Word: burrs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Gore Vidal can leave Benedict Arnold alone, but he can not restrain himself from trying to polish the tarnished reputation of his maternal ancestor Burr. He does not try to turn Burr into a hero, but he does attempt to make him into something less two dimensional than the flip side of a coin. For this day and age, Vidal's attempt constitutes a rehabilitation of Burr. No one tries to write Parson Weems-type historical fiction anymore: larger-than-life heroes like Washington are no longer very appealing. To turn a villian into a hero of today's world...
BENEDICT ARNOLD'S classical treason and Aaron Burr's sinister plotting are as integral a part of American tradition as Nathan Hale's martyrdom or Benjamin Franklin's diplomacy. Arnold and Burr are the flip side of the historical coin, and to try to turn either into a hero seems a thankless task...
...there is any point in rehabilitating Burr this book does not make it, but since Burr is a historical novel rather than a learned defense of an ex-vice president of the United States, its failure in interpreting the period is incidental. Burr remains what he was--Revolutionary War hero, New York lawyer, vice president, Alexander Hamilton's murderer, Western adventurer, exile, and New York lawyer again. Burr concentrates on the public events in Burr's life--making numerous and obligatory bows toward his home life, but never really exploring it with the exception of one grotesque incident late...
...Burr's most savage bites come out of Thomas Jefferson, portrayed as a coward who sat out the Revolution in Virginia, an "exuberant mediocrity in the arts," a household tinkerer who is almost killed by one of his hideaway beds, and a grand hypocrite who spouted humanist theory but kept and sexually exploited slaves...
...this Vidal has at least been faithful to the content, style and tone of Burr's own writing. The kinship of author and subject goes beyond elegant barbs at the high and mighty. Vidal seems especially appreciative of Burr's almost classical stoic outlook, a view reflected in Vidal's own works. Yet the question remains, why read a kind of digest of the life of Aaron Burr when there are sympathetic biographies and Burr's own letters and diaries available? The answer: Most of us will not take the trouble. In the interests of Burrian...