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A review by mubeenirfan
Burr by Gore Vidal
3.0
Founding father of the USA meet House of Cards.
We always have this preconceived notion in our mind about the founder(s) of a country. Like how they had ideals about how our country should be and how they must not have engaged in any petty politics as it was beneath them. Fact is, politics is dirty. What happens when you get your country? Do you let it be run by people around you just because they might be better rulers/administrators or have better fundamentals? Or do you do whatever is necessary to seize power because deep down inside you wanted that fame and glory and those were the primary reasons you fought for the independence?
Washington was an incompetent general who never carried the day on battlefield. Hamilton and Jefferson did not see eye to eye and both were more or less discarded from politics. Hamilton was killed in a duel with Burr and President Jefferson then falsely implicated Burr in a treason case, tried to limit the powers of independent judiciary and more or less established a Virginia dynasty over early US politics. These are all the nasty details of USA's founding fathers and probably not talked about because of the sanctity associated with them. American public keeps hearing about the ideals and principles of the founding fathers. I have a sense they might not be ideals worth following after all.
This novel reads like a classic English novel making the writing dense which is the reason it is 3 and not 4 stars.
We always have this preconceived notion in our mind about the founder(s) of a country. Like how they had ideals about how our country should be and how they must not have engaged in any petty politics as it was beneath them. Fact is, politics is dirty. What happens when you get your country? Do you let it be run by people around you just because they might be better rulers/administrators or have better fundamentals? Or do you do whatever is necessary to seize power because deep down inside you wanted that fame and glory and those were the primary reasons you fought for the independence?
Washington was an incompetent general who never carried the day on battlefield. Hamilton and Jefferson did not see eye to eye and both were more or less discarded from politics. Hamilton was killed in a duel with Burr and President Jefferson then falsely implicated Burr in a treason case, tried to limit the powers of independent judiciary and more or less established a Virginia dynasty over early US politics. These are all the nasty details of USA's founding fathers and probably not talked about because of the sanctity associated with them. American public keeps hearing about the ideals and principles of the founding fathers. I have a sense they might not be ideals worth following after all.
This novel reads like a classic English novel making the writing dense which is the reason it is 3 and not 4 stars.