All one would expect from Vidal
Gore Vidal?s take on the polemic character, Colonel Aaron Burr, provides everything one would expect from Vidal. Insight, cutting commentary and an entertaining spin on historical events. Reading this novel is like watching Muhammad Ali box; Vidal floats like a butterfly through dinner parties, the American Revolution, Constitutional debates and trans-American rail trips. The reader is, accordingly, given a panorama of the embryonic stages of the US. Interspersed amongst these beautiful flutterings are powerful stings whereby, in the matter of one page, Vidal uses the written word as a weapon striking a decisive blow against the hypocrisy of Jefferson and Hamilton. The rogue, Burr, emerges from this novel as the one truly noble figure of the Old Republic. The Vidalesque poetic license of the closing remark forces one to go back over the story in a manner only Vidal can compel.
