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Charlie Schuyler's memoirs are considerably more omniscient than those of his obscure model. For they include Burr's own memoirs as dictated to Charlie, his would-be biographer. The Burr sections are Vidal's skillful précis of Aaron Burr's actual letters and diaries, containing intimate justifications for his adventures and intrigues. Burr, the sardonic wit, constantly sees through labels like Republican and Federalist to such common denominators as hunger for glory, power and the preservation of privilege. He talks of Washington's "eerie incompetence" as a military leader, while admiring the man's "fine talent for defeating rival generals in the Congress." Burr libels Hamilton as having been a British agent during the Adams Administration; he mocks him for reading women's novels wrapped in the Anti Jacobin Review.
Burr's most savage bites come out of Thomas Jefferson, portrayed as a coward who sat out the Revolution in Virginia, an "exuberant mediocrity in the arts," a household tinkerer who is almost killed by one of his hideaway beds, and a grand hypocrite who spouted humanist theory but kept and sexually exploited slaves.
In all this Vidal has at least been faithful to the content, style and tone of Burr's own writing. The kinship of author and subject goes beyond elegant barbs at the high and mighty. Vidal seems especially appreciative of Burr's almost classical stoic outlook, a view reflected in Vidal's own works. Yet the question remains, why read a kind of digest of the life of Aaron Burr when there are sympathetic biographies and Burr's own letters and diaries available? The answer: Most of us will not take the trouble. In the interests of Burrian pragmatism, one must be grateful to Vidal for his history lesson. · R.Z. Sheppard
* It provided that electors cast distinct votes for the President and Vice President. Before that, the runner-up for President became Vice President.