Senator Gore's isolationism has been one of the guiding beliefs of Vidal's political philosophy, which has always been unwaveringly critical of what he perceives to be American imperialism.Īfter graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Vidal joined the US Army Reserve in 1943.įor much of the late 20th century, Vidal divided his time between Ravello, Italy, on the Amalfi Coast, and Los Angeles, California. His grandfather Gore was blind, and the young Vidal both read aloud to him and frequently acted as his guide, thereby gaining unusual access for a child to the corridors of power. Vidal was brought up in the Washington, D.C., area. Vidal later adopted as his first name the surname of his maternal grandfather, Thomas P.

His birth took place at the United States Military Academy where his father was an aeronautics instructor.

He was born Eugene Luther Vidal in West Point, New York, the son of Eugene Vidal and Nina Gore. Vidal's portrait of the president is at once intimateĪnd monumental, stark and complex, drawn with the wit, grace, and authority of one of the great historical novelists.Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925), known simply as Gore Vidal, is a well-known American writer of novels, plays and essays, and has been a public figure for over fifty years.

The cast of characters is almost Dickensian: politicians, generals, White House aides, newspapermen, Northern and Southern conspirators, amiably evil bankers, and a wife slowly going mad. In this profoundly moving novel, a work of epic proportions and intense human sympathy, Lincoln is observed by his loved ones and his rivals. Isolated in a ramshackle White House in the center of a proslavery city, Lincoln presides over a fragmenting government as Lee's armies beat at the gates. During the next four years there will be numerous plots to murder this man who has sworn to unite a disintegrating nation. The future president is in disguise, for there is talk of a plot to murder him. It opens early on a frozen winter morning in 1861, when President-elect Abraham Lincoln slips into Washington, flanked by two bodyguards. Synopsis: Lincoln is the cornerstone of Gore Vidal's fictional American chronicle, which includes Burr, 1876, Washington, D.C., Empire, and Hollywood.

Lincoln by gore vidal