Washington D C - Number 6 in series (Paperback, New edition)

Mr. Vidal is an experienced novelist (although with the exception of Julian never a widely successful one) and politician; it is surprising that he should appear to be so seemingly uninterested in what he is writing here - -a fairly well accessorized if rather listless novel about that small capital compound. The view is long rather than large - extending from 1937, the moment when F.D.R. failed with his Supreme Court bill, to some fifteen years later, and it deals primarily with the rise of the publicly opportunistic, privately promiscuous Clay Overbury, from administrative assistant of an entrenched conservative (Senator Burden Day) to Representative, and on. Unless Peter Sanford, younger son of Blaise Sanford, newspaper-owning, politician-controlling millionaire, can break him. In between there has been Enid, Peter's sister who married Overbury, and whose death can be equally attributable to her father and husband (homosexual implications in this relationship); Diana, the Senator's daughter, who drifts with Peter toward more liberal achievements; etc., etc. Vidal's Washington seems to be a world where nothing has much value and everything has a price: all of his characters, except perhaps Clay Overbury, seem some-what denatured, and Peter, his reluctant hero, a non-hero rather than anti-hero, assumes his moral and temporal obligations wearily. Reciprocally we. (Kirkus Reviews)

History is gossip,' says a protagonist in Washington, D.C., 'but the trick is determining which gossip is history.' It is a trick that Gore Vidal has mastered in his ongoing chronicle of that circus of opportunism and hypocrisy called American politics and which he plays with renewed vigour in this expose of the nation's capital.Young Clay Overbury, Senator Burden Day's assistant, has both a modest background and immense ambitions. Extremely handsome, oozing charm and seemingly dedicated to the Senator's cause, he is also duplicitous, conniving, and disloyal. But Enid Canford doesn't think so: she marries him, so providing the Sanford newspaper dynasty with a direct line to the Senator. Her father Blaise, at first loathing his son-in-law, later learns to love him - for all the wrong reasons. So begins this tale of lust and ambition set in the Republic's high noon. From the late 1930s to Jo McCarthy's reign of terror, Gore Vidal charts the seamy, sleazy side of Washington. Mixing sober history with nakedly Gothic melodrama, he provides an intoxicating cocktail of blackmail, betrayal, sexual ambivalence, lunacy and conspiracy - or, in a word, politics.

General

Imprint:	Abacus
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Narratives of empire
Release date:	May 1994
Authors:	Gore Vidal
Dimensions:	196 x 124 x 28mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	416
Edition:	New edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-349-10527-7
Categories:	Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Historical fiction Promotions
LSN:	0-349-10527-8
Barcode:	9780349105277

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