VIDAL, GORE — Burr. A novel

Random House 1973 First Edition First Printing. ADDED newspaper clip. [4], 430, [2] p. HARDCOVER: (Orig. burgundy cloth boards with gilt-stamped titles, top fore-edges tinted red. spine is unned, owner inscription to first endpaper VERY GOOD) The first in chronological order (second published) of Vidal's seven novel series Narratives of Empire explaining and exploring the imperial history of the United States. Presents an imaginary memoir of Aaron Burr which reexamines the founding fathers and politics of 18th and early 19th c. political life in America. Gore Vidal (born Eugene Louis Vidal) was an American writer (novels, essays, screenplays, stage plays) and a public intellectual, who was known for his patrician manner, wit, and aphorisms. Vidal was born to a political family; his grandfather was Thomas Gore, U. S. Senator for Oklahoma (1907-21, 1931-37). As a member of the Democratic Party, Vidal twice ran for political office. As as political commentator, Vidal's subject was the United States, especially the imperialistic foreign policy, which reduced the U. S. To a decaying empire. His essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books and Esquire. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal was known for his continual quarrels with other public intellectuals and writers, such as William F. Buckley, Jr. , Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote. Of his fiction, "Myra Breckinridge" (1968) was a widely regarded novel of social mores; in the historical novel genre, "Julian" (1964) , "Burr" (1973) , and "Lincoln" (1984) are considered his best works. His third novel, "The City and the Pillar" (1948) , offended the sensibilities of conservative critics (literary and political) , because it featured unambiguous presentations of male homosexuality. Personally, Gore Vidal rejected the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" as inherently false labels, because he believed that men and women potentially are pansexual.