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Burr

by Edgar Box

Summary

Gore Vidal's 1973 novel in the guise of a memoir of Burr's life is told with plenty of gossipy detail. Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, an ambitious journalist, is writing an anonymous pamphlet to prove that Martin Van Buren (Jackson's vice-president) is the bastard son of Aaron Burr. Schuyler wants not to harm Burr, but to ruin Van Buren. (As Vidal famously said, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.") Burr, thinking that Schuyler is writing a biography, gives him a memoir. The novel combines Schuyler's point of view with Burr's own memoir, and during the course of the double narrative, Schuyler discovers the truth about Van Buren-and about himself. Charlie Schuyler also appears in Vidal's novels LINCOLN and 1876.

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Media Reviews

"When Aaron Burr appears as a hedonist, ...a gifted will-o-the-wisp who is (in his own eyes) his own best friend, he is a diverting creature. But Vidal-Burr, the personage who is writing an implausible apologia pro vita sua, and who pulls everybody down to somewhere below his own level, is not only mischievous, but often morose and usually redundant. The two live side by side, so that one is tempted to suggest that the novel is intended as the study of a split personality. As the last chapter convincingly demonstrates, however, it is far, far better when it is simply being a fantasy-a demonstration that comes to late to save the novel's reputation."    -- George Dangerfield

   -- New York Times Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published date: 1989
Size: 4.25 x 7 inches
Weight: 0.6 pounds

Publisher's Notes

A hero of the American Revolution, Aaron Burr (1756-1836) served as vice president under Thomas Jefferson, took the life of Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, and was later tried for treason when Jefferson accused him of plotting to make an empire of his own in the western territories. Told partly by Aaron Burr at the end of his long life and partly by a young journalist in whom Burr confides, this brilliantly imagined memoir, based on fact, is an enormously engaging work of fiction that treats the political intrigues of the new United States as if they were today's headlines.

Other Editions

• Paperback Reissue - Ballantine Books (1989) - from $1.00
• Hardcover - Random House Inc (1973) - from $1.00

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