Volume 50, Number 20 · December 18, 2003
A Tract for the Times
By Edmund S. Morgan
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson
by Gore Vidal
Yale University Press, 198 pp., $22.00
BOOKS BY GORE VIDAL REFERRED TO IN THIS REVIEW
Washington, D.C.
by Gore Vidal
(1967)Vintage,422 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Burr
by Gore Vidal
(1973)Vintage, 430 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Lincoln
by Gore Vidal
(1984)Vintage,657 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays, 1952–1972
by Gore Vidal
(1972)Random House, 449 pp. (out of print)
The Last Empire: Essays, 1992–2000
by Gore Vidal
(2001)Vintage,465 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
by Gore Vidal
(2002)Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books, 160 pp., $10.00 (paper)
Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta
by Gore Vidal
(2002)Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books, 197 pp., $11.95 (paper)
Gore Vidal occupies a unique position among American men of letters. By birth and social position he is an insider, given to invoking his personal relationships with the rich, the well-born, and the famous: the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, Anaïs Nin, Norman Mailer, Anthony Burgess. The afterword to this new book explains how it grew from a long-ago conversation about the Founding Fathers with President Kennedy, whom he addresses as 'dear Jack' (Vidal and Jacqueline Kennedy had the same stepfather). Vidal's insider status gives an edge to his critical assessments when he steps outside the circle to scrutinize what his friends have been up to. His judgment of the Kennedys in 1967 as 'the Holy Family' was that they devoted themselves too exclusively to appearances, the President no less than the others:
Review, 3206 words
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