His rise to fame was accelerated by participation in the War Of Independence. The writer records the words and, here and there, interprets. Schuyler meets Burr several times and, on each occasion, the old man develops a section of his memoir. And it is from this quest that the book’s eventual surprise materialises. Schuyler’s task is to prise out the useful from the detail the old man might reveal. What Burr might reveal can be used to lever contemporary political advantage. His proclivities have left a world-wide trail of successes and failures, personal, political and familial.Ī gentleman called Schuyler, who considers himself Dutch first, American second, is commissioned to write the old man’s memoirs, after a fashion. He still has an eye for the ladies, two very big eyes for money or opportunity, and a very much alive and kicking penchant for political dabbling. He is still very much an active participant in life, however. We meet him first in the 1830s approaching his final years. The treatment enhances the content, allowing Gore Vidal to lay several perspectives before the reader. In the novel Gore Vidal presents a history of the War Of Independence and its aftermath through the eyes of a contemporary, Aaron Burr, who was Vice President to Thomas Jefferson.īurr’s form is a brilliant invention. Having just finished it, nearly forty years after it appeared, I now know much more. A couple of years before, Gore Vidal had published his novel Burr (Vintage, 448 pages), which I had not read. Names such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams became commonplace for a while. At the time, I thought I knew something about the history. I can recall the celebrations that surrounded the bi-centennial of the American Revolution. Eventually, unless events or people are sufficiently insignificant so they can be merely forgotten, the process rounds off what remains to form mere icons, summaries that become anodyne cartoons of once complex events and motives. The roughness and corners of detail wear away under the constant erosion of recall and interpretation.
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