The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (72 page)

WHY A HISTORICAL NOVEL and not a history? To me, the attraction of the historical novel is that one can be as meticulous (or as careless!) as the historian and yet reserve the right not only to rearrange events but, most important, to attribute motive—something the conscientious historian or biographer ought never do.

I have spent a good many years preparing and writing
Burr
and I have tried to keep to the known facts. In three instances, I have moved people about. James Wilkinson did not arrive at Cambridge until a year after Burr departed. There is a case that Jonathan Dayton was not on the Canadian expedition with Burr. The elegiac conversation between Charlie and Edward Livingston in July 1836 becomes entirely explicable if somewhat supernatural when one recalls that two months earlier Ambassador Livingston died a few miles from my old home in Dutchess County. I revived Edward Livingston because I needed him at that point. Otherwise, the characters are in the right places, on the right dates, doing what they actually did.

Obviously I have made up conversation, but whenever possible I have used actual phrases of the speaker. Certainly the opinions Jefferson expresses in the book are taken from life, and often represented in his own words. He wrote and talked a great deal about everything. All in all, I think rather more highly of Jefferson than Burr does; on the other hand, Burr’s passion for Jackson is not shared by me. Although the novel’s viewpoint must be Burr’s, the story told is history and not invention. In fact, all of the characters in the novel actually existed (including Helen Jewett and Mrs. Townsend) except Charlie Schuyler, who is based roughly on the obscure novelist Charles Burdett, and William de la Touche Clancey, who could, obviously, be based on no one at all.

I had thought to give a bibliography but it would be endless, and political. As a subject American history is a battleground today and I would prefer to stay out of range. I will, however, admit to a bias (and hear already the charming sound of bullets, as Washington would say) for a small brilliant work by Leonard W. Levy called
Jefferson and Civil Liberties
.

Errors and anachronisms
ought
to be few. If they do occur, I take full responsibility like Richard Nixon, casting no blame on copy editor Lynn St. C. Strong or on historian-researcher Mary-Jo Kline, who have not allowed me to get away with even, the smallest of shortcuts.

G.V.

June 7, 1973

GORE VIDAL
wrote his first novel,
Williwaw
(1946), at the age of nineteen while overseas in World War II.

During four decades as a writer, Vidal has written novels, plays, short stories and essays. He has also been a political activist. As a Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat in a half century. From 1970 to 1972 he was co-chairman of the People’s Party. In California’s 1982 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, he polled a half million votes, and came in second in a field of nine.

In 1948 Vidal wrote the highly praised international best seller
The City and the Pillar
.
This was followed by
The Judgment of Paris
and the prophetic
Messiah
.
In the fifties Vidal wrote plays for live television and films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. One of the television plays became the successful Broadway play
Visit to a Small Planet
(1957). Directly for the theater he wrote the prize-winning hit
The Best Man
(1960).

In 1964 Vidal returned to the novel. In succession, he created three remarkable works:
Julian
,
Washington
,
D
.
C
.,
Myra Breckinridge
.
Each was a number-one best seller in the United States and England. In 1973 Vidal published his most popular novel,
Burr
,
as well as a volume of collected essays,
Homage to Daniel Shays
.
In 1976 he published yet another number-one best seller,
1876
,
a part of his ongoing American chronicle, which now consists of—in chronological order—
Burr
,
Lincoln
,
1876
,
Empire
,
Hollywood
,
and
Washington
,
D
.
C
.

In 1981 Vidal published
Creation
,
“his best novel,” according to the New York
Times
.
In 1982 Vidal won the American Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for his collection of essays,
The Second American Revolution
.
A propos
Duluth
(1983), Italo Calvino wrote (
La Repubblica
,
Rome): “Vidal’s development ... along that line from
Myra Breckinridge
to
Duluth
is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, each one filled with meaning, not only for the craftsmanship in construction, put together like a clockwork which fears no word processor, but because this latest book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls his ‘apr
è
s-poststructuralism.’ I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or to the cube.”