”In the half-light of the cemetery, Burr did resemble the devil--assuming that the devil is no more than five foot six (an inch shorter than I), slender, with tiny feet (hooves?), high forehead (in the fading light I imagine vestigial horns), bald in front with hair piled high on his head, powdered absently in the old style, and held in place with a shell comb. Behind him is a monument to the man he murdered.”

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Aaron Burr

Aaron Burr is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating figures in American history. He cuts his own swath, leaving a wake behind him that rocks the tender foundations of this newly minted country. He is honorable and dishonorable in equal measure. He is a highly skilled lawyer (he will need those skills to defend himself) and an accomplished politician. Today, he is not as well known as Benedict Arnold, but in a series of events that are more lurid than the plot of a dime novel, he nearly supersedes Arnold as the most loathed man in America.

It is hard to believe that this controversial figure was nearly the third President of the United States. In 1800, one of those pivotal years in politics, Burr makes a deal with Thomas Jefferson to allow him to be president if he insures that Burr will be made vice president. Burr can bring the key New York votes to Jefferson. Interestingly enough, in the first ballot, they tie 73-73. With the way we venerate Jefferson (with a few reservations about his association with Sally Hemings), it is interesting to think about how close he comes to NOT being the third President of the United States. Really only because Burr upheld his promise, one of those times when Burr was maybe too honorable, did Jefferson achieve his ambition (though he insists in true Cincinnatus style that he never desired the Presidency).

The Aaron Burr of this story is really a surrogate for the wicked wit of Gore Vidal. I’d like to think that Burr was exactly how Vidal portrayed, the enigma of charm and enticing, irreverent behavior. His observations on the founding fathers is frankly hilarious. He describes George Washington’s ”womanly hips” and other aspects of his character that are even less flattering. What did he think of Jefferson? ”Meanwhile, I presided over the Senate. I also dined quite frequently with the President who continued to delight and fascinate me with his conversation, not to mention his wonderful malice which was positively Shakespearean in its variety.”

Or how about a description of an older Jefferson after two terms in the presidency.

”The smile was a swift baring of yellow teeth; the lips were gray tending to blue where most men are pink or red. I suppose it was the winter season that made him look like the last ashes of a once-fierce fire---soft, fine, white, no trace remaining of the foxy, red-haired man he had been save for the tarnished bronze of freckles.”

Ahh, yes, Mr. Vidal, you can most definitely write.

This story is told through the eyes of Charles Schuyler (not of the prominent New York Dutch family, unfortunately), a young writer who has been granted access to Burr because Burr has taken a shine to him. We learn in the later chapters exactly why Burr was so forthcoming with the young lad. Charles is there to listen to the Burr stories, write them down, and organize them into some semblance of a biography. Burr cautions the reader, or is that Vidal? ”My side of the story is not, necessarily, the accurate one. But you flatter me. And I like that!” Burr is in his 70s and has weathered more than his share of scandals. He is more interested in not being forgotten than he is in being venerated. Bad press will work as well or better than good press. Even on the social front, he is rather debonair about potential impropriety. ”Whenever a woman does me the honour of saying that I am father to her child, I gracefully acknowledge the compliment and disguise any suspicion that I might have to the contrary.”

A true gentleman, and yet; somehow still a cad!!!

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I love this badass statue of Aaron Burr at the Museum of American Finance.

Vidal explores his growing conflict with Alexander Hamilton, which escalates under the spidery web of insinuations that Jefferson glibly whispers in the ears of those around him. Burr is defined by this brief moment in time, involving two pistol shots, leaving one mortally wounded and immortalized and the other disreputed and, in many measures, driven to more desperate acts when he finds himself on the run out West. Those actions lead to the term “treason” being associated with him, but really it is more about making him pay for the death of Hamilton.

Vidal also explores the spurious comments that were made about President Martin Van Buren’s parentage. Politics have certainly reached a new low with our most recent election, but have no delusions; there was mud slinging, eye gouging, malicious slander, ankle biting, and generally unseemly behavior from the very beginning of our country.

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n  Gore Vidal looking very dapper in 1972.n

Vidal takes us behind the scenes and shows us a more tarnished view of the Founding Fathers. At times this book is irreverent, but under the guise of Burr’s memories, one does wonder if this isn’t closer to the truth than the idealized version of history we are spoon fed with the American flag draped over our shoulders and the Statue of Liberty sitting rather provocatively in our laps.

I chuckled. I giggled. I gasped. The book is serious though. I don’t want to leave people with the impression that it is farcical or a spoof. Vidal does his research. He considered adding the long list of sources that he read and consulted to write this book for he wanted to stay out of the range of the rabid politicos who would not necessarily appreciate his interpretations of history. He elected to let them say what they will in true Aaron Burr fashion. Highly Recommended to those that want to experience an alternative view of our venerated Founders.

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I am guessing that Vidal wanted to do some sort of send up of our normally romantic images of the Founding Fathers and chose the least sympathetic of them with which to do it. And then achieved his goal.

My favourite moment in the novel occurs when Burr has gone for dinner to Monticello, and he and Jefferson are walking afterwards. Burr sees a young child, obviously Jefferson's grandson, precariously playing in a tree and says, "Your grandson is about to fall." At which Jefferson blushes and says it is one of the children of the plantation workers.

When the novel was published in 1973 it was still not accepted history that Jefferson fathered children through his slaves, so this must have been quite diabolical fun for the first readers. I still enjoyed it.

I now want to read more about Burr, as I know little about him. And also about some of the other figures in this book, which, while telling the stories from Burr's earlier years, is set in the 1830's as the founding generation is dying. I'd like to know more about that second and third generation.

The novel illustrates how for many of the young men of the founding generation, ideological commitment to republican ideals was not necessarily the driving force. Many were ambitious and adventurous and admired Napoleon. Here they were in a wide-open new continent filled with possibilities. It was their dream to conquer Mexico, establish Texas, maybe even California!

In this novel Washington comes across as an incompetent, ambitious dullard, Adams as petty, Jefferson as malicious, Monroe as deceptive, Madison as unfaithful, etc. In the afterward, Vidal states that he does not share Burr's opinions of all the characters, but that he, of course, had to write from the opinion of Burr.

If you like Founding Father biographies, but want a fun, quick read that satirizes those, then I recommend this book.

The research was impeccable. You almost like one of the biggest villains of American History. You get the other side that is rarely afforded you since the winners write history, but this is fiction. It gets tedious at times and was hard to finish, The author is a great writer, but this one falls flat. The idea was a good one just there is something missing.

I once read that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the erstwhile presidential candidate, said that once upon a time she had been a Democrat, even working for the election of Jimmy Carter. However, while riding on a train one day, she experienced a political conversion while reading Gore Vidal’s novel, "Burr."

According to Rep. Bachmann, she became so upset with the way Vidal depicted our Founding Fathers – mocking them, she said – that she dropped the book onto her lap and said to herself, “I must be a Republican.”

I have owned two copies of that novel for years, and though I have read all of Vidal’s other historical novels, somehow I had never gotten around to reading this one. But after reading how it had exerted such a great impact on Rep. Bachmann’s life (and she didn't even finish the book!), I decided that I had to read it – and right away. After all, it might change my life, too.

And now I have read it.

If I had the opportunity to discuss the book with her, I would try to make the following points:

1). The author is the late Gore Vidal. He always went over the top in everything he said and everything he wrote, fiction or nonfiction. Always provocative, he was very much prone to exaggeration, even when his point was a valid one.

2). The book is written from the viewpoint of Aaron Burr. The man was a self-promoting scalawag. While he was vice-president of the United States, he shot and killed the very first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. President Thomas Jefferson later accused him of treason against the United States. He was prosecuted by the federal government, but was acquitted.

Since the book tells the story from Burr’s viewpoint and presents his version of these events, it should come as no surprise that it places him in the best possible light and Hamilton and Jefferson in the worst possible lights. (Vidal even admitted in the afterword that he had a higher opinion of Jefferson than Burr did, and a lower opinion of Andrew Jackson.)

3). The book is a work of fiction – not history.

I am sorry to report that after reading this book, I have experienced no political conversion, no epiphany, and have reached no life-altering conclusions. None. Not yet.

A historical novel written from the point of view of Aaron Burr. Interesting to see another side of events. Revolutionary giants like Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton come off in a whole different light.

I'm trying. I really am. My brother and SIL really loved this book, but I'm finding it irritating.

In all fairness, I'm stuck about 50 pages in and reluctant to continue.

I don't like any of the characters, and when that's the case, it's hard for me to like a book (or movie or play). I have to have someone to root for. The clerk/narrator is stupid and superfluous. Everybody is smug and droll to the point of Oscar Wilde.

Now, there are memoir portions of the book in which Aaron Burr relates, via letter or diary, to the clerk some of his history. Those I lke. Brother assures me the book eventually becomes about 70% memoir, so perhaps I will grow to appreciate it more.

I decided that I needed to read Gore Vidal’s ‘Burr’ in part because of my respect for the author’s fiction (viz my reading of ‘Julian’ and ‘Myra Breckenridge’), and in part because of my love for the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical ‘Hamilton’. I was intrigued by the opportunity of engaging with a different take on a key figure of American popular history and cultural imagination.

On the whole I was very happy reading this book. The text in another self is a rather sprawling and vastly populated farrago of a story where the narrator, Charles Schuyler, tries to navigate the twin streams of Burr’s life and early American politics. To Vidal’s credit he succeeds in making both Schuyler and Burr most engaging characters. The former has a curious mix of naïveté and cynicism that does well to reflect the potential character of a young man trying to forge his own intellectual and social identity. The latter is a surprisingly loveable and garrulous old rogue who seems both too honest and too dishonest to be admired.

That the novel is written with an energy and accuracy of observance is another point in its favour. A long story, ‘Burr’ does not suffer from narrative lethargy. Vidal is very adept at keeping the fiction flowing thanks to his searching story of American politics and society. The author creates a vivid and interesting picture of a youthful Republic going through all the growing pains of a nation still trying to work out how it became to be and what it is to become. ‘Burr’ is just as much a political history as it is a fictional biography.

I was pleased to see that Vidal took quite a different path to Miranda re his characterisation of Burr and Hamilton, adding complexity and nuance to my appreciation of both creators’ works of fiction. It is most interesting to see both these writers find significant fault with the character and politics of Thomas Jefferson, though from very different positions. Vidal’s Jefferson is far less admirable than the icon of American patriotism as idolised by many today.

Vidal has also written a very literary novel that still maintains the qualities of more popular fiction. The prose is almost always clear and digestible, the supporting characters more rounded than caricatures. Sometimes the historical references get in the way of clarity however these minor hurdles can be leapt over quickly enough thanks to the energy of Vidal’s writing. There is also an earthiness, a humanity to the characters that Vidal does well to portray; there are no virtuous heroes or simplistic villains herein. ‘Burr’ is populated by a panoply of complex and contradictory visions of real figures. Sometimes tragic, often comic, always interesting.

In summary I would heartily recommend ‘Burr’ to anyone who is interested in American history and/or historical novels. It certainly should be read by anyone who loves ‘Hamilton’. ‘Burr’ is a highly rewarding and substantial book from one of the most imposing and creative American intellectuals of the last 100 years.

The founding generation are often written about in a hagiographic way— the philosopher-statesmen who seamlessly and gloriously shaped the American republic. This kind of discourse often flattens the complexities of the era, the bitter rivalries between many of the founders, and the contentious development of the American state. This all comes into full view in one of Gore Vidal’s best novels, the second of his “Narratives of Empire,” Burr (1973). As the title notes, it is a quasi-biographical novel on the life and works of Aaron Burr, former Senator of New York, Vice President, and historical pariah of the early republic. Like with many of his novels, this one is written in an epistolary style, bouncing between Burr’s own “memoirs” and the narrative of Charles Schuyler, the young, impressionable newspaper reporter who is tasked with learning all he can about the elusive former veep.

You see the American Revolution through Burr’s eyes, as a young officer during the war of independence, with a particular focus on George Washington. Burr offers to his readers a more nuanced position on the patriarch from Mount Vernon; in effect, he was at many moments a lousy general who almost gave victory to the British. You learn about the multi-faceted (and at times inveterate liar) Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “all men are created equal,” yet enslaved people, some of which were his own illegitimate children with the enslaved Sally Hemmings. And, of course, his long-standing rivalry with Alexander Hamilton, ending with Burr’s shooting of the former Treasury Secretary in a duel while Burr was the sitting Vice President. It all culminates in Burr’s failed attempt at a coup in the west, defying President Jefferson (who Burr helped to elect) and the “Virginia junto” in Washington, D.C. Through it all, Burr never served time for his deeds and lived well into his eighties, a man out of time and out of plans.

This novel is classic Vidal, showing all the hallmarks of his mature work— tight, engaging prose, keen historical scholarship, and a biting, aphoristic wit that leaves you smiling throughout its 400-plus pages. It is an essential read from this essential American author.

Excellent read. I'm from Israel so most of the people depicted in this book were either unknown to me or names I heard in other context and never read fully about.
I heard about Gore Vidal first when I read he and Vonnegut had a feud of some sort - that means he's an interesting man and a competition to Vonnegut.
Well, this book certainly did not disappoint me at that - it's hilarious and captivating and oh so snarky.
As a historical fiction book it was brilliant - the physical reconstruction of the period is great, untill you really can see the places and events that are being described.
Also, this lovely trick (good) authors can do, of switching voices between different characters telling the story is often attempted but not at all succeeded. Gore Vidal does this great!

I suppose Vidal is the closest America came to producing an Oscar Wilde. Unlike Wilde, Vidal seems to have developed his remarkable narrative voice without the taint of higher education. It’s true, many of his generation forwent the Ivy League education, which was their due, in the interest of military service, but Vidal may have been the last, significant American author to do so. This, I suppose is a credit to Vidal, rather than to his preparatory instructors.

It seems to me (I taught at universities for 20 years) that the whole point of higher education is to get students to the point where they can direct their own studies. Yet only doctoral candidates are routinely required to be original. It’s hard for any writing to live up to Vidal-the-raconteur (despoiler of William de la Touche Clancey) but I think Burr does. I’m looking forward to reading the companion novels.

I seldom reread books. I first read ‘Burr’ thirty or so years ago. It was well worth the revisit. Gore Vidal was a wonderful writer, all of whose books I’ve read and enjoyed. ‘Burr’ is part of a historical fiction series which the author called ‘Narratives of Empire’, the empire in question being the United States of America. This novel features the one time Vice-President and infamous killer of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr. In 1830s New York, the ageing Burr looks back on his tumultuous life during the Revolution and the early years of the American Republic. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and other giants of the time feature. This is an exquisitely written, compelling and strangely magical book. I cannot recommend it more highly!!
Ps I was surprised to find that none of Vidal’s books are available on ebook. I get the feeling that he’s a writer who’s fallen into neglect. A pity for such a thoughtful and readable author. No doubt his day will come again.

'Burr' is the lead novel in Gore Vidal's seven-book series on U.S. history. It's not the first book he wrote in the series, but in terms of historical chronology, everything begins right here. If you've never read Vidal, there are other places you might want to begin ('Julian' is a marvelous novel, as is 'Messiah.' You can't really go wrong with Gore.) But if you're a fan of history and turned off by textbook drudgery (and occasional misinformation), 'Burr' opens one writer's look at American history without all the usual hagiographic nonsense. The founders are not all here, but those whom Vidal uses in the narrative are treated as real humans, in all their flaws and missteps. This is history with a personality. (Not to mention Vidal is just a natural novelist, a man of letters who writes effortlessly.)

The other six books, in order:

'Lincoln' (acclaimed as the best novel in the series, and Pres. Lincoln is fully fleshed and a wonderful character)

'1876' (Highlights the corruption of American politics with a stolen election at the center of the narrative)

'Empire' (A titanic battle between Teddy Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst, and the media's role in the creation of political legacy, and of history)

'Hollywood' (How the movies became tools for telling Americans how to think and what to do)

'Washington D.C.' (The first novel written, it concerns FDR's rise to American Caesar-ship)

'The Golden Age' (The late FDR years and the creation of the Cold War at the end of the 1940s)