Disset anys després de la mort de l'emperador romà del segle IV, Julià l'Apòstata, dos dels seus contemporanis es disposen a recuperar els diaria personals de l'emperador per escriure una crònica del seu regnat. Els dos escrivents adopten una actitud
Gore Vidal's 1973 novel in the guise of a memoir of Burr's life is told with plenty of gossipy detail. Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, an ambitious journalist, is writing an anonymous pamphlet to prove that Martin Van Buren (Jackson's vice-president) is the bastard son of Aaron Burr. Schuyler wants not to harm Burr, but to ruin Van Buren. (As Vidal famously said, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.") Burr, thinking that Schuyler is writing a biography, gives him a memoir. The novel combines Schuyler's point of view with Burr's own memoir, and during the course of the double narrative, Schuyler discovers the truth about Van Buren--and about himself. Charlie Schuyler also appears in Vidal's novels LINCOLN and 1876.
Charles Schuyler, the young journalist from Gore Vidal's BURR, is here 30 years older, and returning to the US from Europe with his fortune obliterated by the panic of 1873. He must now actively pursue a journalistic career and also find a husband for his daughter, Emma, a widow. Mostly, he must help Tilden get elected president, because then Schuyler will be assured of a diplomatic post in France.
Julian the Apostate, who tried to replace Christianity with tolerance for all religions, particularly the Hellenistic ones, is the subject of this work of historical fiction by Gore Vidal. Accompanied by the notes of Priscus of Athens and Libanius of Antioch, two elderly scholars, the book consists of the main narrative coupled with the humor and backbiting gossip that has made Vidal's style so distinctive--and that serves to make this novel realistic and accessible. This was Vidal's first historical novel, a form that served him well throughout his long career.
