This novel is the fifth installment of a burgeoning saga that might be called "The U.S. According to Gore." Vidal's ambitious retelling and revamping of American history began on a modest scale with Washington, D.C. (1967), a novel set in the middle of this century that mixed real and fictional people in a struggle for the nation's soul. Then came Burr (1973), a witty revisionist look at the Founding Fathers, as recorded by Aaron Burr's amanuensis and illegitimate son Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. In 1876 (1976), an older Schuyler returned home after years of self-imposed exile to witness both the theft of a presidential election and his daughter's cynical campaign to land a rich American husband. Lincoln (1984) was a lumbering but best- selling attempt to portray the legendary President through the eyes of three associates during the war-torn White House years.
Empire can be understood with no knowledge of the four novels that precede it, but a number of nuances will be missed in the process. Vidal's version of American society from 1898 to 1906 comes heavily cross-referenced not only to the historical past but to his other books. For example, the fictional heroine, Caroline Sanford, is Charles Schuyler's granddaughter and thus linked to Burr and 1876; she has an affair with an equally fictional Congressman named James Burden Day, who will one day seek the presidency in Washington, D.C.
These echoes contribute a great deal to a novel that is stronger on atmosphere than plot. In the beginning, the U.S. has just defeated Spain, gaining sway over the Caribbean and, by way of the Philippines, a foothold in the Pacific. A lot of talk ensues about whether an American empire is a good idea. The speakers include William McKinley, McKinley's Secretary of State John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Adams, William Randolph Hearst and Henry James, who comes onstage briefly to wonder, "How can we, who cannot honestly govern ourselves, take up the task of governing others?" James' point is valid, but the outcome of the debate is never in doubt.
Stuck with the emptiness of a foregone conclusion, Vidal improvises diversions to fill in the space. One involves Caroline Sanford's battle with her half brother Blaise over their late father's $15 million estate. Temporarily blocked from her share, Caroline sells four Poussin paintings, buys a money-losing Washington newspaper, and spices it up with sensationalisms a la Hearst, the man whom Blaise admires as "something new and strange and potent." Hay muses, "The contest was now between the high- minded few, led by Roosevelt, and Hearst, the true inventor of the modern world. What Hearst arbitrarily decided was news was news; and the powerful few were obliged to respond to his inventions."