Reading Note: Gore Vidal's Burr

For preservation's sake, below are reading notes - the introductory salvo for a dialogue which never occurred.
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What are we to make of this novel? This work of "historical" "fiction", two terms who rest so uneasily together that I can't even fit them into the same set of quotation marks? What does this book mean? What does it say? Does the one overlap with the other? Is truth stranger than fiction? Is fiction a stranger to truth?

Personally, I'm inclined to read Burr first and foremost as a novel. In it's opening passage, the book presents us not with itself, as a book, but with a historical document, a purported excerpt from the pages of the New York Evening Post written in the salacious tone of the gossip pages. A wealth of factual information economically relayed, with suggestive parentheticals bulging out of nearly every sentence. It sets the mood, bringing us into the randy world of broadside broadsheets that has always marked the nation's celebrity/political discourse.

But this newsprint curtain lifts just after the turning of the page, and our narrator steps forth, inviting us past the foyer of caricatures and cartoons, and into the world of fleshly people. We're not sitting on a streetcorner in New York reading the scandal sheet. We're sitting under the eaves of the Jumel family manse, with "all that aged flesh commingled" just above our heads.

We meet Charlie Schuyler, the cynical poet with the witty pen, the smutty mind, and the sharp eye who is going to introduce us to Aaron Burr, the man he is paid to serve and is paid to destroy. We are here to observe Aaron Burr, but through frosted glass, as Gore Vidal channels Charlie Schuyler channeling Aaron Burr. Can we trust Aaron Burr's narrative of himself? Can we trust Charlie Schuyler's narrative of Aaron Burr? Can we trust Gore Vidal's narrative of Charlie Schuyler? What are they here to tell us? Are they even here to tell us of themselves, or do they speak to something larger?

The America of Burr strikes me as a marvellous accident of arrogance, venality, and incompetence. Every founding father is marred by a flaw, a faultline running across their dignified exterior and penetrating deeply into the fundamental core of the statesman or general. Washington is an unsightly figure with "the hips, buttocks, and bosom of a woman", "no experience of modern warfare," an "expression...grave, but somewhat vacant." Washington, the man, despite these indignities is propelled to power on the force of back-handed virtues. Despite his incompetence, "at least he looked like a general." "it was his genius always to look the part he was called upon to play." Even in victory, Washington remains a failure. At Monmouth Courthouse, "the plan to interecept them had entirely failed; and we sustained heavy casualties for nothing."

Jefferson is cowardly, promiscuous, and vain. "it was Jefferson who was the heretic, and Montesquieu the true believer in democracy." (p. 158) "It was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers." (160) "he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power." (202) "Jefferson's behavior was like that of a woman who has decided to destroy the man - or rather the men... - who spurned her." (359)

The political genius is one of appearance rather than substance. Hamilton, the bastard nobility, "realized better than anyone that the world - our American world at least - loves a canting hypocrite." (p. 270) Hamilton "realized from the beginning that only through politics could he make the United States the sort of aristocratic pond in which he would most like to swim and glitter." (149) On pg. 54 Burr suggests the presence of a flaw, wondering if Hamilton "saw the flaw in me as I saw the one in him?" But what that flaw might be remains opaque. Burr "alone had the means and talent to be what [Hamilton] most wanted to be, the president." "He was envious, I was not."

By way of contrast, Burr was a man of substance, nearly propelled to his proper height, but somehow denied the prize. "Of all the new republic's political leaders, I was the most reluctant." (p. 149) Burr's successes and failures are endowed with a strange passivity. On p. 53, "I hurled Hamilton from the mountain-side, and myself fell." His "political career began, properly" through the pressures of Geroge Clinton. "He offered me the attorney-generalship of the state, a position I did not want. But pressure was brought to bear on me." (p. 150) Upon the election of 1800, Burr solemnly declares "let it be said once and for all, I would have refused the presidency on the practical ground (putting aside honour like a Virginian) that it was plainly the sense of the people of the United States that Jefferson be the president" (224). In their infamous duel, Burr places his trust in fate. "Hamilton fired first." (269) "I could do nothing but what I did. Aim to kill, and kill." (270) On the decision to invade Mexico, Burr reveals "I was sketpical. Jamie overrode me." (281)

His failures are always conveniently crafted by the flaws of those who surround him. In the battle of Quebec, "had the men followed me and met with Arnold's troops... Canada would today be a part of the United States." (50) But of course, "due to the untimely death of Montgomery, the cowardice of Campbell, the defection of Enos, we failed." (50) "It should be noted that my plan to harass Staten Island was finally accepted by Washington, who entrusted the task to our drunken general, the Scots peer Lord Stirling. Not knowing the terrain, he failed." (89) At Monmouth Courthouse, "I gave the order for attack... but fate interevened.... we lost, fatally, the initiative, thanks to Lee's abrupt withdrawal and to Washington's refusal to do more than make a perfunctory feint at the British position." (95)

As he ages, it is not his common sense confounded by the foolishness of his superiors, but his virtue confounded by the venality of his competitors. Of the duel, "I did not realize with what cunning Hamilton had prepared his departure from this world, and my ruin." (266) Of the election, "I made no move to gain the presidence. I behaved honourably and, as Theodosia foretold, I have regretted it all my life." (226) His plot, "I ought to have been more suspicous of Jamie than I was. But I could not, simply, take him seriously. No one could. That is how he came to deceive Washington, Hamilton and me, not to mention any number of other Spanish and American potentates, military and civilian." (281)

And yet, in spite of all his sweet demurral, Burr is a relentless opportunist. He crafts deceitful opportunity at the slightest convenience. He marries Jumel to finance his plot against Mexico, plays Federalists against Republicans, mocks, scorns, deceives, and manipulates. Burr MAKES his world, but in the doing of it, not in the narration. Elevating illegitimate children to the highest posts of power, bringing himself within grasping distance of empire and power. He tells us a story with remarkable bluntness and candor, offering forthrightly the stories of dalliances and escapades... opinions of historical figures unvarnished with condescension to "official" mythology. Burr hides in plain sight, like any true magician, drawing our eyes to the color while pulling away the source of his true motives. Even the novel itself culminates in the sudden drawing of the rabbit out of the hat, a proof that all Burr's force is, at root, motive.

Vidal chooses to open his afterword with a dubious claim against "traditional" history, which is evidence of ignorance or disingenousness, claiming that he's reserved "the right not only to rearrange events but, most important, to attribute motive - something the conscientous historian or biographers ought never do." (429) Leaving aside the falseness of this charge against history, this claim is highly dubious. Burr is presented, in his own words. But are those words meant to be seen as truth? Burr renders a narrative of staggering accomplishment propelled by incredible passivity. Schuyler's own life, his cynical manipulation of his connection to Burr and the import of that relationship for contemporary politics, similarly portrays himself as a hapless pawn who coincidentally but opportunistically brings in the bacon. And Vidal too drapes his narrative in the pacifying net of "history" to obscure his motive, his larger claim against America... his POLITICAL charge, disguised as historical fact.

I think this is a fascinating novel. I think Schuyler is a fascinating character. I suspect I see Vidal's motives, and at last I think I perceive Vidal the Polemicist, lurking below the pages of Vidal the Novelist.