Yet for all this documentary authenticity, how alive and immediate everything Right places, on the right dates, doing what the actually did" and the conversations, though partly made up, always reflect the recorded views of the speakers.
Vidal assures us, "could, obviously, be based on no one at all") as for the actual historical figures who appear in the novel-only in three minor cases are they not "in the Vidal identifies in his Afterword as "based roughly on the obscure novelist Charles Burdett" the other is one William de la Touche Clancey, a "Tory sodomite" with a tongue that "darts in and out of his mouth likeĪ lizard's catching flies," who, Mr. Vidal has managed to stick to the actual historical record-only two of his characters are invented (one is Charles Schuyler, a law clerk and aspiring journalist who is the primary narrator of "Burr," and whom Mr. Vidal gives us an interpretation of our early history that says in effect that all the old verities were never much to begin with. History when all the old verities are beginning to seem hollow, Mr. Ow diabolically well-timed is the appearance of Gore Vidal's latest novel, "Burr" just at this most disillusioning moment in American
OctoBack to the First Principals By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
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