6/5/2023 0 Comments Gore vidal burr review![]() Of this last contingency Vidal leaves little doubt Seward ends his reverie by debating "whether or not the gallows should be placed at the east or the west end of the Capitol." But Seward gets off lightly, compared to Salmon Chase, who is cast as a devious, hymnsinging monomaniac, or Mary Lincoln, portrayed as a mad, spendthrift virago. ![]() Their mission is to dissolve the Congress, disperse its members, arrest Senator Wade and the other "Jacobins," try them, and execute them if convicted. William Seward, for example, daydreams of sending a detachment of troops to surround the Capitol. When he resorts to invention in Lincoln, it is often to illustrate this theme. Vidal has a jaundiced view of politicians, whom he sees in the main as ambitious and ruthless schemers. ![]() It is also, despite the familiarity of the material, the best and most interesting of the lot. Of Vidal's four novels of historical "faction" set in the United States (the others being Washington, D.C., Burr, and 1876), Lincoln has the highest ratio of fact to fiction. $19.95.) "All of the principal characters really existed," writes Gore Vidal in an Afterword to Lincoln, "and they said and did pretty much what I have them saying and doing." This is true, to a point. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:īOOK REVIEWS Lincoln. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |