I just finished working my way through the late Gore Vidal’s magnificent series of political history novels spanning American history from the Revolutionary War through the Kennedy administration. Having sampled one, I was unable to stop until I reached the end.tThe seven well-researched and artfully-crafted novels that Gore called “Narratives of Empire,” written between 1967 and 2000, include Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, Washington DC, and The Golden Age. The series spans virtually all of the relatively short life of our empire-building republic.I’m not the first person to praise this magnificent series of books. Taken together, the books might be compared with Balzac’s The Human Comedy, or Shakespeare’s history plays, which are referenced occasionally. The series has the broad scope of Balzac’s novels and like Shakespeare’s history plays, they illuminate the development of what might be called a national political character by focusing on the men who shaped it.tGore Vidal was surely the man to take on a work such as this. Born at West Point, and reared in Washington, DC, he was the son of socialite Nina Gore and Eugene Vidal, an aviation pioneer at the time when there was romance in aviation and head of the Dept. of Air Commerce under Franklin Roosevelt. He grew up reading books to his well-wired grandfather, the blind Oklahoma Senator Thomas Pryor Gore. Growing up in the nation’s capital, young Vidal knew many of the political actors of his time personally and listened to lots of the gossip. In addition to being distantly related to Jacqueline Kennedy and former Vice President Al Gore, Vidal was a prolific writer and public speaker, and twice a political candidate himself,t“Narratives of Empire” is mostly set in Washington, DC, and blends real political characters and historical events with characters and situations invented by the writer. Vidal took pains to accurately represent the actions and political views of historical characters, but he does make up dialogue consistent with their stated views. And Vidal focuses on some history that is often glossed over or forgotten, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to get Japan to attack us first, prior to our entering World War II.Vidal’s invented characters are close to the seats of power and influence in Washington, DC, observing, commenting on, and sometimes participating in historical events. We rub elbows with a lot of big money, and many powerful, ambitious, and egotistical men. Vidal’s ability to blend fact and fiction, and his witty sense of humor, keeps the series lively. While political history is often dull reading, Gore brings American history and culture alive.tSeveral of Vidal’s invented characters are found in more than one of the books, appearing first as their younger selves and later in maturity. The repeat appearances bind the books together and help give the series continuity. For example, the historical character John Hay, an aide to the president in Lincoln, reappears in Empire as a seasoned diplomat returning to the Washington scene. Franklin Roosevelt appears as a young secretary of the Navy with a pretty mistress in Hollywood and as president and president for life in Washington DC, and The Golden Age.My favorite of Vidal’s invented characters is Carolyn Sanford, who could be the heroine of a romance novel. A smart beautiful American heiress educated in France, Sanford appears as a witty young ingénue in Empire, as the lover of an ambitious politician and founder of a Washington newspaper who discovers she can act in Hollywood, and as a somewhat disillusioned grande dame in The Golden Age. Another invented character, the writer Charlie Schuyler, appears in Burr as an aide and confident to Aaron Burr who turns out to be his father. Schuyler reappears as an old man returning to Washington after a diplomatic appointment abroad trying to marry off his daughter in Lincoln.Lincoln is arguably the most memorable book of the series. It begins with former railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln just elected to office, and ends after the Civil War with his assassination.Lincoln contains an extraordinary multi-faceted portrait of President Abraham Lincoln. Vidal never tries to channel the thoughts of this complex and secretive man, but we sense Lincoln’s gravity and horse sense through the eyes of several others -- aide John Hay, Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, and the young Confederate sympathizer David Herold, who are all historical characters.tWe get a sense of Lincoln’s political skill from Seward, a rival who is outmaneuvered and won over by Lincoln. The president also uses and outfoxes Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, another rival hungry for the presidency who takes himself quite seriously, and whose job requires him to raise a lot of money to finance the war. The young Confederate spy David Herold sees Lincoln as a monster while plotting his death with Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.In Vidal’s hands, the ups and downs of the Civil War seem to unfold in real time. We meet the cigar-chomping General Ulysses Grant and many other generals, prostitutes, politicians, and knaves.tVidal does allude to Lincoln’s alleged treatment for syphilis, and he doesn’t gloss over Lincoln’s constitutional lapses, such as arresting editors of newspapers who questioned his policies, and imprisoning some political opponents without due process. We are present at Lincoln’s great speeches, and Vidal makes the reader feel Lincoln’s painful, sober, heartfelt, patient efforts to bring the Southern states back into the union while doing his best to manage a truly horrible civil war.Many statesmen are described in a way that is sardonic and witty, and some scenes are outrageously funny. In Lincoln, I particularly like the scene in which Walt Whitman comes looking for a job from Secretary of the Treasury Chase, who collector the autographs and letters of the very famous. Chase knows and despises Whitman’s poetry but covets the letter of introduction from Ralph Waldo Emerson that Whitman has brought to introduce him.And President Lincoln plods through his own history, a head taller than most everyone, having his hat shot off, watching his generals duck or lose battle after battle, and doing his best to manage the political tides of his day. Lincoln also provides a glimpse of mid eighteenth century American life, and a portrait of Lincoln the family man, with a loyal, fragile, shopaholic wife and several rambunctious children including one who dies in the White House. In these books, one gets a rather different picture of the men who have served as American presidents than one encounters in high school history books. Vidal paints warts-and-all portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and many more although his sense of humor gets in the way sometimes, and makes his portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt practically caricatures.“Narratives of Empire” brings us into what feels like personal contact with American characters like Washington Irving, Davy Crockett, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ward McAllister, William Jennings Bryan, Henry Adams, Alice Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and William Randolph Hearst.This is entertainment, of course, but it is politically sophisticated entertainment pitched at a very high level, probing the soul of our scrappy, empire-building nation. And it is educational. The novels end with the America’s achieving political hegemony over the world. In the final chapter of The Golden Age, Gore suddenly switches to a first person point of view. He has a couple of his invented characters come to his villa in Italy for a television interview with him, and allows himself liberty to puzzle over the meaning of it all.One of his invented characters, magazine owner Peter Sanford asks Vidal, “How does it feel to play God?”Vidal chooses to quote the last line of poet John Keats ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.“Unreal,” Vidal the character replies. “Do I wake or sleep?”###
"THE GOLDEN AGE" is the capstone to the series of fine historical novels (known as "Narratives of Empire") about America through the ages which Gore Vidal began with "Washington DC" in 1967. The story begins at a private residence in Washington DC in October 1939, a few weeks after war has broken out in Europe. Several standouts from the city's social scene are in attendance, along with a number of powerful members of the House and Senate (e.g. real historical figures such as Republican Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Robert Taft of Ohio, both potential Presidential candidates for the coming election in 1940), a celebrated film maker (Tim Farrell) and his former lover, friend of the Roosevelts, and Francophile, Caroline Sanford, who had wielded considerable influence in Washington politics since the days of Teddy Roosevelt as owner of The Washington Tribune. Conversations laced with spicy gossip fill the air. Furthermore, for those readers of Vidal's other novels in the "Narratives of Empire" series (e.g., "Empire", "Hollywood", and "Washington DC"), a number of characters therefrom make an appearance here. Figures like Senator Burden Day, who though a Democrat, is a potential FDR rival for the 1940 nomination for President; Blaise Sanford, Caroline's half-brother who took over ownership of the Tribune and is, in contrast to Caroline, an avowed enemy of FDR and the New Deal; his son, Peter, who plays a interesting role in the evolution of national news, culture, and politics over the 8 decades covered in "THE GOLDEN AGE"; and Clay Overbury, Peter's half-brother and future bete noire, who later becomes a political force in his own right on Capitol Hill during the 1950s. "THE GOLDEN AGE" takes the reader through the 1940 campaign (with a unique view of the Republican convention and its candidate, Wendell Willkie), the Second World War, the early post-war years between 1945 and 1950 (an era in which Vidal contends that the U.S. experienced a unrivalled flowering of the arts and culture such as had never been experienced before), the Korean War, the Eisenhower years, and on to the dawn of the 21st century. This is probably the most personal of novels that Gore Vidal has written. Here is a quote by way of illustration: "...Gene Vidal was several years younger than Peter. Each had been at St. Alban's, each had attended Mrs. Shippen's; then war had taken Vidal to the Pacific and Peter to the far more perilous corridors of the Pentagon. Now, to Peter's bemusement, Vidal had dropped his Christian name and as GORE VIDAL had published a first novel; a second novel was on the way... - p. 294 [hardcover edition]." (This was in 1946.)There was also an observation in the novel about Caroline Sanford in relation to the changes wrought in Washington by the war and the Communist scare of the late 1940s, which made me pause in my reading and reflect on some remarks I heard Gore Vidal make when I saw him in person at the Smithsonian almost 15 years ago --- "... in the half century since she [Caroline Sanford] had first come upon the Washington scene, this leisurely world, hardly much different from that of John Quincy Adams, had been jolted by the First World War and the attendant corruption that war always brought; then jolted yet again by a second world war that had made the entire world, like it or not, an American responsibility." --- p. 372."Of all the novels I've read this year, the more I read "THE GOLDEN AGE", the more I enjoyed uncovering its priceless pearls of wisdom through its characters, be they of the real, historical variety or the ones that Gore Vidal created out of his fertile, inventive, and wide-ranging mind. Furthermore, he knew personally many of the historical characters he employs here (e.g., Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt), which gives "THE GOLDEN AGE" a solid and unassailable credibility. Honestly, I almost hated for this novel to end. As a Gore Vidal fan, it pains me deeply that he is no longer with us, because we are now utterly bereft without his unrivalled wisdom, wit, and knowledge of American culture and politics. (Here was a man who occupied a unique position among the first generation of post-Second World War American writers in that he grew up in Washington DC during the 1930s, the grandson of one of the first Senators from the State of Oklahoma, whom he often accompanied to Congressional meetings on the Hill and read the Congressional Record to him, due to his grandfather's blindness. Vidal's father, a West Point graduate who had been one of the Army's first aviators, served FDR for a time as an advisor on civil aviation matters.)I like to sum up my review with the following passage from the novel. (The setting takes place in 1946 in a low-ceilinged flat in Manhattan, where several artists and patrons are in attendance. Among them is Peter Sanford and two old friends from the prewar years in Washington.)"There was a round of applause for Laurence Vail, who had finally raised the sails of a miniature ship inside a bottle. 'That's my sort of ship,' said the young war novelist. [i.e. Gore Vidal]" 'I intend for us to create --- we'll include you and Cornelia if you want to come along for the ride --- America's Golden Age.' Peter was overwhelmed not only by his own megalomania but by the new world empire's untapped resources."He was promptly deflated by Vidal. 'How can you have a golden age after Roosevelt took us off the gold standard?'" 'Uranium,' said Aeneas, 'will do just as well.' "
What do You think about The Golden Age (2001)?
The Golden Age is the seventh and last in The American Chronicle series by Gore Vidal. I previously read Burr and Lincoln, both of which I enjoyed more than this novel. Gore writes of the era between 1939 and 1960. To propel the story, he creates a fictional family – the Sanford’s – and weaves their story into actual political figures and events of the era – the Roosevelt’s, Harry Hopkins, Truman, Acheson, McCarthy and others. The Sanford’s own one of Washington’s leading newspapers. Blaise Sanford is the publisher; his half-sister Caroline was a founder of the paper. She had been away from the paper for decades when she went to Hollywood to star in silent pictures, but returns to Washington right before the war. Caroline has become close to Hopkins and her interactions with Franklin and Eleanor serve to bring the historical events into the story line. Blaise’s son Peter decides not to follow his father into the newspaper business; instead, he starts his own magazine – “The American Idea” – a left-leaning commentary periodical on the politics of the time. There are portrayals through the eyes of the Sanford’s of the political conventions of 1940 and 1944 when Roosevelt sought unprecedented third and fourth terms. The atmosphere of the conventions of those days is vividly depicted, certainly in contrast to later day political processes. A minor character in post-war political ambitions is Clay Overbury, son-in-law to Blaise, who exploits his war hero image (likely fabricated) to advance his political career ruthlessly until his untimely death. Overbury is aiming for the presidency in 1960 as a competitor to Jack Kennedy.Vidal delves deeply into the build up to the war and the radically shifted American role on the world stage in the post war era. He examines the theory that Roosevelt manipulated America (at the time overwhelmingly isolationist) into war. Despite our neutrality, Roosevelt used complicated quasi-legal means to support Britain, like the lend-lease scheme that sent ships and war material to England. He also (according to the theory) pursued a series of blatantly provocative moves against Japan designed to compel them to attack America first. These theories have been expounded throughout the years and there is a ring of credibility to them. Truman’s decisions are examined from the perspective how they brought on the cold war with the Soviet Union. By exploiting the hyperbolic fixation present in the media and right-wing political circles on the Soviet’s putative intentions to dominate the world, Truman and his diplomats engendered a hostile, belligerent attitude toward the Soviets that foreclosed any possible less antagonistic relations. The rise of the extremism of McCarthyism was, in light of the overblown conceptions of the dangers posed by the Soviet Unions, a manifestation of the paranoia extant throughout the nation.The novel is the forum for Vidal to expound his conceptions of the motivations of the political figures of the time. From the jaded viewpoint of one who considers himself an insider, there is a cynical tone in his writing and the sense of the American people are utterly manipulated leaders whose self-interest plays a large part in their scheming. I found this a bit too tendentious at times and the personal intrigues of the characters a bit too much to care about. Nonetheless, understanding the figures of the times and reading a point-of-view about their motivations and decisions would make this an interesting read for anyone.
—Steve Smits
Not the best of Vidal's American Chronicle, but not bad. My husband thought it awful. He claimed the dialog was impossible to track, new characters kept jumping in without introduction, and the final 100 pages were proof of a disintegrating intellect. So I had to read it for myself, and I'm afraid I disagree on all points. The Golden Age is jammed with characters, and it does skip fairly large periods of time, so it calls for rapt attention -- or, in my case, rifling back a few pages on occasion. But Vidal spins a good tale, often with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, and this period of his Chronicle is an interesting one to which he does no harm.Is The Golden Age worth the effort? I'll give that question a lackadaisical Yes.
—Kathy Petersen
Had a strange feeling of deja vu while reading this book, which is making me think I'm getting old, because parts of it were very familiar and I was sure I had read it, but the end was completely unfamiliar to me.Anyway, Vidal puts himself in this book, both as a character and as the author, in the end conversing with his characters about inventing them.There was a melancholy air to this book which, I suspect, had more to do with Vidal's age as he wrote it, than with the subject, which further increased my feelings of ennui and made me ruminate about my own growing age (see above.)Nonetheless, it was, as usual, delightful and full of just enough truth to make you wonder about the received history you learn and to further understand the value of various viewpoints and deciding for yourself.Of course, as I have often mused, the first of those viewpoints often sets the tone for how you view the rest.It is the last of his "American series," which includes such other notable titles as "Lincoln" and "1876" and the great "Burr," which is where I started, having been assigned it in for a college course on the history of New York City.I now have, sitting my my shelf, a giant history of New York City, courtesy of my ever-watchful family, but still feel a little too intimidated.But not so much that I won't tackle that J.P. Morgan biography that stares me in the face every morning when I get up.A recent piece in Smithsonian about the photograph everyone things of when they think of Morgan has convinced me that the synchronicity is now right for reading it.
—Evan Brandt
