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The Golden Age

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from: Erik Tarloff

The Windiness of War

Posted Monday, Sept. 18, 2000, at 3:36 PM ET

Howdy, neighbor,

I remember the 1973 New York Review of Books article you mentioned in your letter, and, in fact, thought about that article often while reading Vidal's current novel. Because, as I recall, among the books on the New York Times best-seller list that season was Herman Wouk's The Winds of War. Vidal, despite the prevailing snottiness (you prefer to call it "archness") of his survey, found much to admire in Wouk's novel, which combined a fictional family narrative with a sweeping historical account of the years preceding and encompassing World War II. But, although his comments were largely favorable, I do remember a certain patronizing quality to his account, a sense that he was speaking de haut en bas, a subtly conveyed impression he was a serious novelist deigning to acknowledge the professional competence of a less-serious colleague.

Which is, in retrospect, ironic. The Golden Age actually has an extraordinary kinship with Wouk's novel, including quite a few of the same historical personages appearing in fictionalized scenes. And yet I believe the earlier novel is, in almost every way, the superior work.

Historical fiction, as a genre, poses a curious set of problems for author and reader alike. Are we to consider it pre-eminently a work of the imagination and react to the historical characters and events no differently than we do to the invented ones? Or are we to assume that the author's notions about the history are his or her primary focus, and the rest is a kind of window-dressing? The author's minimal responsibility, I should think, is to be accurate about the history insofar as possible, and yet to regard the narrative as primary (The Winds of War, while unquestionably a popular entertainment rather than a work of literary fiction, accomplished both tasks superbly). It's in the latter regard, I think, in the author's commitment to his narrative--you and I are in agreement about this--that Vidal is especially derelict. The story is not merely thin, it's unengaging; it doesn't even seem to engage Vidal himself very much. I've read most of the books in this series and liked most of them (Lincoln, as you say, is probably the best, but Burr is also excellent, as is 1876). Here, though, many of the big scenes--by which I mean the big fictional events, not world-shattering occurrences like the bombing of Pearl Harbor--occur offstage, and many significant plot lines are simply dropped as Vidal's focus shifts from character to character.

Filmmaker Tim Farrell has taken up with the daughter of his previous lover? Well, this is a pretty big emotional moment, but we learn about it second hand, long after it has taken place. Ambitious politician Clay Overbury has abandoned his fiancee Diana so he can marry someone rich enough to bankroll his political career? Again, we are told about it years after it has happened, long after it's already an established and accepted fact. Diana and Peter, publisher of the radical journal American Idea, have reconciled and married? Ditto. There's no investigation of Peter's emotional reaction to marrying Diana on the rebound, to knowing he's her second choice, or to what impact this knowledge has had on their relationship. Any professional writer knows that these sorts of developments are the big moments, the payoffs, the dramatic explosions toward which the story builds. Vidal's failure to exploit them suggests 1) his heart may not be in the whole enterprise; and 2) he believes he's frying much bigger fish. I suspect both of these reasons obtain, as I'll explain in a subsequent letter. And I think the novel suffers accordingly.

Since you've mentioned awkward sentences, I agree the book has a disconcerting number, probably another indication that Vidal, usually an accomplished prose stylist, is not fully engaged in his task. Permit me to offer my candidate for the most egregious offender: "If the Canadians had the military and economic power, might they not have had an equal right to save their southern neighbors from two European world wars on the ground that an American minority, armed with great wealth, could so subjugate the American political process as to oblige the many to go glumly to war for the benefit of the few?"

There's also a surprising carelessness about details. On Page 79, for example, we read the following: "A tall man of middle age and middle height and middling appearance approached. ..." Is he tall or is he of middle height? And on Page 334, Hubert Humphrey is identified as the mayor of Milwaukee, which is not merely the wrong city, but it's in the wrong state. And a number of characters use the word "elitist" in attributed dialogue, surely an anachronism.

And finally (for this day's offering, anyway), seeing as how you mentioned your pet peeve, let me offer mine: Since, as you say, this book is at least partly a disguised memoir, with elements of a roman à clef, some of the fictional characters have obvious real-life counterparts. However, since the fictional elements of the novel intersect with real historical events, there are times when, much too cutely for my taste, the fictional characters co-exist with their real-life models. Clay Overbury and John F. Kennedy are presented as rivals for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, for example, but they're obviously more or less the same person. This gets back to a central problem of historical fiction: Is it meant to take place in the real universe or a parallel universe of the author's creation? That Vidal makes this conundrum overt in his final chapter doesn't relieve him of the responsibility for dealing with it consistently in the body of his text.

Tomorrow, I'll try to mention a few things about the book that I admire, along with positing some possible reasons for its having gone awry. For now, though, I plan to stare out the window and admire the crystalline view of San Francisco across the bay. I recommend you do the same.

Your birthday brother,
Erik

the book club
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

from: Erik Tarloff

The Windiness of War

Posted Monday, Sept. 18, 2000, at 3:36 PM ET

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This week, our Book Clubbers discuss The Golden Age, Gore Vidal's opus about Washington and Hollywood in the 1940s and '50s. Click here to buy the book and here for an explanation of Slate's new and improved "Book Club" format.

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Reader Comments from The Fray:

Mr Tarloff's memory fails him concerning Vidal's discussion of The Winds of War; [Monday] Vidal gave the book a pretty thorough drubbing. It was Mary Renault for whom he betrayed the sneaking affection. Alas, the sentences you fellows have chosen to quote are pretty dire, and it seems that the Lion of Ravello may at last be succumbing to the writerly entropy that drags down all except Saul Bellow (so far). I always found most of the novels a bit--what, astringent?--but let's remember him above all as the finest essayist our nation produced in the 20th century. The American Montaigne will always be welcome on that shabby table at my bedside.

--Bruce Lanier Wright

(To reply, click here.)

If I might rattle the teacups a bit, these two gentlemen are delineating fine points of the novel in an atmosphere so rarefied as to be all but unbreathable. What has happened to the Berkeley air?

I, too, remember with deep admiration Vidal's NYRB piece reviewing all 10 novels on the NY Times fiction bestseller list. Have our correspondents looked at the NY Times fiction bestseller list lately? Granted there are 15 books on it now, but no writer who prizes his sanity would dream of reviewing most of that sludge. But it was possible back then. It's not now.

My point is not that in a sloppy age Vidal is to be forgiven slapdash practice of the craft of fiction. By all means, summon Tolstoy and Joyce and Henry James to make your case against Vidal (if, indeed, those writers are precisely relevant to a discussion of The Golden Age?) But both of you go on to fault Vidal for writing about, caring about, a Big Idea. For pete's sake, at least he has one! Roth, Updike, Bellow-and Vidal--can barely make it to the bestseller list these days, and surely can't stay on it long.

Do you gentlemen who care for the craft of fiction note the decline that has occurred in the last quarter-century? Vidal does, I'm sure; and I'll wager The Golden Age will be more important, more memorable, than the finely crafted Jamesian ironies now propounded by twelfth-rate imitators of James currently practicing fiction, precisely because Vidal's work does at least tackle ideas. That's one of the jobs of the novel, a job few "craftsmanlike" writers today even consider undertaking. Please ponder that poisonous state of affairs before you start lambasting Vidal for not advancing the art of fiction in his latest novel. What art of fiction? Him and who else?

Besides, Vidal has already advanced the art considerably (to take a small example, consider the paradox that Vidal's Lincoln, beloved of both our correspondents, is about a tragic president yet is structured comically, like a Trollope novel, with the White House at the center of the action like a Barchester manse; this is a book written by a man who knows the novel form intimately). In novel after novel, from Myra Breckenridge to Creation, Vidal has stretched the form to accommodate ideas. To take him to task now for finishing what he--and, I'd submit, largely he alone--started with respect to American historical fiction is to underappreciate his considerable contribution. I'm betting that The Golden Age, even if wobbly, will stand alone as a kind of fiction not much honored, much less done well, these days. As a novelist, Vidal will take a tormenting idea over a tormented ego any day. That fast-fading literary instinct--you can't buy it or teach it in a writing class--is to be cherished, not trashed.

--Ivan Webster

(To reply, click here.)

Notes from the Fray Editor: There was this argument on which was Vidal's first historical novel. And Colleen wants to tell James Fallows "if you read Washington, DC you will find out all about Diana, Clay and Peter in the early years and it will answer all the questions you asked in your piece. He is just not re-treading old ground--it is a series and meant to be read that way."

Loki says Gore Vidal just is like that, he hasn't changed: "These types of sentences have appeared in almost all the novels I've read from him. I guess it's a matter of taste, but hardly worth pointing out, really...and what exactly is anachronistic about the term 'elitist'?"