Blennerhasset-footnotes as well as Big Feet-Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, John Hay, William Cullen Bryant in their historical pajamas. We had met Washington, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, Col. In “Empire,” just published, he goes back for a missing chunk: the expansionist years of the Spanish American War and Manifest Destiny. In his fictional re-creations of our nation’s political life-”Burr,” “Lincoln,” “1876,” “Washington D.C.”-Vidal first-named his way from the Revolution and the Jackson era, to the Civil War, to the robber-baron Gilded Age, to a stretch running from the later New Deal into the McCarthy days. As mentor, Vidal has reservations about his protege. Gore Vidal and History are on breezy first-name terms, but there is a trickle of irritation underneath.
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