» » The Golden Age (Narratives of Empire)

Download The Golden Age (Narratives of Empire) fb2

by Gore Vidal

Gore_Vidal Contemporary English
  • ISBN: 0349114277
  • Category: Fiction
  • Author: Gore Vidal
  • Subcategory: Contemporary
  • Other formats: lit azw doc lrf
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk (December 2001)
  • Pages: 467 pages
  • FB2 size: 1424 kb
  • EPUB size: 1745 kb
  • Rating: 4.7
  • Votes: 446
Download The Golden Age (Narratives of Empire) fb2
Download FB2 Download EPUB

The Golden Age, a historical novel published in 2000 by Gore Vidal, is the seventh and final novel in his Narratives of Empire series

The Golden Age, a historical novel published in 2000 by Gore Vidal, is the seventh and final novel in his Narratives of Empire series. The story begins in 1939 and features many of the characters and events that Gore Vidal introduced in his earlier novel, Washington, . This includes the families of conservative Democratic Senator James Burden Day, and powerful newspaper publisher Blaise Sanford

Empire is the fourth historical novel in the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal, published in 1987. The novel concerns the fictional newspaper dynasty of half-sibling characters Caroline and Blaise Sanford.

Empire is the fourth historical novel in the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal, published in 1987. Playing these characters against real-life figures of the years 1898 to 1907, the novel portrays the conjunction of government and mass media in the creation of modern-day America

The Golden Age is the concluding volume in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling Narratives of Empire series-a unique pageant .

The Golden Age is the concluding volume in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling Narratives of Empire series-a unique pageant of the national experience from the United States' entry into World War Two to the end of the Korean War. The historical novel is once again in vogue, and Gore Vidal stands as its undisputed American master. In his six previous narratives of the American empire-Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, and Washington, . he has created a fictional portrait of our nation from its founding that is unmatched in our literature for its scope, intimacy, political.

The "sort of", I should explain, is due to the fact that I skipped Washington DC, the sixth volume in the series (although the one that Vidal wrote first). Maybe this was lazy, but I found it difficult to muster enough enthusiasm to read two books covering roughly the same span of time.

As Vidal did in the earlier books, the author sticks pretty rigorously to the facts. The newest entry in Vidal's "narratives of empire" series (which includes Burr, Lincoln and 1876) is a densely plotted, hugely ambitious novel that manages to impress and infuriate in equal measure. A series of historical essays masquerading as a historical novel, it endeavors to present Vidal's philosophy regarding our nation's ascent to global-empire status, from 1939 into the 1950s.

Used availability for Gore Vidal's The Golden Ag.

June 2008 : USA Library Binding.

THE GOLDEN AGE is the final, eponymous novel that brings to an end what Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called 'Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels or novelised histories', NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE

THE GOLDEN AGE is the final, eponymous novel that brings to an end what Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called 'Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels or novelised histories', NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE. Like a latter day Anthony Trollope, Vidal masterfully balances the personal with the political, the invented with the historical fact. His heroine from Hollywood, Caroline Sanford, reappears in Washington as President Roosevelt schemes to get the USA into the war by provoking the Japanese.

The Golden Age. (Book in the Narratives of Empire Series). The Golden Age is Vidal's crowning achievement, a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War II and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire. The sharp-eyed and sympathetic witnesses to these events are Caroline Sanford, Hollywood actress turned Washington .

The Golden Age (Gore Vidal novel). The Golden Age (Gore Vidal novel).

THE GOLDEN AGE is the final, eponymous novel that brings to an end what Gabriel García Márquez has called ‘Gore Vidal’s magnificent series of historical novels or novelised histories’, NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE.

THE GOLDEN AGE is the final, eponymous novel that brings to an end what Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called 'Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels or novelised histories', NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE. Like a latter day Anthony Trollope, Vidal masterfully balances the personal with the political, the invented with the historical fact. His heroine from Hollywood, Caroline Sanford, reappears in Washington as President Roosevelt schemes to get the USA into the war by provoking the Japanese. In the novel's ten year span America is master of the globe, with Japan and Europe as colony and dependency under her empire. Against this backdrop there is a glittering explosion in the arts (we see the likes of Lowell, Bernstein and Tennessee Williams and witness the opening night of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE). But by 1950 and the coming of the Korean War, the Golden Age is over. For the reader who wants to be informed as well as vastly entertained about the last two hundred years of American history there could be no better place to start than with Vidal's NARRATIVES.
Reviews about The Golden Age (Narratives of Empire) (7):
Quinthy
The Golden Age is the last chapter in a series of books that stretch from Aaron Burr and the birth of America, all the way to the apogee of the American Empire, as Gore Vidal describes it.
The reader may enjoy reading the novels in order, since they follow a small number of families through history, but this is not mandatory; each book can be read as a standalone story.
The Golden Age forms a somewhat bitter ending to the series and feels more like a very polished draft than a finished Vidal novel. The characters are less dimensional; like the author maybe, they seem tired and disillusioned. Even Vidal's brilliance, he was a brilliant writer, cannot hide the patterns and recipes he uses, sometimes abuses, and his monomaniacal attention to the upper classes and the power brokers, as well as on his own family's political clout, wear a bit thin in the end.
The books is still enjoyable and well written, but if you are looking for an introduction to Gore Vidal, you can do much better. We recommend, in particular, his incredible "Lincoln" to anyone who enjoys historically based fiction.
Lilegha
Though the realizations in this book might have been a bombshell back when it was written, they're old news now. It came out some time ago that Roosevelt actually knew the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor well before it happened. This novel made me coin a new term..."drivia", which is a combination of drivel and trivia. It was tiring to read endless gossipy chit chat among the elite fops that surrounded the Roosevelts and Truman when they were in power. If you'd like an inane plunge into that world, then this book is for you.
Hunaya
This was my least favorite book in the Empire series and led to a very flat and unsatisfying conclusion. It pales in comparison to Burr and Lincoln. I particularly disliked the fact that Vidal brought himself into the book as a reference character -- kind of cheesy. With that said, I really enjoy Gore Vidal's writing and highly recommend Burr, Lincoln, and Hollywood.
Unereel
Gore Vidal's "The Golden Age" is a magnificent book by our greatest living author and man of letters. As the capstone on his historical novelization of the rise and decline of the American Empire, it is a fitting end to a series which enlightens and entertains. For Vidal strips away the myth of America that neo-conservatism seeks at virtually all cost to perpetuate, be it the myth of a noble "Founding," the myth of a saintly and simple Abraham Lincoln, the myth of a noble empire bent on enlightening the world out of sheer altruism, the myth that we fought World War II because we were attacked without provocation, or the myth that our actions at the beginning of the Cold War were entirely in reaction to those of the Soviet Union.
This is Vidal's great theme. Over the course of his work, the main line of character development lies, not so much in Vidal's people, as in the country and then the nation itself. Vidal grew up surrounded by the men who became the ghosts that haunt our history; which is why, I suppose, that the end of this book is so fitting and so beautiful a finale to what has become a monumental work.
Shakagul
The time just before World War II is considered here and this is interesting. Wendell Wilkie's run for President, Roosevelt and
his approach to a third term, war discussions at every cocktail party, all the players in Washington when Washington was small and everyone seemed to know everyone. After a while one grows tired of all the name dropping and chatter, but Vidal was certainly at home in this world and that counts for a good deal.
Laitchai
From Burr to the golden age you will read the history of the USA in away that you were never taught at school. Interesting, good stories and educational while being fun to read. Gore Vidal was one of Americas best writers and if you read the entire group of books you will understand why. Should be a must reading for all Americans.
terostr
Gore Vidal is a national treasure and one of my favorite authors, but this is the most disappointing of his novels that I have read. The first hundred pages or so consist of Washington cocktail-party chatter circa 1940, and it doesn't get much better as it goes along. The characters seem oddly detached from the epochal events unfolding around them, and as a result the reader cares little about them. There is much to be said about the machinations of the ruling powers during the period covered in this book; perhaps a work of fiction, although based on fact, is not the proper forum to explore them, as master essayist Vidal must himself have known before finishing this dramatically unsatisfying work. Perhaps he needed the advance to pay the mortgage on his Italian villa? Authors have to eat, too.
Although this novel provides interesting insights into how at least some people were thinking in the 1940's, and some equally interesting anecdotal material regarding the great and near great Americans of the time, it fails as a novel. Its principal characters are no more than stick figures; they never come alive, never make the reader care about what happens to them. They are little more than mouthpieces for Vidal to bring out his views of some of the happenings the age -- e.g. the theory that the attack on Pearl Harbor was deliberately instigated by the Roosevelt administration and that efforts to provide advance warning to those directly affected were deliberately thwarted as part of a master plan to get us into the war. Vidal's views on Truman are equally negative, to the point of being outrageous, but views of these kinds and the anecdotes that support them provide virtually all of the interest that the book offers. Vidal can -- and has -- done much better (e.g. Burr, Lincoln, 1876).

Related to The Golden Age (Narratives of Empire) fb2 books: