I have been reading Vidal for 50 years, since I first tried to struggle my way through Burr as a junior-high student. This makes me want to revisit all of these books.
Michael this is a wonderful piece. You rather brilliantly placed both Vidal and his work in conversation with the grad sweep of American imperial history.
Since I first discovered Gore by way of the stellar documentary “Best of Enemies,” I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Vidal as public intellectual/political commentator. However, you’ve pushed to me to see him as he saw himself, as a writer first and foremost.
You’ve also inspired me to give Burr another go, I’ll let you know what I think. Bravo my friend!
Thank you, Conor. Coming from someone who knows his American history and has an acute appreciation of the forgotten aspects of America’s story, it means a lot!
Best of Enemies is a great documentary. Well-balanced, I think. Buckley, for his faults, thought carefully, in his way. But Vidal, as you note, and as I try to present, was really the writer who wrote (and read) so brilliantly about America and her history (among other things).
Please do give Burr another go, and please do let me know once you have. I’ll come on the podcast and we can discuss it properly 😉😄
My parents were great admirers of Gore Vidal and read everything he wrote. I read some but not enough I will definitely be revisiting his work with great interest thanks for this post
This is such an interesting take. I really like your point that the books aren’t simply retelling American history, but questioning how history gets turned into a story in the first place.
The way Burr challenges the version of the Founding Fathers kids inherit from schoolbooks is really clever, and I love how that question then seems to grow throughout the series from memory and reputation, to newspapers, film, politics and propaganda. Great article!
Thanks for reading - I’m glad you enjoyed! Absolutely. There’s an unsettling of the national myth at the beginning and that’s then the basis for the changes that are explored in the subsequent novels. They really are wonderful reads (especially Burr).
Love this! I've read "Burr" and "Empire" so far. Your timing is funny because I just referred to "Empire" in a comparative essay on Henry James's "The Ambassadors" and Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible." Vidal's James character was the perfect connective tissue!
Thank you, Septimus. I’m glad you enjoyed, and I’m even more delighted you’re already a reader of the Narratives. Vidal’s portrayal of James is excellent. There’s a whole essay on Vidal’s literary depictions in the books I need to write! Do you know which of the Narratives is calling you next?
I’m going to go back to Rutherfraud Hayes and allegations of election rigging in “1876”! I skipped ahead because “Empire” was a great pairing with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Bully Pulpit.”
Thanks for reminding me Gore was a great essayist, too. My brother (at @Ideational Evolution) has a few of his essay books—I will have to borrow them.
Thanks for this insightful dive into some of the work of one of my favorite authors. I’ve been thinking for a while of rereading these in chronological order rather than order of publication. I read Washington DC first but several years after it’s release. Everything else I think I read as they were published except for The Golden Age which I never got around to. He is a fine novelist, consistently provocative and entertaining.
Thanks for reading, John. I’m delighted you enjoyed, especially having already read some of the Narratives. When I first read them, they were roughly in sequence, but with other non-Vidal books over a period of a few years. I did however sit down and reread them back-to-back and in order. It was a very rewarding experience.
I never read Point to Point, so maybe I will read that first, before the historical novels. Have you read Kalki? Certainly, his most unusual book. Mick Jagger had an option on it for years.
I have read Palimpsest twice. It is on the shelf between Martin & Malcolm & America and J. Edgar Hoover The Man And His Secrets. How about The Golden Age?
I read at least four of them, Burr, Lincoln, Empire, & Hollywood. I agree with some of the other comments about his essays and memoirs being superior to the novels. I felt exactly this way about Jimmy Baldwin too. Also, they both had great dustups with Buckley.
Agree that Baldwin’s essays are stronger than his novels. And Vidal’s novels are stronger than Baldwin’s! I can’t agree that Vidal’s best novel writing - as in Burr or Lincoln - is inferior to his essays. They’re on par - just written from different sides of the desk, as it were.
I loved his essays more than the historical novels, but your post inspired me to revisit at least one. Gore was one of three artists I loved, whom I shared a birthday. Chubby Checker and Thomas Wolfe were the others.
Thank you, David. It means a great deal to me if I inspire someone to read or revisit a book. Have you decided from the post which one you’d like to tackle?
Burr is just so beautifully written I cannot fathom how someone can say, in a serious way, that Gore has no talent? Burr isn’t just historical fiction. It is a genuine work of art. Not sure where this impulse comes from—to cruelly dismiss the talent and skill of accomplished artists? Even when I read the work of writers I don’t appreciate, I’m still able to recognize some measure of skill in what they do, am able to see their appeal.
I too appreciate him most for his essays—but still, to say his novels are “inert?” I charged through all of them, literally had a difficult time putting them down.
Vidal possessed everything a good novelist needs. Except talent. We only think of him as a good writer because he spent 50 years telling us he was America’s literary biographer. As if that made him good. But he never wrote anything memorable because he lacked talent. Even those memoirs were a slog. But his essays were extraordinary. The only work of this that will live on.
The only scene I remember is in “Washington, D. C.” where he describes the grounds of the Virginia mansion he grew up in. Many years later I lived in the neighboring house that looked onto what he was writing about and I thought Vidal got it right. Jacqueline Kennedy also lived in the same house for a time. She and Vidal shared the same stepfather.
I’m sure you won’t mind my disagreeing with you given that my piece is on how worthwhile it is to read him. For me, the paragraph I quote at the end (that’s in Washington D.C. and The Golden Age) is a fine example of his talent as a writer. Funnily enough, he would agree with you, however, that his work most likely to survive are his essays. He considered it the form that had longevity because it’s a voice that the reader hears (something I write about in another essay!).
Actually, Vidal's plays may also survive. They're periodically revived. He was just a lousy novelist and contrary to what you claim, he wanted desperately to be valued first and last for his novels. They were as good as they can be when you have zero artistic talent. Which is to say, his novels were inert. If anything, Vidal wrote the sort of novels that English professors write -- smart and well-crafted but dead. Which is a nasty thing to say since he disliked academics. What's unforgivable are his crappy memoirs. I expected him to get to last word on his already-dead friends and rivals. Instead I came away disagreeing with him.
A few months ago, I happened to be in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington. Completely by accident I saw Vidal's grave. He was supposedly buried within sight of the grave of the boy he fell in love with at St. Albans School who was killed in the Pacific. I didn't have time to check.
For a writer I don't much like, I seem to have more encounters with Vidal than I want. Driving in Washington yesterday, I needed to detour through Virginia to avoid the mess at the National Cathedral caused by Trump attending Lindsey Graham's memorial. Twice I ended up going past Merrywood, the estate where Vidal lived as a child. Every time I make that drive, I think of that scene in WashingtonDC.
I have been reading Vidal for 50 years, since I first tried to struggle my way through Burr as a junior-high student. This makes me want to revisit all of these books.
That’s music to my ears, Doug - thank you 🙏 Burr is one of the strongest books in series. I hope it’s more enjoyable this time round 😃
Enjoyed this. I collected Vidal's most salacious Kennedy quotes here: https://substack.com/@henrydstaley/note/p-195591573?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7qoxxf
Thanks, Henry. I’ll have a read and see if there are any I haven’t come across before 😃
Michael this is a wonderful piece. You rather brilliantly placed both Vidal and his work in conversation with the grad sweep of American imperial history.
Since I first discovered Gore by way of the stellar documentary “Best of Enemies,” I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Vidal as public intellectual/political commentator. However, you’ve pushed to me to see him as he saw himself, as a writer first and foremost.
You’ve also inspired me to give Burr another go, I’ll let you know what I think. Bravo my friend!
Thank you, Conor. Coming from someone who knows his American history and has an acute appreciation of the forgotten aspects of America’s story, it means a lot!
Best of Enemies is a great documentary. Well-balanced, I think. Buckley, for his faults, thought carefully, in his way. But Vidal, as you note, and as I try to present, was really the writer who wrote (and read) so brilliantly about America and her history (among other things).
Please do give Burr another go, and please do let me know once you have. I’ll come on the podcast and we can discuss it properly 😉😄
We’d love nothing more than to have you on the pod!
Thank you, good sir. We should make sure that happens, then 👍😃
We’ll have to talk a little Tom Paine too
My parents were great admirers of Gore Vidal and read everything he wrote. I read some but not enough I will definitely be revisiting his work with great interest thanks for this post
That’s great to hear, Elizabeth. I hope you enjoy. I’d suggest starting at the beginning with Burr 😊
This is such an interesting take. I really like your point that the books aren’t simply retelling American history, but questioning how history gets turned into a story in the first place.
The way Burr challenges the version of the Founding Fathers kids inherit from schoolbooks is really clever, and I love how that question then seems to grow throughout the series from memory and reputation, to newspapers, film, politics and propaganda. Great article!
Thanks for reading - I’m glad you enjoyed! Absolutely. There’s an unsettling of the national myth at the beginning and that’s then the basis for the changes that are explored in the subsequent novels. They really are wonderful reads (especially Burr).
Congratulations on publication in TMR. Well-deserved! For me, Vidal is not as much fun as The Simpsons, but I can appreciate a brilliant essay. ;))
Thank you, Marian 🙏 Rest assured, there will still be plenty of The Simpsons on Making Sentences 😄
Love this! I've read "Burr" and "Empire" so far. Your timing is funny because I just referred to "Empire" in a comparative essay on Henry James's "The Ambassadors" and Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible." Vidal's James character was the perfect connective tissue!
Thank you, Septimus. I’m glad you enjoyed, and I’m even more delighted you’re already a reader of the Narratives. Vidal’s portrayal of James is excellent. There’s a whole essay on Vidal’s literary depictions in the books I need to write! Do you know which of the Narratives is calling you next?
I’m going to go back to Rutherfraud Hayes and allegations of election rigging in “1876”! I skipped ahead because “Empire” was a great pairing with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Bully Pulpit.”
Thanks for reminding me Gore was a great essayist, too. My brother (at @Ideational Evolution) has a few of his essay books—I will have to borrow them.
1876 will anger you - in a good way!
Thanks for this insightful dive into some of the work of one of my favorite authors. I’ve been thinking for a while of rereading these in chronological order rather than order of publication. I read Washington DC first but several years after it’s release. Everything else I think I read as they were published except for The Golden Age which I never got around to. He is a fine novelist, consistently provocative and entertaining.
Thanks for reading, John. I’m delighted you enjoyed, especially having already read some of the Narratives. When I first read them, they were roughly in sequence, but with other non-Vidal books over a period of a few years. I did however sit down and reread them back-to-back and in order. It was a very rewarding experience.
I never read Point to Point, so maybe I will read that first, before the historical novels. Have you read Kalki? Certainly, his most unusual book. Mick Jagger had an option on it for years.
Would recommend Palimpsest then Point to Point. Kalki is wonderful!
I have read Palimpsest twice. It is on the shelf between Martin & Malcolm & America and J. Edgar Hoover The Man And His Secrets. How about The Golden Age?
Excellent. The Golden Age - or Act VII as I write about here - is definitely worth a read 😃 But I’d recommend reading I-VI first 😉
I read at least four of them, Burr, Lincoln, Empire, & Hollywood. I agree with some of the other comments about his essays and memoirs being superior to the novels. I felt exactly this way about Jimmy Baldwin too. Also, they both had great dustups with Buckley.
Agree that Baldwin’s essays are stronger than his novels. And Vidal’s novels are stronger than Baldwin’s! I can’t agree that Vidal’s best novel writing - as in Burr or Lincoln - is inferior to his essays. They’re on par - just written from different sides of the desk, as it were.
I wholeheartedly agree. And thank you for the excellent essay!
I loved his essays more than the historical novels, but your post inspired me to revisit at least one. Gore was one of three artists I loved, whom I shared a birthday. Chubby Checker and Thomas Wolfe were the others.
Great post.
Thank you, David. It means a great deal to me if I inspire someone to read or revisit a book. Have you decided from the post which one you’d like to tackle?
Burr is just so beautifully written I cannot fathom how someone can say, in a serious way, that Gore has no talent? Burr isn’t just historical fiction. It is a genuine work of art. Not sure where this impulse comes from—to cruelly dismiss the talent and skill of accomplished artists? Even when I read the work of writers I don’t appreciate, I’m still able to recognize some measure of skill in what they do, am able to see their appeal.
I too appreciate him most for his essays—but still, to say his novels are “inert?” I charged through all of them, literally had a difficult time putting them down.
I am nodding and smiling at this comment 😁
Vidal possessed everything a good novelist needs. Except talent. We only think of him as a good writer because he spent 50 years telling us he was America’s literary biographer. As if that made him good. But he never wrote anything memorable because he lacked talent. Even those memoirs were a slog. But his essays were extraordinary. The only work of this that will live on.
The only scene I remember is in “Washington, D. C.” where he describes the grounds of the Virginia mansion he grew up in. Many years later I lived in the neighboring house that looked onto what he was writing about and I thought Vidal got it right. Jacqueline Kennedy also lived in the same house for a time. She and Vidal shared the same stepfather.
I’m sure you won’t mind my disagreeing with you given that my piece is on how worthwhile it is to read him. For me, the paragraph I quote at the end (that’s in Washington D.C. and The Golden Age) is a fine example of his talent as a writer. Funnily enough, he would agree with you, however, that his work most likely to survive are his essays. He considered it the form that had longevity because it’s a voice that the reader hears (something I write about in another essay!).
Actually, Vidal's plays may also survive. They're periodically revived. He was just a lousy novelist and contrary to what you claim, he wanted desperately to be valued first and last for his novels. They were as good as they can be when you have zero artistic talent. Which is to say, his novels were inert. If anything, Vidal wrote the sort of novels that English professors write -- smart and well-crafted but dead. Which is a nasty thing to say since he disliked academics. What's unforgivable are his crappy memoirs. I expected him to get to last word on his already-dead friends and rivals. Instead I came away disagreeing with him.
A few months ago, I happened to be in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington. Completely by accident I saw Vidal's grave. He was supposedly buried within sight of the grave of the boy he fell in love with at St. Albans School who was killed in the Pacific. I didn't have time to check.
For a writer I don't much like, I seem to have more encounters with Vidal than I want. Driving in Washington yesterday, I needed to detour through Virginia to avoid the mess at the National Cathedral caused by Trump attending Lindsey Graham's memorial. Twice I ended up going past Merrywood, the estate where Vidal lived as a child. Every time I make that drive, I think of that scene in WashingtonDC.