Lincoln - Number 2 in series (Paperback, New Ed)

As if to balance the flighty vileness of the lamentable Duluth (1983), Vidal follows it up with his most sober, unfanciful historical novel yet: a thick, competent, modestly imaginative portrait of Lincoln as President. A few fictional people from other Vidal novels (Burr, 1876) appear here - but only very briefly. The principals are all history-book figures (and their families); no bold irreverences or revisionisms occur. The Civil War-fare and the crucial issues (war finance, habeas corpus, etc.) are conscientiously documented; the dialogue relating to major events sometimes has the flat, corny quality of old Hollywood film-bios. ("Now that we've got the victory we've been waiting for, I can issue my proclamation of emancipation.") Still, if much of this workup is on only an intelligent-journeyman level, Vidal does create a nice triangular tension in the novel's major focus: a Lincoln poised between two ambitious, shrewd politicos - abolitionist Salmon Chase, expansionist Wm. Seward - who want to be Prez (or PM), who consistently underestimate Lincoln's abilities. Treasury Secretary Chase sees Abe as wishy-washy, "often weakly firm - or firmly weak," especially on the slave question (Lincoln favors relocation of blacks outside the US); egged on by beloved daughter Kate, Chase lusts for the White House, with backing from rich "boy governor" William Sprague IV (whom Kate will lovelessly marry). Secretary of State Seward sees Abe as a figurehead, laments his rough-edged rhetoric. (At the Inauguration, "Lincoln made a perfect hash of Seward's most splendid peroration.") But, as Vidal concentrates on President/Cabinet interplay, Lincoln savvily counters Chase's finaglings, dazzles Seward with his "political genius. He had been able to make himself absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything more than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer." Meanwhile, less distinctively: the Booth conspiracy is followed, mostly through little-known (neatly fictionalized) David Herold; the First Lady, at first refreshingly brisk, is seen in spendthrift/crazed modes; the President deals with the generals (Grant is at least "not like any of the others"); Presidential secretary John Hay visits D.C.'s brothels; Abe tells those cute stories (because "there is so much you cannot say"); and, after Lincoln is assassinated, Hay believes that he "had willed his own murder as a form of atonement" for the bloody Civil War. Without depth or freshness in the central sketch: a solid, educational piece of fact/fiction craftsmanship, occasionally flickering into novelistic life. (Kirkus Reviews)

In the hazardous fictional terrain of his historical novels, Gore Vidal is never especially kind to American history in general, or to its icons in particular. Yet in this brilliantly realised study of Abraham Lincoln, he paints a surprising and near-heroic picture of the man who led America through four of the most divisive and dangerous years of the nation’s history. Observed alternately by his loved ones, his rivals and his future assassins, Lincoln at first appears as an inept and naïve backwoods lawyer. People in this novel are not averse to turning up, getting drunk, and regaling the reader with details of Lincoln’s whoring activities and his seemingly inexhaustible supply of folksy stories. Yet gradually Lincoln the towering leader of deep vision emerges in a Washington engulfed by fear, greed and the horrors of the Civil War. Lincoln’s loving but mentally decomposing wife, his view from the White House on slavery and America’s bloodiest war, and his own, fierce personal ambition: all are portrayed with a vibrancy and an urgency that almost belies what they have now become ? history itself.
 

General

Imprint:	Abacus
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Narratives of empire
Release date:	April 1994
Authors:	Gore Vidal
Dimensions:	198 x 134 x 36mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	736
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-349-10530-7
Categories:	Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Historical fiction Promotions
LSN:	0-349-10530-8
Barcode:	9780349105307

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