Burr

Burr - Gore Vidal

Like scandalous gossip about celebrities? This is the novel for you.

'Burr' is fiction, but I love a good story. Vidal's superbly researched novel brings Aaron Burr to life and this reader was willingly swept up into the romance of an anti-hero. 'Burr' shrewdly picks apart the myths and legends surrounding the men who founded the United States, reveling in their flaws and, despite any cries of 'disrespect!', making me admire their achievements all the more. This country was created by contentious compromise - it should never be seen as a perfect body. This book is the antidote for the hero-worship we used to see in textbooks.

Before reading the novel I had had a very limited picture of Burr's life, in fact the only thing I could have told you about him with certainty was that he had killed Hamilton in a duel. But taking it all in: his belief in the mind of his daughter, his ambitions in the west, the sheer amount of time he was given, makes his life a fascinating one, even stripped of the more colorful assertions of this novel. It makes me more interested in the time period. New York was only just losing its Dutch identity, the powers of the three branches hadn't been tested against each other yet, and before the Louisiana Purchase the country had a much different outlook. One of these days I'll have to read (actual) memoirs of the early republic to compliment the pictures given in 'Colonial American Travel Narratives'.

I'll never think of the founding fathers in the same way again.

 

Narratives of Empire

 

Next: 'Lincoln'