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
|
LSN: |
0-349-10527-8 |
Barcode: |
9780349105277 |
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