Word: sanfords
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Near the conclusion of Gore Vidal's "Washington, D.C." (1967), a political thriller spanning the years 1937-52, the novel's hero, Peter Sanford, expresses irritable despair at the human condition as he has observed it in his treacherous hometown: "There was never a golden age. There will never be a golden age and it is sheer romance to think we can ever be other than what we are now." Now, 33 years later, Sanford pops up again as the protagonist of another Vidal novel, set in the same place and roughly the same time, and readers familiar with...
...Irony is unAmerican," a character in The Golden Age (Doubleday; 467 pages; $27.50) warns Sanford, and that comment is, of course, intended ironically as well. But the novel completes a very American literary project that, for all its various humors, Vidal takes seriously indeed: a fictional history of the U.S. as portrayed through the conduct, mostly bad, of its elected leaders. This best-selling saga started with "Washington, D.C." and continued with "Burr" (1973), "1876" (1976), "Lincoln" (1984), "Empire" (1987) and "Hollywood" (1990). "The Golden Age" wraps up the long story and includes a flash-forward to earlier this year...
...himself. That is why his sympathy in his political novels goes out to history's losers, starting with Burr - betrayed, in Vidal's retelling, by the coldly ambitious Thomas Jefferson - all the way up to Adlai Stevenson, who twice played Hamlet to Dwight D. Eisenhower's Henry V. "Yes," Sanford notes in "The Golden Age," "he couldn't make up his mind but at least he had one to make...
...company, to be known as J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., into an elite group of American mega-banks in competition with rivals in Europe as well as Japan. "The U.S. has the world's largest capital markets, and dollars are used everywhere," explains Ron Mandle, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "This deal helps consolidate America's role at the epicenter of global finance...
DIED. CORY ERVING, 19, son of basketball legend Julius ("Dr. J") Erving; in Sanford, Fla. Missing since May 28, he was found in his car at the bottom of a pond less than a mile from home. The cause of death was not immediately determined...