brother Blaise become fascniated with the publishing industry, and both become newspaper owners. On a higher plane, the novel deals with the complex interaction between the historical movers and shakers of the time: McKinley, Roosevelt, Willian Randolph Hearst, and Secretary of State John Hay. The book forces one to think about issues prevalent in society today, and who really does create everyday events.

I s Gore Vidal a great writer? It depends on what he is writing. This compilation is long overdue as Vidal has never been taken as seriously by the Eastern literary establishment as he deserves. Certainly, he is one of the very few serious writers who also know how to entertain. This is what makes him so successful. Included here is his play, "The Best Man," the complete "Myra Breckenridge," selections from his historical novels, and a number of essays. My own opinion is that few writers are capable of such elegant prose as Vidal is when he is writing in the essay form. He understands politics better than any other fictional writer, which is why his historical novels make such splendid reading. His wit is uneven; brilliantly hilarious and insightful at its best, unnecessarily vulgar and savagely mean at its worst, which is why his comic novels are such hit and miss affairs. Vidal's work, taken as a whole, is an impressive library. Few good writers have been as productive as he, and who else can claim to have been consistently on the bestseller lists for nearly four decades as he has? Anyone who admires Vidal will argue with some of the selections here but there is also much to entertain and enlighten. Enjoy.

This is an accessible and illuminating study of one of the twentieth century's unique public intellectuals. Though the book weighs in at only 141pp. of text, the breadth of Frank's research on Vidal is impressive. She is a bonafide fan and writes with a sense of analytical purpose and critical appreciation.

Frank covers all the significant events in Vidal's long and varied career as a public intellectual and postmodern celebrity. Thankfully, she doesn't rehearse these events in chronological order; the book is not Vidal's biography. Rather, Frank organizes her material around thematic questions of public intellectualism and mass mediation as they bear on the construction of Vidal's intellectual cachet. Her basic claim is that Vidal, unlike many of his intellectual equals of his generation, welcomed the opportunity to extend his celebrity from page to screen, from the exclusivity of the publishing world to the networked immediacy of television.

Frank elaborates on her thesis in a number of contexts and with a handful of illustrative examples. Her reading of Vidal's heated televised debate with William F. Buckley at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is particularly astute. My only reservation about Frank's analysis is that she doesn't do enough with the conceptual intervention she terms the "print-screen circuit." Frank does well to talk about Vidal's publishing output as well as his big- and small-screen appearances, but she leaves unexamined the specifically *dialectical* character of their relationship. Tracing the interaction of text with image and image with text in the life of the public intellectual might have given readers a better idea of Vidal's unique positioning between/across media.

The story has some very powerful moments, but the best above all is the surprising ending and the fact that the main character's love from his youth is turned in such a big hope for him that we can't help feeling pity for him. Very recommendable for those into unusual love stories. An interesting portrait of the early Hollywood society as well.

In this little-known short novel, Gore Vidal revisits the legend of King Richard the Lion-Heart and his troubadour Blondel. As fans of Robin Hood or Ivanhoe will recall, Richard was imprisoned by a duke of Austria on his return from the Third Crusade and held for ransom. In his absence, the King's younger brother John siezed the throne, intending to keep it.

The legend (and this novel) recount how Richard's companion minstrel Blondel continued to search for the King throughout Europe when others abandoned him. Vidal has taken a relatively straightforward narrative here. Anyone hoping for salacious details of Richard's sexuality or scandalous stories of medieval monks will be disappointed. This short novel follows the old legend, and not speculative history. There are werewolves, a giant, a dragon and other mythical beasts, but not in the manner one might always expect. For although the book is not unsuitable for younger readers, there is not much in the way of whimsy in this tale.

As Blondel looks for his friend and patron, he undergoes a type of existential crisis. His search defines him and limits him at the same time. Vidal is a skilled enough craftsman to make this apparent to the older reader without coming across as a Freudian analyst, but the internal monolauges and grim reflections of Blondel (especially late in the book) often make this storybook fable more modern than one would expect.

All in all, I recommend this novel with the proviso that it is neither reliably historical (unlike the author's better known "Julian" or "Lincoln" or a "boy's adventure" in the tradition of Harry Potter or a boy's King Arthur. Those with the willingness to appreciate it's unique approach will be rewarded.

Vidal writes of F. Scott Fitzgerald whose sad life provides a cautionary tale. From 1920 to 1940 he published four novels as well as writing short stories and movie scripts. Fitzgerald personified a high romanticism. Fitzgerald knew the novel was being superseded by film.

Edmund Wilson had a brain to match his liver. Wilson supported himself by literary journalism. He was the perfect autodict. Christopher Isherwood was the rare thing, an objective narcissist.

Gore Vidal reports he spent a great deal of his youth in Frank Baum's Land of Oz. Baum had a lifelong interest in science and gadgetry. Gore Vidal presents an hilarious review of Doris Lessing's science fiction. In the next piece he describes Italy, a place where people are free of the burden of taxation. Vidal opines that Thomas Love Peacock is revived every quarter century.

In the 1950's the author worked at MGM as a contract writer. He could not make an adequate living just writing novels. Cinema cannot convey complex ideas. Prejudice is the topic of a selection entitled, 'Pink Triangle and Yellow Star.'

The piece on Theodore Roosevelt describes him as lively and bumptious. He had a high-pitched voice and an upper class accent. He had a trait of ruthless righteousness. Roosevelt was reckless and domineering in politics. He helped invent Panama out of a piece of Columbia. Henry James called the president Theodore Rex.

Vidal calls the presidential election a carnival. He thinks the current configuration of the United States is too homogenized and over-centralized. He suggests we have a two party system comprised of those who vote versus those who don't.

I haven't described all of the lively essays contained in the volume and have neglected to convey sufficiently the intelligent and racy flavor of Gore Vidal's treatment of various subjects pertinent to politics and literature.