History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 9/10

• Accuracy: Well researched, with real documents and events, but Burr’s opinions of the Founding Fathers are deliberately partisan.
• Readability: Witty, elegant and malicious; a pleasure to read.
• Plot: An elderly Aaron Burr dictates his memoirs to a young law clerk in 1830s New York, while the clerk investigates Burr’s secrets.

In the 1830s, Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, a young law clerk, works for the elderly Aaron Burr, former vice-president, killer of Alexander Hamilton, and accused traitor. Schuyler is asked to help Burr write his memoirs, and he is also secretly hired to find evidence that Martin Van Buren, then a presidential candidate, is Burr’s illegitimate son.

Gore Vidal alternates Burr’s memoirs with Schuyler’s journal. Burr’s voice is the novel’s glory. He is urbane, charming, cynical and funny, and his portraits of Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton are wicked. Washington is a vain, incompetent general. Jefferson is a hypocrite. Hamilton is an ambitious schemer.

This is revisionist history, and Vidal enjoyed puncturing American myths. But the research is extensive, and many of Burr’s claims have a basis in fact. The duel with Hamilton and the treason trial are vividly presented.

Schuyler’s story, set in 1830s New York, provides a counterpoint and a mystery, as he learns about Burr and himself.

The weakness is that Burr’s charm can make the book’s viewpoint seem more authoritative than it is. Readers should remember that he has reasons to lie. The Schuyler sections are less lively.

The 9 reflects a brilliant, entertaining and provocative novel, the first in Vidal’s Narratives of Empire. It remains one of the great American historical novels.