Vidal’s Washington novels began as scribbling. Alexandria as the infinitely disenchanted capital of Old Egypt, that is not Washington’s bedroom suburb. Now we are treated to the table talk and table manners of Teddy Roosevelt, William McKinley, William Randolph Hearst and the two Henrys: Adams and James along with Vidal’s Alexandrian notions of what they all represented. Blennerhasset-footnotes as well as Big Feet-Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, John Hay, William Cullen Bryant in their historical pajamas. We had met Washington, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, Col. In “Empire,” just published, he goes back for a missing chunk: the expansionist years of the Spanish American War and Manifest Destiny. In his fictional re-creations of our nation’s political life-”Burr,” “Lincoln,” “1876,” “Washington D.C.”-Vidal first-named his way from the Revolution and the Jackson era, to the Civil War, to the robber-baron Gilded Age, to a stretch running from the later New Deal into the McCarthy days. As mentor, Vidal has reservations about his protege.
Gore Vidal and History are on breezy first-name terms, but there is a trickle of irritation underneath.
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