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Narratives of Empire #5
Hollywood
Hollywood marks the 5th episode in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire," his celebrated series of six historical novels that form his extended biography of the USA.
It's 1917. President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives -- West Coast movie star & East Coast newspaper publisher & senator's mistress -- so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood & Washington.
Here's history as only Gore Vidal can recreate it: brimming with intrigue & scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen & American politics.
With a new Introduction by the author.
It's 1917. President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives -- West Coast movie star & East Coast newspaper publisher & senator's mistress -- so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood & Washington.
Here's history as only Gore Vidal can recreate it: brimming with intrigue & scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen & American politics.
With a new Introduction by the author.
448 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1989
152 people are currently reading
2369 people want to read
About the author
Gore Vidal
423 books1,866 followersWorks of American writer Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, noted for his cynical humor and his numerous accounts of society in decline, include the play
The Best Man
(1960) and the novel
Myra Breckinridge
(1968) .
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews
October 6, 2025
"I don't think any actor should ever be president of the United States. He is too used to getting fed lines and moved about in front of the camera".---Gore Vidal, on why Ronald Reagan would never become President
I met Gore Vidal once in person, and his talk that day illuminates both the virtues and faults of this novel of America from entry into World War One to the 1920s, when it emerged both a world power and gained a monopoly on virtual reality. Gore spoke at UCLA in 1982 while running in the Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Governor Jerry Brown, who refused to debate him on the grounds that "Gore Vidal is a serious writer, not a serious politician". Gore's talk to us was filled with great jibes, (on state education: "it's Brown versus Education"), puns and whispers: "I recently visited Yorba Linda to see His Satanic Majesty {Richard Nixon}. HOLLYWOOD, published in 1990, is a period novel very much in the same vein. Nearly every scene takes place in a parlor or patio, including the White House and the early Paramount Studios, and the dialogue is gossip, gossip, gossip: Which Hollywood actress is a cocaine fiend? Is Marion Davies cast in so many roles for sleeping with "Pops", AKA William Randolph Hearst? How many mistresses is Warren Harding juggling at this moment? Does Eleanor Roosevelt (a personal friend of Gore's back in the Kennedy years) know about her husband Franklin's affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer? All of this is depicted through the eyes of Blaise and Caroline Sanford, half-brother and sister who trace their ancestry back to Aaron Burr, the subject of the first and best of Gore's Washington, D.C. cycle of novels. Trouble is, no one familiar with this period will find much that is news here, and for those unfamiliar Vidal's characters never really come to life. They are stand-ins for his view of Washington as throughly corrupt, in every sense, not just financial, and Hollywood filled with vipers with no back bone. Gore hints that Hollywood is destined to become America, to recreate the world in its own image, but this theme is both underdeveloped and underwhelming. I recommend this book to those readers who want a portrait of an era when most Americans, at least of the upper classes (Gore always called himself a patrician) still thought themselves pure and naive of worldly matters, though they were neither.
I met Gore Vidal once in person, and his talk that day illuminates both the virtues and faults of this novel of America from entry into World War One to the 1920s, when it emerged both a world power and gained a monopoly on virtual reality. Gore spoke at UCLA in 1982 while running in the Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Governor Jerry Brown, who refused to debate him on the grounds that "Gore Vidal is a serious writer, not a serious politician". Gore's talk to us was filled with great jibes, (on state education: "it's Brown versus Education"), puns and whispers: "I recently visited Yorba Linda to see His Satanic Majesty {Richard Nixon}. HOLLYWOOD, published in 1990, is a period novel very much in the same vein. Nearly every scene takes place in a parlor or patio, including the White House and the early Paramount Studios, and the dialogue is gossip, gossip, gossip: Which Hollywood actress is a cocaine fiend? Is Marion Davies cast in so many roles for sleeping with "Pops", AKA William Randolph Hearst? How many mistresses is Warren Harding juggling at this moment? Does Eleanor Roosevelt (a personal friend of Gore's back in the Kennedy years) know about her husband Franklin's affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer? All of this is depicted through the eyes of Blaise and Caroline Sanford, half-brother and sister who trace their ancestry back to Aaron Burr, the subject of the first and best of Gore's Washington, D.C. cycle of novels. Trouble is, no one familiar with this period will find much that is news here, and for those unfamiliar Vidal's characters never really come to life. They are stand-ins for his view of Washington as throughly corrupt, in every sense, not just financial, and Hollywood filled with vipers with no back bone. Gore hints that Hollywood is destined to become America, to recreate the world in its own image, but this theme is both underdeveloped and underwhelming. I recommend this book to those readers who want a portrait of an era when most Americans, at least of the upper classes (Gore always called himself a patrician) still thought themselves pure and naive of worldly matters, though they were neither.
July 23, 2022
Vidal's Hollywood As A Narrative Of Empire
The controversial public figure and prolific author Gore Vidal (1925 -- 2012) wrote seven historical novels on American history called the "Narratives of Empire Series" with the overall goal of showing how, in his view, the United States developed from a small republic to an overbearing, militaristic empire. The fifth novel in the series in terms of chronological history is "Hollywood" (1990). The novel begins in 1916 following Woodrow Wilson's election to a second term to the presidency. It moves forward through the election of Wilson's successor, Warren Harding, up to Harding's death in office in 1923. Most of the story is set in Washington, D.C. Substantial sections, however, are set in Hollywood, and the novel appears to draw several broad connections between the rise of film and American political life.
Most of the characters in the book are historical figures, but some are fictitious. Most of what the book does well involves the historical events of the day. Thus the novel opens with the Zimmerman Telegram in which Germany tried to enlist Mexico's assistance for a war against the United States. This telegram was critical factor in America entering the war after it tried hard to maintain neutrality. The book offers a good portrayal of the influenza epidemic, which resulted in more deaths world-wide than did the Great War, of the negotiations in Versailles, following the War, of the suppression of dissent in the United States during the conflict, of the rise of feminism, of American racism, and much more. The book also portrays the rise of the Hollywood film industry. Some of the historical characters in the book are described well, including President Wilson, his second wife, Edith Wilson, Harding, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and others. There is an effective portrayal of the aging curmudgeonly Henry Adams together with several apt brief quotations from the American philosopher George Santayana. Vidal has an eye for detail and often writes effective scenes on the backrooms of American politics. He also describes places well, including places I have come to know from living in Washington, D.C. Much of the book is written with flair, tartness and irreverence. The writing style on the whole effectively moves the book along.
Hollywood becomes involved in the book as a result of the United States' entry into the War. Among other ways for garnering public support for an unpopular war, Hollywood was asked to make films supporting the war effort and vilifying the enemy. One such movie receives a great deal of attention in the work, as a fictitious character in the novel stars in a film in which her character is abused and raped by German soldiers. Together with encouraging Hollywood to make pro-war films, films that were deemed hostile to the United States or to the war effort sometimes faced suppression and producers and directors faced jail time. The novel also shows how the situation changed with time as Hollywood producers and directors realized the scope of their new medium to reach a broad audience. They frequently made movies critical of what they saw as American values and politics. Vidal shows this tension in varying ways of using film which has persisted well beyond the time frame covered in this novel. Another way Hollywood is used in this book is as metaphor. The book portrays Hollywood as shallow, concerned with appearances and making an appeal to a broad unthinking public rather than with producing works of merit. Broadly, Vidal thinks these traits apply to the American political process which on all sides receives a less than flattering portrayal in this book.
This novel has its moments, but it didn't work for me. The events of the day and some of the characterizations are effective but the novel is disjointed. It lacks a sustained plot, The book moves back and forth between politics, Hollywood, sex, and other aspects of the lives of its real and fictitious characters. The work never comes together as a whole and the overall effect is one of tedium. There is too much wordy dialogue at the expense of historical understanding. While the author's erudition and language are often admirable, this book works neither as a novel nor as a history of its era. Historical novels can have a valuable role in illuminating history and in telling a story that are not available within the constraints of a study limited to the historical record. This book didn't convince me as a history or as a novel.
Robin Friedman
The controversial public figure and prolific author Gore Vidal (1925 -- 2012) wrote seven historical novels on American history called the "Narratives of Empire Series" with the overall goal of showing how, in his view, the United States developed from a small republic to an overbearing, militaristic empire. The fifth novel in the series in terms of chronological history is "Hollywood" (1990). The novel begins in 1916 following Woodrow Wilson's election to a second term to the presidency. It moves forward through the election of Wilson's successor, Warren Harding, up to Harding's death in office in 1923. Most of the story is set in Washington, D.C. Substantial sections, however, are set in Hollywood, and the novel appears to draw several broad connections between the rise of film and American political life.
Most of the characters in the book are historical figures, but some are fictitious. Most of what the book does well involves the historical events of the day. Thus the novel opens with the Zimmerman Telegram in which Germany tried to enlist Mexico's assistance for a war against the United States. This telegram was critical factor in America entering the war after it tried hard to maintain neutrality. The book offers a good portrayal of the influenza epidemic, which resulted in more deaths world-wide than did the Great War, of the negotiations in Versailles, following the War, of the suppression of dissent in the United States during the conflict, of the rise of feminism, of American racism, and much more. The book also portrays the rise of the Hollywood film industry. Some of the historical characters in the book are described well, including President Wilson, his second wife, Edith Wilson, Harding, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and others. There is an effective portrayal of the aging curmudgeonly Henry Adams together with several apt brief quotations from the American philosopher George Santayana. Vidal has an eye for detail and often writes effective scenes on the backrooms of American politics. He also describes places well, including places I have come to know from living in Washington, D.C. Much of the book is written with flair, tartness and irreverence. The writing style on the whole effectively moves the book along.
Hollywood becomes involved in the book as a result of the United States' entry into the War. Among other ways for garnering public support for an unpopular war, Hollywood was asked to make films supporting the war effort and vilifying the enemy. One such movie receives a great deal of attention in the work, as a fictitious character in the novel stars in a film in which her character is abused and raped by German soldiers. Together with encouraging Hollywood to make pro-war films, films that were deemed hostile to the United States or to the war effort sometimes faced suppression and producers and directors faced jail time. The novel also shows how the situation changed with time as Hollywood producers and directors realized the scope of their new medium to reach a broad audience. They frequently made movies critical of what they saw as American values and politics. Vidal shows this tension in varying ways of using film which has persisted well beyond the time frame covered in this novel. Another way Hollywood is used in this book is as metaphor. The book portrays Hollywood as shallow, concerned with appearances and making an appeal to a broad unthinking public rather than with producing works of merit. Broadly, Vidal thinks these traits apply to the American political process which on all sides receives a less than flattering portrayal in this book.
This novel has its moments, but it didn't work for me. The events of the day and some of the characterizations are effective but the novel is disjointed. It lacks a sustained plot, The book moves back and forth between politics, Hollywood, sex, and other aspects of the lives of its real and fictitious characters. The work never comes together as a whole and the overall effect is one of tedium. There is too much wordy dialogue at the expense of historical understanding. While the author's erudition and language are often admirable, this book works neither as a novel nor as a history of its era. Historical novels can have a valuable role in illuminating history and in telling a story that are not available within the constraints of a study limited to the historical record. This book didn't convince me as a history or as a novel.
Robin Friedman
March 29, 2013
I am slowly making my way through all the books Gore Vidal wrote. I have to admit I started reading him only in the last few years. What a marvelous writer this man was. Usually anything politically-oriented leaves me cold, but I am now 5 books into his "Narratives of Empire" series revolving around the Washington political atmosphere over the span of the revolutionary war to J.F.K., and I find these books utterly enthralling. If even half of what he has written in this series actually happened our politicians have, indeed, always been a mighty slippery bunch, and I don't mean just the men. I am fascinated with just how well he seems to have understood and portrayed the women behind the "movers and shakers" as well. That is not to say these are easy reads, unlike some of what I read after a long day of listening to doctors yammer on, I find myself needing to go back, rereading sentences and even paragraphs over and over ... it is almost a machiavellian atmosphere he has created and it needs total brain concentration to follow along ... still, now that I have finished "Hollywood" I find myself eagerly anticipating the last 2 volumes in this series, "Washington, D.C." and "Empire."
December 20, 2013
Gore Vidal was quite an author.....he could write the controversial Myra Breckendridge and then turn his talent to a book like Burr. This book is somewhere in between; a historical fiction full of real people and some thinly disguised fictional ones. The title is a bit misleading since the scenario is set more in Washington, DC during the administrations of Wilson and Harding. Hollywood enters the picture when a politico discovers that the movies could be used for propaganda purposes and the image of the "hateful Hun" could be seen by the general public. But the political public face of the Senate and House were as fictional as those seen on the screen so the book title is probably more appropriate than it first appears.
The story is based on actual history.....so I won't repeat it here since we are familiar with the League of Nations, the scandal and fall of the Harding administration, and the power of motion pictures during the early part of the 20th century. The fictional approach is really only a supplement to the overall tenor of those turbulent times. Beautifully written, it weaves a fascinating tale of wealth and politics which will hold your interest throughout.
The story is based on actual history.....so I won't repeat it here since we are familiar with the League of Nations, the scandal and fall of the Harding administration, and the power of motion pictures during the early part of the 20th century. The fictional approach is really only a supplement to the overall tenor of those turbulent times. Beautifully written, it weaves a fascinating tale of wealth and politics which will hold your interest throughout.
May 30, 2016
The title is misleading. This is one of Vidal's "American Chronicle" novels (the best of the series were "Burr" and "Lincoln") and most of the action takes place in Washington, not Hollywood. This particular entry in the series is not the best. The main historical figure, Woodrow Wilson, is too dry and humorless a pedant to be interesting while his presidential successor, Harding, is a total non-entity, though for some reason Vidal gives him a much more positive character than that which history has assigned him. The fictional protagonist, Caroline Sanford, is too obviously Vidal's alter ego ever to come alive. Through her, Vidal gives the reader his own idiosyncratic view of American history, patrician and laced with mordant wit.
May 27, 2025
This one was so much fun! Genuinely haven't enjoyed one like this in a while. and with summer upon us it's the perfect read for a breezy, sunny day. It goes back and forth between two storylines that feel only tangentially connected, but it somehow manages to make this work and its exciting when they intersect. If there's any central storyline it's the buildup to the 1920 election, or at least that's the one I found the most interesting. The chapters get shorter and shorter toward the middle of the book as we spend all night going back and forth between hotel in rooms in Chicago for the Republican Convention, where Senator Harding comes out of nowhere to snatch the nomination from two deadlocked favorites. Gore Vidal loves to pack his novels full of lesser-known historical accidents and great men who could've been (ex Lincoln's treasury secretary conspiring to primary him, Hoover trying to make a comeback in 1940 etc); apparently Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were both trying to contest their respective nominations in 1920 only to be struck down by ill health. Meanwhile the other half of the book takes place in burgeoning Los Angeles, a city the author knew as well if not better than DC. Reading this as a native was so satisfying, as he often gives specific locations and street intersections you can go see for yourself. Places I grew up knowing as bustling thoroughfares here come off as almost quaint, little dusty roads connecting the new studios popping up everywhere in the formerly quiet agrarian landscape of Southern California. He conveys the sense of newness wonderfully, of a new art form with infinite possibilities, where every story still has yet to be made and it's virtually impossible to lose money. The studio bands, the burning set lights, and the infectious excitement of the whole thing are impossible not to love. In typical fashion the new industry intersects with, of course, politics, as the Wilson administration harnesses the medium to churn out prowar content. An industrial complex thus established, it then swings almost instantly to the feverish anticommunist films of the First Red Scare. Yet throughout all of this the whole thing never feels particularly dire, and the reader is taken for a tranquil ride not unlike a sunny LA afternoon. The Harding administration stakes out a new position for the 20s, away from great men and world-historical events, led by a president keenly aware of his own shortcomings. While I would've loved more of the idiosyncratic Wilson, WG and his "Ohio Gang" are all so much fun as characters, implementing corruption on an unheard-of level and having such a fun time while they do it. It does seem that Harding genuinely didn't know how deep it all went and how bad things were, and died feeling deeply betrayed by his friends. Still, they seem like a great time and I can't imagine how fun it would be come over for poker and a cigar. His easygoing personality is such a great contrast for the scholarly, if bumbling, Wilson. Apparently the stroke really did a number on him, to the extent that Vidal refers to the period of 1919-1920 as "the first American regency, with Edith Wilson and Admiral Grayson (his personal physician) running the show behind a carefully managed facade. In 2025 it all felt a little too similar, with an ailing Democratic president rapidly losing the support of his own party (he still tried to contest the 1920 primary and no one took it seriously) and aides frantically scrambling to hide it. This is precisely what makes Harding's arc so good, as the jovial isolationist ends up exactly where his predecessor was at the end of his term, making himself sick as he crisscrosses the country trying to bypass the Senate and sell the nation on a foreign treaty. All of the plotlines go about belly toward the end, with the Harding finally catching wise to the endemic graft greasing the wheels of the Veterans' Administration and succumbing to the heart attack we've been building to. Meanwhile in Los Angeles the bombshell case of English director Charles Desmond Taylor's murder at 404 Alvarado Street (now a Ross, I drove by to investigate) turns the country against America's Babylon and sets the stage for Will Hays and his infamous code to enforce some order in the fledgling motion picture industry. I really can't stress how much of a pleasurable read this was, in a time when money was easy and absolutely everyone (Wilson included) lands on some dream to be a movie star. The dialogue is simply superb, between the delightful three stooges-esque repartee of small town racketeers-turned-bootleggers, to the raucous guest-star appearances of Chaplin and Fairbanks. Growing up in the environs of Hollywood I've never considered it particularly glamorous or interesting, but I think I understand some of the magic now, especially when as a generation of newly minted moviegoers adapted in real time to stardom and public scrutiny. The protagonist being an ageing actress does all the more to drive home the camera's unique ability to paper over some flaws while magnifying others fortyfold. It's a wonderfully unique idea for a novel and the twin storylines are juggled expertly. When one really gets going you almost don't want to switch over to the other, only to be lulled into the exact same feeling again in a few pages. Cannot recommend this one highly enough.
August 14, 2016
This one took a while to get through. Strange that as it was set from just before the American entry into WW1 (a favourite period) to the early twenties, it did not grab me. There were a lot of characters from the previous novel in the series, which was good, but I didn't believe a few of the plot lines (notably one in Hollywood itself). Anyway, the political detail was great as usual, although some of it was a bit in depth, covering Presidents Wilson, Harding and Coolidge, with a bit of Teddy Roosevelt and FDR thrown in. Vidal deals with elections very well, especially when you know the outcome, as it is very funny to listen to the character's predictions of what will happen when you do in fact know that the results are going to differ. He also loves to play with idioms and phrases, which I find amusing and keeps the sentences fresh and clever.
Although I read them completely out of order, I can recommend the Narratives of Empire series as a whole, although individually some are better than others (least favourite ones being this and Washington DC). Maybe I'll go back and read them chronologically some time.
Although I read them completely out of order, I can recommend the Narratives of Empire series as a whole, although individually some are better than others (least favourite ones being this and Washington DC). Maybe I'll go back and read them chronologically some time.
October 13, 2010
I found this book slow and the characters empty. The political background was interesting but made for slow reading as it was just not what I had expected. Lots of history......just presented in a very droning type way.
March 26, 2025
“In order to make the world safe for democracy,” Caroline parodied herself as an editorial writer, “we must extinguish freedom at home.”
This installment of Vidal’s critique of the developing American empire covers the United States’ entry into World War One and its domestic political impact. The series focus, usually on New York City and Washington, expands to the new home of picture-play making. Published in 1989. Paradoxically his treatment of the coverup of Wilson’s stroke resembles contemporary politics.
“No matter what you hear, I don’t think she and Grayson are running the country.” “So who is?” “Tell no one,” said [redacted]; then he whispered dramatically, “Nobody.”
Vidal’s you-are-there narrative delves into the inner workings of the White House and Congress as Wilson engineers America’s entry into “the war to end all wars,” and his petty and profound failures leading to the flawed Treaty of Versailles and America rejecting the League of Nations. Meanwhile fictional Caroline Sanford becomes both a star and a producer of movies as well as a manipulator of opinions..
“The audience for the movies is the largest there is for anything in the world. So if we can influence what Hollywood produces, we can control world opinion. Hollywood is the key to just about everything.”
Vidal’s verisimilitude is increased by his flawed fictional characters uniform disposition to the wrong side of contentions or expecting the reverse of what happened. It helps disguise his agenda-driven storytelling.
“When shall we have our next war?” “Twenty years, if we don’t disarm now.” “If we do?” “In twenty years, if we do disarm.”
This installment of Vidal’s critique of the developing American empire covers the United States’ entry into World War One and its domestic political impact. The series focus, usually on New York City and Washington, expands to the new home of picture-play making. Published in 1989. Paradoxically his treatment of the coverup of Wilson’s stroke resembles contemporary politics.
“No matter what you hear, I don’t think she and Grayson are running the country.” “So who is?” “Tell no one,” said [redacted]; then he whispered dramatically, “Nobody.”
Vidal’s you-are-there narrative delves into the inner workings of the White House and Congress as Wilson engineers America’s entry into “the war to end all wars,” and his petty and profound failures leading to the flawed Treaty of Versailles and America rejecting the League of Nations. Meanwhile fictional Caroline Sanford becomes both a star and a producer of movies as well as a manipulator of opinions..
“The audience for the movies is the largest there is for anything in the world. So if we can influence what Hollywood produces, we can control world opinion. Hollywood is the key to just about everything.”
Vidal’s verisimilitude is increased by his flawed fictional characters uniform disposition to the wrong side of contentions or expecting the reverse of what happened. It helps disguise his agenda-driven storytelling.
“When shall we have our next war?” “Twenty years, if we don’t disarm now.” “If we do?” “In twenty years, if we do disarm.”
September 3, 2011
This is an incredible book. The paragraph structure can take some getting used to - Vidal likes to interrupt quotes in odd places - and I had to create a little cheat sheet to keep track of all the characters and their entangling relationships. But if you like political history, the book is a must. It's also something of a conceit. It's the sexy side of American history: of our beautiful people and our smoke-filled back rooms of power. (Don't go looking for a more comprehensive social history.) You feel privy to amazing (embellished) historical exchanges: Wilson and TR debating WWI; Hearst talking politics and movies; Harding as he begins to suffocate in scandal. There's a ton of great trivia too. I hadn't realized the extent to which Wilson trampled on civil liberties during the war. One producer, Robert Goldstein, who made an acclaimed revolutionary war movie - The Spirit of '76 - was imprisoned when the U.S. entered WWI; what had been patriotic the year before was now considered a dangerous British-bashing film that would undermine the war effort.
June 12, 2018
I read this for research, and while I did find some relevant material, this was not a particularly enjoyable read. First of all, very little of the book is actually in or about Hollywood; it's centered in Washington, D.C. on political shenanigans. The cover quote also says it's a novel about the 1920s, while in fact 3/4 of the book takes places in the late teens, depicting America entering the Great War and the developments around that.
This is very much a literary fiction novel with lots and lots of talking, virtually no action, and sexual escapades all around, though nothing graphic. The cast is wide and I found it difficult to track who was who because there was a constant barrage of new names. The actual depictions of history is fantastic, though. Vidal captures the sense of the time with fine details and everything is well-paced. Characters are well-done, too, and quite strong through dialogue alone. While this was definitely not my sort of book, I can see why Gore Vidal was such a big name in the field.
This is very much a literary fiction novel with lots and lots of talking, virtually no action, and sexual escapades all around, though nothing graphic. The cast is wide and I found it difficult to track who was who because there was a constant barrage of new names. The actual depictions of history is fantastic, though. Vidal captures the sense of the time with fine details and everything is well-paced. Characters are well-done, too, and quite strong through dialogue alone. While this was definitely not my sort of book, I can see why Gore Vidal was such a big name in the field.
February 3, 2020
The title is "Hollywood" - Set mostly in Washington DC.
"A novel of America in the 1920's" - Story is from 1917 to 1923.
Although I feel it's misrepresented on the cover, not a bad read. Found it hard to keep track as to who was who though.
"A novel of America in the 1920's" - Story is from 1917 to 1923.
Although I feel it's misrepresented on the cover, not a bad read. Found it hard to keep track as to who was who though.
January 19, 2013
I like his books, but this is the worst I' e read of his. The characters are difficult to keep straight, it is repetitive (he needed an editor), the timeline is askew, and it takes forever to get somewhere. Shame because it could be Interesting topics.
May 15, 2016
Much better than the previous entry in the series, it gives one a feel for how large a role the media begins to play in the formation of American ideals circa World War I. As a former comic-book collector, I would have liked to see more evidence in Vidal's writing of just how important they became in the American imagination. Perhaps the next book in the series would be a more appropriate time to introduce that element, but I fear that he may pass over the genre as he does with pulp novels in this one. It reminds one that however elegant the narrative sweep of his historical fiction may be, it is still only a slice of the story.
October 19, 2024
Gore Vidal combines his two interests, the cinema and politics in this interesting and entertaining look at the period around America's entry into WWI and the subsequent failure of the League of Nations, contrasted with the rise of the film industry in Hollywood.
Peopled with a cast of thousands "Hollywood" provides an interesting take on the politics, history and mores of the time. Quite compelling.
Peopled with a cast of thousands "Hollywood" provides an interesting take on the politics, history and mores of the time. Quite compelling.
January 31, 2009
Interesting history but I find his style hard to read. Is it just me?
August 31, 2012
A deeply turgid read. Vidal never failed to take himself very seriously and that's how he approached his fiction too. A shame, because the project is worthy, it just needed a much lighter touch.
August 18, 2018
Loved the Narratives of Empire series.
March 6, 2022
I remain impressed by the ambition of Vidal’s Narratives of Empire. Having finished five of the seven – and determined to knock out the other two in the next couple years – I see an effort to reimagine American history as a series of “bastard” impulses. That’s literally true in the sense that he sees his various protagonists as descended from Aaron Burr, through “natural” children who came outside marriage.
It's metaphorically true in the sense that Vidal’s America is a place that never quite follows the straight route of its flowery rhetoric. We’re less a shining city on the hill than an emporium fortuitously located at the last exit before the higher prices of that shining city. We aren’t an immoral, spent force – we’re just one that isn’t quite so high-minded as we proclaim.
What’s true of the full series is true in particular and interesting fashion in this volume. Here we see the Republic move from what we might call the hangover of Teddy Roosevelt’s flamboyant populism through the heady confusion of Woodrow Wilson’s academic (and vaguely bigoted) view of American power to the vacuousness of Warren G. Harding.
We do get to see each of those Presidents up close, but the heart of the story turns on Vidal’s fictional Caroline Sanford, a Burr descendant who – as we saw in the previous volume – rose to power as the publisher of a fictional Washington, D.C. newspaper. Here, Caroline finds herself at the pivot-point of written news giving way to the spectacle of film. She not only splits time between D.C. and a just-emerging Hollywood, but she splits herself. As “Emma Trachsler,” she becomes a star of the silent screen. She is, in other words, two people, and Vidal has some clear narrative fun distinguishing her in her two different worlds.
Caroline’s situation is more than the stuff of a curious fiction, though. As a piece in the larger chessboard of the Narratives of Empire, she represents the shift from a society trying to see itself in its “great men” – Vidal enjoys showing us that women and people of color were part of the mosaic, too, but he does so early enough in that effort that his personal effort sometimes shows – to a society that actually invents its stars. “Emma” does not exist as such, but she has enormous power when, in the climax of her pro-U.S.-into-World-War-I film, she smashes a crucifix on the head a “Hun” who’s trying to rape her. As a friend later tells her, that was part of what turned a nation committed to neutrality into one that sent the American Expeditionary Forces abroad. They made reality out of dream.
This isn’t as subtle as perhaps a great novel on the subject would be, but it is staggeringly ambitious and worthy of thinking about. As I went on about in reflecting on an early novel in the series, this is “middlebrow” literature of a kind that no longer has a market. It’s not quite literary fiction, nor is it escapism. It’s grappling with the big questions, but it isn’t exploring adventurous narrative strategies.
Except…Vidal is, of course, wickedly funny in an epigrammatic way. You can’t go long without finding a turn of phrase that shows his claws and cleverness. I jotted down a few favorites:
“Marriage to anyone makes adultery a possibility, perhaps a necessity.”
“Meanwhile, Jess was sober, a sign of new development in his temperament…or in his liver.”
A woman is asked, “Do you speak French?” She replies, “Oh yes. As little as possible.”
Such insistent cleverness carries a lot of weight, and you get the sense that Vidal, with his many references to Henry James, Henry Adams, and Edith Wharton, understands himself as writing in the tradition of an American elite. I'm not sure history will feel the same way, but I also don't like the idea of something so ambitious, so generally entertaining, and so clever, fading away entirely.
It's metaphorically true in the sense that Vidal’s America is a place that never quite follows the straight route of its flowery rhetoric. We’re less a shining city on the hill than an emporium fortuitously located at the last exit before the higher prices of that shining city. We aren’t an immoral, spent force – we’re just one that isn’t quite so high-minded as we proclaim.
What’s true of the full series is true in particular and interesting fashion in this volume. Here we see the Republic move from what we might call the hangover of Teddy Roosevelt’s flamboyant populism through the heady confusion of Woodrow Wilson’s academic (and vaguely bigoted) view of American power to the vacuousness of Warren G. Harding.
We do get to see each of those Presidents up close, but the heart of the story turns on Vidal’s fictional Caroline Sanford, a Burr descendant who – as we saw in the previous volume – rose to power as the publisher of a fictional Washington, D.C. newspaper. Here, Caroline finds herself at the pivot-point of written news giving way to the spectacle of film. She not only splits time between D.C. and a just-emerging Hollywood, but she splits herself. As “Emma Trachsler,” she becomes a star of the silent screen. She is, in other words, two people, and Vidal has some clear narrative fun distinguishing her in her two different worlds.
Caroline’s situation is more than the stuff of a curious fiction, though. As a piece in the larger chessboard of the Narratives of Empire, she represents the shift from a society trying to see itself in its “great men” – Vidal enjoys showing us that women and people of color were part of the mosaic, too, but he does so early enough in that effort that his personal effort sometimes shows – to a society that actually invents its stars. “Emma” does not exist as such, but she has enormous power when, in the climax of her pro-U.S.-into-World-War-I film, she smashes a crucifix on the head a “Hun” who’s trying to rape her. As a friend later tells her, that was part of what turned a nation committed to neutrality into one that sent the American Expeditionary Forces abroad. They made reality out of dream.
This isn’t as subtle as perhaps a great novel on the subject would be, but it is staggeringly ambitious and worthy of thinking about. As I went on about in reflecting on an early novel in the series, this is “middlebrow” literature of a kind that no longer has a market. It’s not quite literary fiction, nor is it escapism. It’s grappling with the big questions, but it isn’t exploring adventurous narrative strategies.
Except…Vidal is, of course, wickedly funny in an epigrammatic way. You can’t go long without finding a turn of phrase that shows his claws and cleverness. I jotted down a few favorites:
“Marriage to anyone makes adultery a possibility, perhaps a necessity.”
“Meanwhile, Jess was sober, a sign of new development in his temperament…or in his liver.”
A woman is asked, “Do you speak French?” She replies, “Oh yes. As little as possible.”
Such insistent cleverness carries a lot of weight, and you get the sense that Vidal, with his many references to Henry James, Henry Adams, and Edith Wharton, understands himself as writing in the tradition of an American elite. I'm not sure history will feel the same way, but I also don't like the idea of something so ambitious, so generally entertaining, and so clever, fading away entirely.
March 9, 2023
I listened to this book after I had first listened to the book that immediately follows it. Regrettably this is a pair of books that I think are better if they are read in the appropriate chronological order.
This book covers the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding. The major event during this period of course was World War I. You should be surprised to hear that Hollywood plays a major role in this particular book.
As usual, the author does a lot of reading between the lines of the traditional history. It is hard to tell the difference between history and fiction.
This book covers the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding. The major event during this period of course was World War I. You should be surprised to hear that Hollywood plays a major role in this particular book.
As usual, the author does a lot of reading between the lines of the traditional history. It is hard to tell the difference between history and fiction.
March 1, 2024
Didn’t realise it was 5th in a loose series - loved it and I’m going to start from the beginning!
March 25, 2012
I was sure I'd read Hollywood many years ago, but now I''m not sure. If I did, I didn't finish it. I'm tempted to give the book 5 stars, but will stick with 4 since it's a little unfocused in some places, and talky; though talky from GV is hardly tiresome.
Hollywood expands Caroline Sanford (and Hearst's) practice of news creation as Caroline takes the idea into film, first as the unlikely actress Emma Traxler and at the end, as a film mogul who sees film as the ultimate creation of a new society. On the very last page of the book we read a discussion between Caroline and Blaise, who opts to stay with print:
Caroline nodded,." After all, that's the only world there is now, what we invent."
"Invent or reflect?"
"What we invent other reflect, if we're ingenious enough, of course,. Hearst showed us how to invent news, which we do, some of the time for the best of reasons. But nothing we do ever goes very deep. We don't get into people's dreams, the way the movies do--or can do."
Along the road to Hollywood we get a lot of history: Wilson and his war, the McLeans, Alice Roosevelt, William Desmond Morris (whose murder is handled very well towards the end of the book), Mabel Normand, Warren G Harding, the Ohio Gang and numerous pols, hacks and otherwise, the Red Scare and the rise of rightwng hysterics, of which her daughter Emma partakes with gusto. Blaise and Burden Day are stalwarts. and with the addition of Fredericka and Kitty make for a sophisticated family situation.
I was happy to see Harding portrayed as I pretty much how see him. He was hardly the worst president we ever had, and importatly he understoodo how to wield power and let others take the credit for it. Harding, unfortunately, surrounded himself with cronies (and some good guys, too) whom he didn't keep a close eye on, believing that if they were doing a good job they were doing it right. At the end he points out, though that the way things are run crudely in Columbus or Washington Courthouse, aren't the way they are done in WDC, though the motives may be the same. I'd have liked to see Harding's wife ,"the Dutchess" played a little softer since she was actually a strong independent woman very involved with social issues, but she's also an easy target. Carl S Anthony's bio of her really changes perceptions. And WG himself hardly shied away from social issues.
Some of my favorite small parts of Hollywood: the manner in which the reader learns that Henry Adams has passed. It was so funny that after I read it the first time, I re-read it out loud a couple more times. And, of course, the idea that Caroline who once sat at the feet of Henry Adams and Henry James becomes the creator of vulgar pop culture is puzzling on one level, but also makes sense on another. I also was quite taken with the dialogue between Caroline and Mabel Normand in Caroline's dressing room after Taylor's murder.
GV leaves us with some important, but forgotten questions 100 years later: who killed Taylor (I'm on a Taylor FB llst and this is a big topic of discussion), did Eddie Sands and Jess Smith commit suicide? What would have happened with Harding's second term? Personally, I'd like to see Burden Day as president. Oh, wait a minute, he's not real.
But, What is real? What is created? Is there a difference? No in politics and media, I think.
On to Vol 6: Washington DC and I assume the young second (or is it third) Emma Sanford, the scourge of liberals. What did Caroline and Burden do to deserve her? Even the sordidness of 1920s Washingotn looks mild by today's standards.
Hollywood expands Caroline Sanford (and Hearst's) practice of news creation as Caroline takes the idea into film, first as the unlikely actress Emma Traxler and at the end, as a film mogul who sees film as the ultimate creation of a new society. On the very last page of the book we read a discussion between Caroline and Blaise, who opts to stay with print:
Caroline nodded,." After all, that's the only world there is now, what we invent."
"Invent or reflect?"
"What we invent other reflect, if we're ingenious enough, of course,. Hearst showed us how to invent news, which we do, some of the time for the best of reasons. But nothing we do ever goes very deep. We don't get into people's dreams, the way the movies do--or can do."
Along the road to Hollywood we get a lot of history: Wilson and his war, the McLeans, Alice Roosevelt, William Desmond Morris (whose murder is handled very well towards the end of the book), Mabel Normand, Warren G Harding, the Ohio Gang and numerous pols, hacks and otherwise, the Red Scare and the rise of rightwng hysterics, of which her daughter Emma partakes with gusto. Blaise and Burden Day are stalwarts. and with the addition of Fredericka and Kitty make for a sophisticated family situation.
I was happy to see Harding portrayed as I pretty much how see him. He was hardly the worst president we ever had, and importatly he understoodo how to wield power and let others take the credit for it. Harding, unfortunately, surrounded himself with cronies (and some good guys, too) whom he didn't keep a close eye on, believing that if they were doing a good job they were doing it right. At the end he points out, though that the way things are run crudely in Columbus or Washington Courthouse, aren't the way they are done in WDC, though the motives may be the same. I'd have liked to see Harding's wife ,"the Dutchess" played a little softer since she was actually a strong independent woman very involved with social issues, but she's also an easy target. Carl S Anthony's bio of her really changes perceptions. And WG himself hardly shied away from social issues.
Some of my favorite small parts of Hollywood: the manner in which the reader learns that Henry Adams has passed. It was so funny that after I read it the first time, I re-read it out loud a couple more times. And, of course, the idea that Caroline who once sat at the feet of Henry Adams and Henry James becomes the creator of vulgar pop culture is puzzling on one level, but also makes sense on another. I also was quite taken with the dialogue between Caroline and Mabel Normand in Caroline's dressing room after Taylor's murder.
GV leaves us with some important, but forgotten questions 100 years later: who killed Taylor (I'm on a Taylor FB llst and this is a big topic of discussion), did Eddie Sands and Jess Smith commit suicide? What would have happened with Harding's second term? Personally, I'd like to see Burden Day as president. Oh, wait a minute, he's not real.
But, What is real? What is created? Is there a difference? No in politics and media, I think.
On to Vol 6: Washington DC and I assume the young second (or is it third) Emma Sanford, the scourge of liberals. What did Caroline and Burden do to deserve her? Even the sordidness of 1920s Washingotn looks mild by today's standards.
June 27, 2020
The setting is 1918-22--America's entry into the Second World War, Woodrow Wilson's decisive re-election and failed attempt to get the Senate to allow the US to join the League of Nations, the rise of Warren Harding and corruption of his otherwise effective administration. Vidal has less of a story to tell than in earlier instalments of his seven-volume 'American Century' series. His invented characters, the Democratic Senator James Burden Day and the Sanfords, brother Blaise and sister Caroline, are manoeuvred where they are to shed light on events and historical tendencies, not as the protagonists of any story that is cogent or urgent in its own right. Vidal makes the intelligent to have as the point-of-view character in the sections dealing with Ohio Republican politics and Harding's circle Jess Smith, a bag-carrier for Harding and his backer Daughterty, and their go-between in dealing with Harding's younger mistress Nan. Smith enriches himself through grift at the Department of Justice helping bootleggers sidestep Prohibition.
Woodrow Wilson, a fine extempore speaker and spinner of idealistic exhortations, is presented by Gore as an able party manager and mediocre former Princeton Professor of History. He is outwitted in the Senate by the Republican Majority Leader, Henry Adams's former protege, the now elderly and acidulous Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson vindictively spoils the electoral chances of his son-in-law, William McAdoo, by refusing to campaign on Harding's supposed African-American blood.
The essence of the early 20s, for Vidal, is the emergence of 'photo-plays' or 'movies' (the word is used once towards the end of the book), first as vehicles of wartime and anti-Bolshevik propaganda, then as the media of realistic art. Caroline Sanford, Vidal's newspaper proprietor, becomes a producer, having an affair with a Boston-Irishman and proto-Red sympathiser, who directs her, and also an improbable star. She plays a woman searching for her son in the Trenches, fending off the sexual advances of a German clerk in a church. The smile she thought 'transparently insincere' is imbued with an elevating, almost a sacred, radiance on camera. She is one of the first stars, in her early 40s, to have cosmetic surgery done--in France. Her introverted daughter, a Math student, disindentifies strongly with her and Timothy X. Farrell. Emma marries a 'eunuchoid' older professor and takes to working for the FBI smoking out Bolsheviks. Vidal's own comment, nearly, is that America cares too much about freedom to allow freedom of speech.
Caroline's most ambitious movie project is to make a film of Mary, Queen of Scots, like her a woman of immense charm and sophistication with whom it has never really registered that other people exist. The final insight of this section is that power, the power to frame ordinary Americans' dreams and sense of themselves, is moving from Washington D.C. to Hollywood. With Farrell and a new studio, financed by the sale of her share of the paper, she will indite Americans' dreams and instil their sense of small-town normality.
Woodrow Wilson, a fine extempore speaker and spinner of idealistic exhortations, is presented by Gore as an able party manager and mediocre former Princeton Professor of History. He is outwitted in the Senate by the Republican Majority Leader, Henry Adams's former protege, the now elderly and acidulous Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson vindictively spoils the electoral chances of his son-in-law, William McAdoo, by refusing to campaign on Harding's supposed African-American blood.
The essence of the early 20s, for Vidal, is the emergence of 'photo-plays' or 'movies' (the word is used once towards the end of the book), first as vehicles of wartime and anti-Bolshevik propaganda, then as the media of realistic art. Caroline Sanford, Vidal's newspaper proprietor, becomes a producer, having an affair with a Boston-Irishman and proto-Red sympathiser, who directs her, and also an improbable star. She plays a woman searching for her son in the Trenches, fending off the sexual advances of a German clerk in a church. The smile she thought 'transparently insincere' is imbued with an elevating, almost a sacred, radiance on camera. She is one of the first stars, in her early 40s, to have cosmetic surgery done--in France. Her introverted daughter, a Math student, disindentifies strongly with her and Timothy X. Farrell. Emma marries a 'eunuchoid' older professor and takes to working for the FBI smoking out Bolsheviks. Vidal's own comment, nearly, is that America cares too much about freedom to allow freedom of speech.
Caroline's most ambitious movie project is to make a film of Mary, Queen of Scots, like her a woman of immense charm and sophistication with whom it has never really registered that other people exist. The final insight of this section is that power, the power to frame ordinary Americans' dreams and sense of themselves, is moving from Washington D.C. to Hollywood. With Farrell and a new studio, financed by the sale of her share of the paper, she will indite Americans' dreams and instil their sense of small-town normality.
January 8, 2010
So far so good. I haven't gotten far enough to tell what is going as far as where Vidal is taking this whole novel which seems, at least so far, epic in scope. This is one of those historical fictions where real historical personages are turned into fictional characters, but so far it has been completely believable. I think Gore Vidal is probably a pretty good student of American history, both political and cultural, though he undoubtedly has a polemic it hasn't shown itself yet. The novel opens on the eve of the American entry into the First World War and I think Vidal is trying to emphasize America on the brink of becoming a world military power. It's odd now to imagine a time when America wasn't a world superpower and what's even stranger are the parallels between the Democrats of 1917 wanting to get us into the war on the side of England and France at any cost - even manipulating public opinion through faking documents - and the Republican desire of 1917 to avoid war at any cost. A strange and somewhat unsettling reality given the recent experience of the Iraq invasion when the parties took essentially opposite stances.
You begin to see that "morality" like "patriotism" are often used as smoke screens for the real reasons political events occur.
May 26, 2009
I couldn't get through it. I skimmed the first 50 pages hoping it would get interesting, but at page 180 I gave up. Seemed to me the book was about a bunch of rich people with little to do. It just didn't pull me in.
March 19, 2012
Vidal captured the beginning of the incestuous relationship between government and the recreational media; the political and social changes presented by "image-making" have been with us ever since. Lots of facts woven throughout this fictional tapestry. Great read.
December 16, 2008
Historical novel focusing on the Wilson and Harding administrations, including the political scandals and the cultural evolution from wartime puritanism and progressivism to the Roaring 20s.
January 4, 2015
One of my favorite lines from this book is - the movie stars have big heads and little bodies.
November 6, 2020
Despite having heard about Gore Vidal, this is my first taste of his writings. This book is set in the early 1900s, starting with the end part of Woodrow Wilson's presidency, where he dealt with the decision of bringing the United States in the war going on in Europe. Russia had just changed from a Tzar royal monarchy to a socialist government which immediately took Russia out of the war on the European front. The Central Powers, mostly those of Germanic areas, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Otterman Empire were fighting against England, France, Italy, Romania, Russia,and Japan.
At that specific period, the United States had never involved itself with conflicts outside its boundaries and the majority of those in charge (in today's terminolgy--the Swamp) preferred to stay isolated. But Thedore Roosevelt was still very active in politics as he was still trying to run for President again. He had a big following of supporters who had been companions (fellow soldiers) as part of his Rough Riders force. Wilson knew he had to enter the war but he wanted to do it on his terms--end the war and have all nations combine to keep this from happening by forming a Legion of Nations with regulations to maintain peace. At the same time, everyone was dealing with an illness with flu-like symptoms that was making everyone sick. Just like today, mask were requested for everyone to wear and the same laissez faire attitude was had by all as to dealing with the sickness. As this author is describing this period from the views of those in power and money, most of those who were ill, had top medical care including homeopathy medicine. Plus they hid their illnesses behind closed doors from the public. Wilson kept the United States out of WW1 for three years until April 1917 until the war ended in a ceasefire and Armistice was declared in November 11, 1918. Wilson got sick in Paris and never really regained his health after that, especially when he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side. His wife and doctor kept everyone uninformed to keep him in office.
Because of this, the powers that choose a Presidential candidate for the Republicans chose Warren Gamaliel Harding who became the 29th President. He was married to a very ambitious woman who was nicknamed the Duchess, who was the First Lady that opened the White House to the public for viewing.
Meanwhile, the media at that time that controlled the version of news received by the public was newspapers. But it was slowly being replaced by screen movies starting with the silent screen plays and eventually talkies. Owners of the newspapers invested in studios to produce movies to present themes to the public and they developed close ties with the politicians to get free rein in their productions on both coasts (East in New York and New Jersey and West in LA and Hollywood). The King and Queen of the West Coast productions was Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickwick, who, with Charlie Chapin, formed United Artist film production. They were so famous that they were able to raise money for War Bonds for the nation.
That period of time was very chaotic with lots of cheating and scamming of government funds. In fact, between several departments including the USPS postmaster, a great deal of money crossed hands which resulted in the FBI investigating the scam. What was the worst part of the scam was the fact that Harding allowed it to occur knowingly because it put money in his pocket too.
Considering all the complaints about 2020, people need to go back and check history and see that it was no better 100 years ago with how information is given to the general public,
At that specific period, the United States had never involved itself with conflicts outside its boundaries and the majority of those in charge (in today's terminolgy--the Swamp) preferred to stay isolated. But Thedore Roosevelt was still very active in politics as he was still trying to run for President again. He had a big following of supporters who had been companions (fellow soldiers) as part of his Rough Riders force. Wilson knew he had to enter the war but he wanted to do it on his terms--end the war and have all nations combine to keep this from happening by forming a Legion of Nations with regulations to maintain peace. At the same time, everyone was dealing with an illness with flu-like symptoms that was making everyone sick. Just like today, mask were requested for everyone to wear and the same laissez faire attitude was had by all as to dealing with the sickness. As this author is describing this period from the views of those in power and money, most of those who were ill, had top medical care including homeopathy medicine. Plus they hid their illnesses behind closed doors from the public. Wilson kept the United States out of WW1 for three years until April 1917 until the war ended in a ceasefire and Armistice was declared in November 11, 1918. Wilson got sick in Paris and never really regained his health after that, especially when he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side. His wife and doctor kept everyone uninformed to keep him in office.
Because of this, the powers that choose a Presidential candidate for the Republicans chose Warren Gamaliel Harding who became the 29th President. He was married to a very ambitious woman who was nicknamed the Duchess, who was the First Lady that opened the White House to the public for viewing.
Meanwhile, the media at that time that controlled the version of news received by the public was newspapers. But it was slowly being replaced by screen movies starting with the silent screen plays and eventually talkies. Owners of the newspapers invested in studios to produce movies to present themes to the public and they developed close ties with the politicians to get free rein in their productions on both coasts (East in New York and New Jersey and West in LA and Hollywood). The King and Queen of the West Coast productions was Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickwick, who, with Charlie Chapin, formed United Artist film production. They were so famous that they were able to raise money for War Bonds for the nation.
That period of time was very chaotic with lots of cheating and scamming of government funds. In fact, between several departments including the USPS postmaster, a great deal of money crossed hands which resulted in the FBI investigating the scam. What was the worst part of the scam was the fact that Harding allowed it to occur knowingly because it put money in his pocket too.
Considering all the complaints about 2020, people need to go back and check history and see that it was no better 100 years ago with how information is given to the general public,
January 8, 2022
This is another one of Gore Vidal's series of novels on America. This novel focuses on the period from 1917 to 1923 as the United States was being drawn into World War 1 and its culture was being affected by numerous developments such as the automobile and the motion picture.
Like the prior book in the series, Empire, we see the activities of the period through the eyes of Carolyn Sanford and her half-brother Blaise, who are co-owners of a Washington-based newspaper called the Tribune. However, in this book, Carolyn also begins to participate in the world of Hollywood as both an actress, whose stage name is Emma Traxler, and a co-producer.
Vidal's strong point is in bringing the political players of these times into vivid life. His depiction of Woodrow Wilson shows how he has used skills developed in academia as a President of Princeton in the political sphere. He is shown to be a gifted orator, but struggled to master the hard knuckle politics to drive his League of Nations dream into reality. It's also interesting to see how Franklin Delano Roosevelt was being viewed during this period as a bit of a dilettante.
There is a lot of emphasis in this novel on the developing Hollywood lifestyle and Carolyn jumps in feet first to be part of it and pass on her observations. We hear a lot about the stars of the period including Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, though Carolyn notes that the magic of these individuals is much more apparent on the screen than in person. For me, the Hollywood sections are much less interesting than the political aspects of the times, though it is fascinating to see how blacklists and laws related to sedition came into play both during and after the World War. Hollywood had its own scandals during this period and Vidal shows how the media and political actors had an influence on how these played out.
As I read this book, we are in a time of turbulent politics in the US, but the political skirmishes described in this book show that alleged vote fixing, payoffs and complex electoral battles have long been a part of political life in America.
Readers who are hoping to get a stronger sense of the Twenties may be disappointed, since only the first part of the decade in covered and through the fairly narrow lenses of the Warren G. Harding administration and the aforementioned Hollywood scandals. Vidal does offer an interesting take on Harding as being widely loved by the electorate and we only get hints of the wheeling and dealing by cronies around him that would greatly tarnish his political reputation.
I'd recommend this book to those who want to better understand how the aftermath of World War I created the conditions which traumatized Germany in the years to follow and why the League of Nations touted by Woodrow Wilson failed to materialize. Vidal does a wonderful job in bringing the period to life, but we hear much more about the highly affluent of these times and not so much about the lives of more ordinary people. We do get a sense of how the United States is stepping into its role as a world leader during and after the first world war, yet this more global view is is still in deep tension with alternative isolationist visions.
Like the prior book in the series, Empire, we see the activities of the period through the eyes of Carolyn Sanford and her half-brother Blaise, who are co-owners of a Washington-based newspaper called the Tribune. However, in this book, Carolyn also begins to participate in the world of Hollywood as both an actress, whose stage name is Emma Traxler, and a co-producer.
Vidal's strong point is in bringing the political players of these times into vivid life. His depiction of Woodrow Wilson shows how he has used skills developed in academia as a President of Princeton in the political sphere. He is shown to be a gifted orator, but struggled to master the hard knuckle politics to drive his League of Nations dream into reality. It's also interesting to see how Franklin Delano Roosevelt was being viewed during this period as a bit of a dilettante.
There is a lot of emphasis in this novel on the developing Hollywood lifestyle and Carolyn jumps in feet first to be part of it and pass on her observations. We hear a lot about the stars of the period including Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, though Carolyn notes that the magic of these individuals is much more apparent on the screen than in person. For me, the Hollywood sections are much less interesting than the political aspects of the times, though it is fascinating to see how blacklists and laws related to sedition came into play both during and after the World War. Hollywood had its own scandals during this period and Vidal shows how the media and political actors had an influence on how these played out.
As I read this book, we are in a time of turbulent politics in the US, but the political skirmishes described in this book show that alleged vote fixing, payoffs and complex electoral battles have long been a part of political life in America.
Readers who are hoping to get a stronger sense of the Twenties may be disappointed, since only the first part of the decade in covered and through the fairly narrow lenses of the Warren G. Harding administration and the aforementioned Hollywood scandals. Vidal does offer an interesting take on Harding as being widely loved by the electorate and we only get hints of the wheeling and dealing by cronies around him that would greatly tarnish his political reputation.
I'd recommend this book to those who want to better understand how the aftermath of World War I created the conditions which traumatized Germany in the years to follow and why the League of Nations touted by Woodrow Wilson failed to materialize. Vidal does a wonderful job in bringing the period to life, but we hear much more about the highly affluent of these times and not so much about the lives of more ordinary people. We do get a sense of how the United States is stepping into its role as a world leader during and after the first world war, yet this more global view is is still in deep tension with alternative isolationist visions.
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