A review by peggyluwho
Burr by Gore Vidal
5.0
5 out of 5 dueling pistols
This is one of my all-time favorite books and was the first novel that made me love historical fiction and how it makes me curious about the factual history that lays beneath it by making it into a story where gaps and questions we will likely never have an answer to are filled in. I enjoy Vidal’s writing, it’s accessible to me and just stylized enough. I like the device of a book-within-a- book as it is employed here but generally am a fan. It obviously doesn’t shy away from some of the less than pleasant realities of the time period, such as slavery, racism, and sexism, but I didn’t read any of it as an endorsement of the prevailing opinions of the time or apologetics. If anything, one of the things about this book that I liked was that it humanized historical figures who are frequently put on a pedestal, the “Founding Fathers”, and showed them with all their glorious flaws on display. It pokes holes in the mythology that they were all interested in government by the masses and that they were unanimously and wholeheartedly committed to democracy. Plots to colonize to the east and south of the United States and install new monarchies were not a thing that I was taught in history classes throughout my childhood, but I did learn about from this book. I took Burr as a starting point and was able to investigate the history further to find out more about not just Aaron Burr, but many of his contemporaries. At the same time, I was entertained.
This is one of my all-time favorite books and was the first novel that made me love historical fiction and how it makes me curious about the factual history that lays beneath it by making it into a story where gaps and questions we will likely never have an answer to are filled in. I enjoy Vidal’s writing, it’s accessible to me and just stylized enough. I like the device of a book-within-a- book as it is employed here but generally am a fan. It obviously doesn’t shy away from some of the less than pleasant realities of the time period, such as slavery, racism, and sexism, but I didn’t read any of it as an endorsement of the prevailing opinions of the time or apologetics. If anything, one of the things about this book that I liked was that it humanized historical figures who are frequently put on a pedestal, the “Founding Fathers”, and showed them with all their glorious flaws on display. It pokes holes in the mythology that they were all interested in government by the masses and that they were unanimously and wholeheartedly committed to democracy. Plots to colonize to the east and south of the United States and install new monarchies were not a thing that I was taught in history classes throughout my childhood, but I did learn about from this book. I took Burr as a starting point and was able to investigate the history further to find out more about not just Aaron Burr, but many of his contemporaries. At the same time, I was entertained.