The details of the Teapot Dome scandal, the shadow presidency of Mrs. There is no dramatic tension in Hollywood, although there are regular flashes of Vidal's wit, in particular a scene in a steambath with Fairbanks and Chaplin waxing grandiloquent on the nature of movies. His fictional protagonists-Caroline Sanford and Burden Day, also the main characters of Empire -seem on hand merely to be injected at just the right moment to catch an intimate glimpse of the rich and famous. Presidents Harding, Wilson and Coolidge, and Hollywood stars Fairbanks, Chaplin and Mabel Norman make major appearances here. saga has become more extravagantly peopled with historical personages. His imagination seems to flag as he draws closer to the present, and he delivers a surprisingly dry recitation of the facts and circumstances of history. In the sixth of Vidal's historic novels about Aaron Burr and his descendants, the author has come a long way from Burr, the first in the series, both in time span-the focus here is on the years between 19-and quality. "A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal's best," said The New York Times Book Review.
"Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives-West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress-so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington.
Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. Hollywood marks the fifth episode in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire," his celebrated series of six historical novels that form his extended biography of the United States.
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