From Publishers Weekly
In this concise but hardly cohesive effort, the achievements of America's most venerable founding fathers-and a large supporting cast, including Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin-are eclipsed by their personal, psychological and political foibles. Our nation is often portrayed as a finished product, having been birthed by great thinkers and selfless patriots. Vidal illustrates that the new nation was, in fact, a messy, tenuous experiment, consistently teetering on the brink. Vidal sheds light on the shaky alliances, rivalries, egos, personal ambitions and political realities faced by the men who became the first three American presidents. Unfortunately, Vidal's greatest strength, his novelist's flair, runs amok here. At John Adams's inauguration, for example, Vidal asserts that Washington "won his last victory in the Mount Rushmore sweepstakes" by forcing Jefferson, the vice-president, to exit the hall before him, so Washington could claim the larger ovation. This is divined from a record that merely states, "Jefferson was obliged to leave the chamber first." Correspondence is used to support Vidal's acerbic appraisals, but without source notes, readers are left to wonder in what context the extracts were originally penned. Vidal's antipathy toward the "American Empire" and contempt for the American public drips thick from his sentences and shows up frequently in annoying parenthetical asides and interjected screeds. He sneers that the "majority" of Americans "don't know what the Electoral College is" and compares Truman to the bloody Roman tyrant Tiberius. This book was surely intended to be thought provoking. Unfortunately, it provokes more thought about its author than its subjects. Still, one has to appreciate the irony of a noted icon-smasher launching Yale's new American Icons series. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Much of Vidal's contempt for contemporary America may originate in his admiration of how the Founding Fathers handled human nature. At least the founders, Vidal seems to say in this sinuous essay, were not hypocrites disclaiming interest in power; rather, they made an honest attempt in the original Constitution to restrain what they saw as politicians' inevitable appetites for ambition and avarice. Long fascinated with the behind-the-scenes aspects of politics in the 1780s and 1790s, Vidal muses on Alexander Hamilton's machinations against John Adams and analyzes similar political sleights of hand by Jefferson, Aaron Burr, John Marshall, and James Madison. Along with these characteristically brilliant and acerbic reflections on power and personality, Vidal offers a generally positive portrayal of Washington, taking time to note how the Father of His Country looked with his wooden teeth. This entertaining and enlightening reappraisal of the founders is a must for buffs of American civilization and its discontents. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson FROM THE PUBLISHER
Gore Vidal, one of the master stylists of American literature and one of the most acute observers of American life and history, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the formidable trio of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
In Inventing a Nation, Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and other key figures who helped found the American Republic. Vidal's splendid and percipient prose animates key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation, and we come to know these men in ways we have not until now - their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life and illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they gave, and the institutions of government they fashioned. Above all, Inventing a Nation presents a powerful, compassionate, immensely moving portrait of George Washington, whose resolution, integrity, and intelligence rescued the fledgling Republic many times in its early days.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
It is hard to know what to make of Vidal, America's super-satirist. Can he be serious? Yes, sometimes. Probably no American writer since Franklin has derided, ridiculed and mocked Americans more skillfully and more often than Vidal. In this latest effort, which is not one of his lively novels about moments in America's past but his attempt to explain where these great founders came from, Vidal has his usual sardonic fun with the creation of the nation, interspersing his history with some witty remarks about our present dreadful circumstances.
— Gordon S. Wood
Publishers Weekly
In this concise but hardly cohesive effort, the achievements of America's most venerable founding fathers-and a large supporting cast, including Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin-are eclipsed by their personal, psychological and political foibles. Our nation is often portrayed as a finished product, having been birthed by great thinkers and selfless patriots. Vidal illustrates that the new nation was, in fact, a messy, tenuous experiment, consistently teetering on the brink. Vidal sheds light on the shaky alliances, rivalries, egos, personal ambitions and political realities faced by the men who became the first three American presidents. Unfortunately, Vidal's greatest strength, his novelist's flair, runs amok here. At John Adams's inauguration, for example, Vidal asserts that Washington "won his last victory in the Mount Rushmore sweepstakes" by forcing Jefferson, the vice-president, to exit the hall before him, so Washington could claim the larger ovation. This is divined from a record that merely states, "Jefferson was obliged to leave the chamber first." Correspondence is used to support Vidal's acerbic appraisals, but without source notes, readers are left to wonder in what context the extracts were originally penned. Vidal's antipathy toward the "American Empire" and contempt for the American public drips thick from his sentences and shows up frequently in annoying parenthetical asides and interjected screeds. He sneers that the "majority" of Americans "don't know what the Electoral College is" and compares Truman to the bloody Roman tyrant Tiberius. This book was surely intended to be thought provoking. Unfortunately, it provokes more thought about its author than its subjects. Still, one has to appreciate the irony of a noted icon-smasher launching Yale's new American Icons series. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Vidal (Burr: A Novel; Lincoln; Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace) uses the 1787 Constitutional Convention both as a focus for his psychological portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams and as a jumping-off point into these Founders' lives. The narrative briefly traces early American history through the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson. But, more a commentary than a history, Vidal's short book relates certain modern troubles (e.g., the Enron scandal) to events from early U.S. history and spends so much time denigrating Alexander Hamilton that Hamilton's name might have been added to the book's subtitle. Uncertain of his intended audience, Vidal assumes that readers are familiar with little-known historical incidents, yet he goes to the trouble of defining Tories. His literary allusions are well beyond the average reader, as is his long-winded writing style. Lacking a central theme, this book offers little beyond commentary that is sometimes obscure at best. A better history is John Ferling's recent A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle To Create the American Republic. Libraries will buy this bewilderingly unfocused book on the strength of Vidal's name. That's a shame, since it does not merit the shelf space if judged on its own. [Inventing a Nation debuts Yale's "American Icons" series.-Ed.]-Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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