Eventually all things are known. And few matter.

 

Before I went off to college, I read Gore Vidal's Burr. I had read a friend's review of it and loved the idea of a book that really takes it to the founding father hagiography. Of course, at that time, I was very stupid, though, and I sort of thought that the book reflecting the enlightenment pioneers of the revolution as just massive pieces of shit was good enough. Like Leo's character in One Battle After Another, I sort of gestured to the founding fathers and said things like "he was a slave owner, you know". This struck me as brilliance.

You can imagine an early college student clinging to this concept, trying it out on all sorts of people so they could laud me for how smart I was. One day I tried it on a friend, an upperclassman majoring in US history; "the founding fathers were terrible people, obviously the fabric of our country is deeply corrupted, incomplete," etc. He shrugged. Retorted that just because they were bad people didn't mean their ideas were bad. So ended my deployment of what I thought to be Vidal's core point. So ended the utility of the novel Burr.

As I was weighing what all I wanted to reread this year, it originally didn't make the list, but I decided to revisit Burr almost two decades later because, beyond anything I remember it teaching me, I remember it being a really enjoyable read. Nothing has changed there; Vidal is hilarious, capable of believably transforming lauded historic men of philosophy into the pettiest of bitch. Normally, I roll my eyes at classical or literary writers who slip in jokes about asses or farting (thinking of Melville), but Vidal writes about things like George Washington's ass in poetic flurries; it fits, it's funny, and it's quick. I genuinely laughed out loud several times. Particularly when he was tearing apart Jefferson.

But the utility of a novel like Burr has also been transformed. I'm no longer trying to IRL shit-post arguments with anyone and everyone; reading in my early 20s was about leveraging books in a way that made me look cool, reading in my 30s is about understanding the world. And Burr ended up being a perfect read to understand what feels like a uniquely hideous moment in American politics.

As Vidal's protagonist Charlie navigates the election between Van Buren and Harrison, he also works on the memoirs of Aaron Burr, one of US revolutionary history's notorious villains. Vidal's portrayal of Burr is incredible: he is biting and has dirt on everyone; no one is safe. The pockmarked, powdered, familiar faces are there: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Washington, Benedict Arnold, Hamilton, and more. While only Hamilton was physically killed by Burr it feels like he murdered all of them; the pace and timing of these insults truly keeps this book feeling so alive.

You can tell Vidal pieces the narrative together with primary sources, weaving in effortlessly with characterization and dramatization that is intense in its believability. Vidal's choice not to write a work of non-fiction is an important one and not just for entertainment. The novel feels contemporary in a way that lends itself to making it abundantly clear that our political moment is not unique. American politics was born partisan; politicians have always been empty vessels of power, they have long abandoned or adopted positions or even entire belief structures to simply win elections and gain/keep power. I was wrong in that our founding fathers might have had correct ideas in spite of being terrible people, the right lesson to take is that terrible people will get into politics and lie about having the correct ideas.

I find this comforting in a way. You are not only reading about Thomas Jefferson you are experiencing him as a character. The way we experience Donald Trump is as a character.

And this may make people mad, but reading about Jefferson as a character doesn't feel that dissimilar from reading about Trump as a character. Jefferson was an attempted agricultural mogul who was better at branding himself as such than doing the work; for Trump, it's the same, but with real estate. Both fancied themselves men of the arts; they were both credibly accused of rape and pedophilia. Both are wildly egotistical. Jefferson had Monticello, Trump had Mar-a-Lago. Jefferson, no doubt, was a better writer, but he was also a pamphleteer; Trump is a tweeter. Jefferson wrote eloquently and spoke of the rights of man while owning slaves, Trump button mashes about the working class while shitting on a literal gold toilet.

This is all to say that we are not living in the worst of times. Everything is dark, but familiar. Burr is a fantastically entertaining ghost of Christmas past; demonstrating the depravity of our present politics is not new. And there are no more quick or cute arguments to be made, the ultimate takeaway from Burr is to kill the heroes in your head, Aaron Burr can be your second 🔫.