The Golden Age: A Novel by Gore
Vidal
Vidals Good Old Days
The era covered by the book is clearly sentimental to Vidal, hence the title
Golden Years. I guess its a natural tendency of people to see their
formative years as the good old days. Vidal reveres the enigmatic FDR as
a political icon and pities the bucolic and inferior Harry Truman who is
tapped to fill FDRs shoes. In Vidals Myra Breckinridge, the movies from
this era (late thirties to mid forties) are considered the only movies of any
substance or merit. On a larger scale, FDRs administration represents the
zenith of the American empire that is slowly destined to fade in the age of
industrialization and military armament of the late twentieth century.
The theme of the book, as in other chronicles of the American empire, is
that the real political struggle in the United States has been between a
generally representative Congress against a small professional elite that is
totally split off from the nation. The rich aristocracy has been pursuing its
wealth through wars that they invent and justify and res onate for others to
die in. In Golden Age, the main conspiracy promoted by Vidal is that
America forced Japans hand with tyrannical economic sanctions and
restrictive oil embargos. With no other choice, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
and permits the wealthy ruling class of America to enter into another war
and pile more millions on their already established hoards of money.
Despite the historical conspiracy and social criticisms, I found this book to
be predominantly Vidals heart-felt tribute to his beloved fictional narrators,
the descendents of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. The book even
provides a family tree. Caroline de Traxler Sanford lived an impossibly
sumptuous life that started in the novel Empire and ends in the Golden
Age. The characters and era were special for Vidal, and this was their
eulogy.
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