Veering backwards to the revolution and the early days of the republic, stopping at dinner-parties on the way, and reaching forward to the future, Burr is a novel about treason, both the particular and in general. He was an aide to General Washington during the Revolutionary War. Here, the latter appears as a power-hungry 'parvenu' from the West Indies and the former as a semi-literate slave-owning tyrant.Īmerican politics, suggests Vidal, had a penchant for the vulgar.Įven then. Aaron Burr, the central character, was a minor revolutionary hero, first rate politician, our third vice president, Alexander Hamiltons assassin in Americas. While the kingdom may in fact be dying, Vidal's rank in it is of course far more baronial than his modest trope suggests. Instead he appears as one of the 'host of choice spirits' forced to live among coarse, materialistic, hypocritical people, among them Jefferson and Hamilton. Gore Vidal once described himself as a border lord in the dying kingdom of literature. Gore Vidal, romping iconoclastically through American history, debunks, in this historical novel of Burr's life, the common and casually held notion of the man as a scoundrel and an adventurer. This novel starts from the point of view of Charles Schuyler, a young law clerk working in the law office of an aged Aaron Burr. Three years later, on the order of President Thomas Jefferson, he was tried for treason: for plotting to dismember the United States. In 1804, Colonel Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Veering backwards to the revolution and the early days of the republic, stopping at dinner-parties on the way, and reaching forward to the future, Burr is a novel about treason, both the particular and in general.Gore Vidal's classic novel of Aaron Burr - the man who shot Alexander Hamilton. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis.

American politics, suggests Vidal, had a penchant for the vulgar. Burr: A Novel by Gore Vidal Narratives of Empire: Book I. Here, the latter appears as a power-hungry 'parvenu' from the West Indies and the former as a semi-literate slave-owning tyrant. Gore Vidal (19252012) was born at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Instead he appears as one of the 'host of choice spirits' forced to live among coarse, materialistic, hypocritical people, among them Jefferson and Hamilton. Gore Vidal, romping iconoclastically through American history, debunks, in this historical novel of Burr's life, the common and casually held notion of the man as a scoundrel and an adventurer. Gore Vidal's classic novel of Aaron Burr - the man who shot Alexander Hamilton.

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