GORE VIDAL: AN APPRECIATION

It has been fascinating watching reactions to Gore Vidal's death, because his is a career that will resist short and immediate summary. There are those, like my friend Michael Goldfarb, who lamented the way, in his words, Vidal 'went up his own arse' late in his career, and many others noted that he had not really fulfilled the promise of his talent, and similarly blamed it on a louche sort of self-indulgence. There were those who had always disliked his politics, particularly as they smacked of a kind of class-treason, and because Vidal was so capable of expressing his views with dismissive venom for those who disagreed.

I can sympathise with those who feel Vidal at some point stopped being a man of letters and started playing one on TV, but it's going too far to call him a dilettante. Man of letters is indeed an apt description, and the problem is more that our society no longer has a place for men (or women) of letters, in the old sense, and instead has given their public platform to cable TV shouters and standup comedians, while reserving their intellectual platform for academics and privileged journalists.

Vidal came of age as a man of letters in a time when novelists were still figures of public profile, but also at a time when television was beginning to erode their standing. We can see in the clips of his famous TV encounter with Norman Mailer (and even those with William Buckley, though Buckley was far more the 'privileged journalist' than man of letters) the seeds of Vidal's self-reduction: he's put down by Dick Cavett, who's far more instinctive and comfortable with the situation. Vidal learned, but very quickly he (and Mailer, the more relentless self-promoter) were relegated to the fringes. Vidal and John Kennedy, related by multiple marriages, are a good match in the analysis of such considerations: Kennedy transformed our politics and got us Reagan (and Obama, in that sense) and pushed many of the figures of old-style machine politics out the back-doors of their smoky back rooms.

Like Truman Capote, Gore courted celebrity, but he was a far more prolific and active writer. As an aside, it's fascinating that Capote's best book, like Mailer's, is in the 'non-fiction novel' category; what they were doing was writing contemporary historical novels, where Vidal's best books were traditional historical novels, and he confined his contemporary work to straightforward non-fiction and broad, and less successful, satires.

The traditional historical novels were his best books, Julian, and four of his American (or Narratives Of Empire) septet (including the earlier political novel Washington DC) Burr, 1876, Lincoln, and Empire. I'd suggest Burr is the best of the six, because, as with Julian, Vidal works with a central character who is strong enough to overcome his own voice and push his own persona to the background, while still containing it. Lincoln may be the most interesting, because despite his evident desire to deflate the Lincoln myth he still can't help but be impressed with the man himself. These books made such a mark in good part because their re-interpretation of history was both factual and understated—with considerable sympathy for history's failed heroes, and with a perspective that still isn't being taught in American schools. His later efforts, like Live From Golgotha, or Hollywood in the Empire series, tried too hard to be shocking, too much in thrall to their own revealing of emperors and their new clothes, though Creation, which I enjoyed greatly, despite its treading much of the same ground as Julian with early Christianity, was entertaining in its audacious ultimate conspiracy theory, a sort of shaggy-dog finish worthy of Vonnegut.

Vidal's reputation was originally based on the scandal of his 'coming-out' novel, The City And The Pillar, though his first, Williwaw, a World War II novel is more interesting precisely because its so different in style, somewhat Hemingway-esque, from virtually all that followed. After that book, he preferred, it seemed, to approach sexuality as a side issue, as it were, or to have great fun with it, as in Myra Breckinridge. He also wrote mysteries, as Edgar Box, and I have to confess that I've never read any of them. My standards in crime fiction are rather different from the kind of thing I assumed Vidal might write, though I should probably give him the chance to prove me wrong.

There is a good study to be done of his early television work (though sadly most of those live dramas shown in the 1950s have not been preserved), his film work and his theatre. The Best Man is a considerable political drama, and has been revived, though it, like Washington DC, was bettered by others in the era. Vidal was in some ways too much an insider to craft more straight-forwardly exciting books about contemporary politics. His original screenplay for The Left-Handed Gun was remade as a TV movie called Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, with Val Kilmer in the Paul Newman role, and the focus switched away from Freudian parental issues and more to Reconstruction-era politics. And of course that steamy scene with Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis in Ben Hur was famously Vidal's, and even more famously, beyond Charlton Heston's comprehension. What Heston would have made of Caligula is beyond all comprehension!

Vidal was astute as a social critic, but perhaps weakened by his natural aristocratic hauteur. He made much of his run for Congress in 1960, where he ran ahead of Kennedy's Presidential vote, but he knew he was never going to actually win the election in staunchly conservative Duchess County, NY--I think he secretly longed to be the sort of imperial president he saw Franklin Roosevelt as having been, and indeed, Eleanor Roosevelt was a major backer of his campaign. It was probably a more serious effort than Mailer's famous run for mayor of New York. Vidal understood the power of what might be called 'meta-politics', the entrenched interests for whom government becomes merely a tool, and he understood it both from personal experience and also from study of it historically—control of resources and trade was just as important for the Romans as it is today. Even in death he was roasted for his willingness to consider, and promote, 'conspiracy theories', which he sometimes seemed to be doing simply to get his audience to consider the possibilities. Evidently, he had been doing this since his school days: Vidal is supposedly the basis for the character Brinker Hadley in the novel A Separate Peace, written by his Exeter classmate John Knowles. One of my favourite Vidal pieces was an essay in the New York Review of Books some 40 years ago, in which he 'proved' to my satisfaction that the Watergate burglar and spy novelist E. Howard Hunt had in fact written the diaries of Arthur Bremer, whose wounding of George Wallace put Wallace out of the 1972 Presidential race, where he might well have siphoned considerable votes away from Hunt's employer Richard Nixon.

He proved it with literary analysis, something he did very well, and something which especially in recent years I found very interesting. Another of his most impressive essays was a long re-evaluation, again in the NYRB, of William Dean Howells. And it occurred to me when reading it, and more recently when trying to get back into Howells, that Vidal's championing of his talents lay as much in self-awareness as in retrospective championing. Howells, of course, was known in his time as The Dean Of American Letters, and as both editor and writer was a campaigning journalist and astute literary critic. He also championed the fiction of realism—as any students who have read The Rise Of Silas Latham, which is really the only one of his novels still in currency, will know. Howells wrote humour and farces, indeed some satire, and it was hard for me when reading the essay not to think that perhaps Vidal saw himself in Howells, and saw his fate to be remembered for one, or maybe a few, novels of historical realism. It also occurred to me how much different his career would have been in the 19^th century, where his status among society would have precluded his need to chase celebrity. I wonder whether, a century from now (assuming people are still reading), Burr or Lincoln will be read, whether they will be texts set in history classes, exist to be read solely in American Studies classes as artefacts, or whether it will be only Vidal's bitchy TV videos that will be available to a new generation. Yesterday I watched Vidal narrate a documentary on the growth of the National Security State, and realised how different Washington had become for him since his youth. It made me realise how much I had enjoyed his work, and how much I had learned from it. All the self-indulging egotism in the world can't take that away.

JAMES MCPHERSON'S ANTIETAM

There are certain battles that seem to exhibit an endless historical fascination. In the Civil War, it's Gettysburg, the three-day epic in which the ultimate fortunes of the Confederacy swung back and forth. And although James McPherson acknowledges that the Union victory at Gettysburg, coupled with the fall of Vicksburg on the same Fourth of July in 1863 had a major impact on the war, he makes a persuasive argument that it was Antietam in 1862 which marked the actual turning point of the war. Crossroads Of Freedom (the title reflects McPherson's monumental one-volume history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom) appeared in 2002 as part of Oxford University Press' series 'Pivotal Moments in American History' and McPherson makes his case eloquently and succinctly.

In 1862 the early successes of the Union forces in the West (along the Mississippi, in Tennessee and Kentucky, in West Virginia, and along the coast) had been reversed, and a series of victories brought about primarily by better Confederate generalship, had brought the South to the brink of success. McPherson's thesis rests on the political importance of Antietam, for two reasons. First was the effort to get Britain and France to recognise the Confederacy—something their own cotton embargo (and the Union blockade) had failed to do. But with Union armies stalling, and losing major battles, it looked increasingly as if the South could argue it was a viable independent country. That argument would be reinforced by the second factor, the 1862 mid-term elections. McPherson notes that the incumbent party had lost control of the House in such elections for the past 20 years, and given an unsuccessful war, President Lincoln's opponents, whether they were 'war' Democrats or 'peace' Democrats, were strong enough to win the election by a margin which might persuade the Europeans as convincingly as the battlefield victories themselves.

The political situation was made worse because Lincoln's top general, George McClellan, in command of the Army of the Potomac, was a Democrat, and appeared to show little interest in providing Lincoln with the kind of victory he needed to convince Europe and his own electorate. Furthermore, Lincoln had decided to announce the emancipation of slaves in Confederacy—a move which would not only align the Union with those countries in which slavery was already banned, but could potentially rob the South of a great resource. It was a part-way measure, since it applied only to states actively in rebellion, and not those under Federal control, and it was still tendentious enough for Lincoln to shelf the proclamation, waiting for a victory substantial enough to allow him to announce it. This was a victory McClellan was proving both unwilling and unable to provide.

In a brief over-view such as this, there is little space to develop characters. With Lincoln this is not a problem—we have such a strong image of the man and his contradictions we can fill in much ourselves. Other players in the drama, the Union general Pope, the Confederates Jackson and Longstreet, might need somewhat more fleshing out. But the one character to whom McPherson does justice is McClellan, who fancied himself an American Napoleon, but fell far short. McClellan was beloved by his troops, and a master of organising and drilling them quickly into fighting shape. But he was hopeless at the fighting itself, fearful of making any move unless he were convinced he had an overwhelming superiority, something of which he was rarely, if ever convinced. His constant cries for more soldiers, his claims to be outnumbered by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, by as much as two to one, when the reality was that he always held a vast superiority in both men and materiel, and his outright refusals to obey direct orders to attack, even from the President, put him at a distinct disadvantage when facing men like Lee or Jackson, willing to take great risks to gain great rewards.

Lee's basic strategy was defensive, knowing the longer the war went on, the more discontented Lincoln's supporters would become. But his tactics were aggressive; twice he was faced with situations where he felt he could eliminate Union resistance with a major victory on their soil; Antietam was the first of those attempts. As it happens, he might have won the battle had not a copy of his battle plan, wrapped famously around some cigars, fallen into Union hands. His second attempt also failed, but the inability of the Union forces to stop his retreat after Gettysburg, while not as glaring as McClellan's failure to even pursue Lee during Antietam, ensured that the war would continue for two more bloody years.

Antietam was finally McClellan's perfect situation. Although he believed otherwise, he had far more soldiers available than Lee did; they were better equipped and fresher. And he knew Lee's battle plan, knew that Lee would split his forces, giving him an even bigger advantage. McPherson is very good at giving a broad but comprehensible picture of the battle itself, and particularly McClellan's failures at a number of times when decisive action might have provided an overwhelming victory. At one point McClellan, with more fresh troops in reserve than the Confederates already had on the battlefield, failed to bring them into battle, and thus allowed Burnside's attack to fail. AP Hill, having captured Harper's Ferry, brought his men to Sharpsburg (site of the battle, the Confederates called battles after the towns, the Union after topographical features, like the Antietam Creek) and saved the day. When Lee retreated, McClellan's failure to pursue him for six days finally led to his removal at the head of the Army; Lincoln was livid at his inaction, while McClellan believed he had single-handedly saved the Union. He would run against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864, and lose badly.

The battle fought near Sharpsburg on 17 September 1962 remains the bloodiest in American military history; four times as many casualties as the D-Day landings; more casualties in one battle than in all the other wars of the 19th century put together. McPherson draws a parallel with 9/11 which I find forced and a bit strained, but that is really the only off-note in the book.

Antietam proved victory enough for Lincoln's Republicans to hold on to Congress, for the British and French to stay out of the war, and for the Emancipation Proclamation to be issued. That changed the tenor of the war; no longer was it being fought, nominally, to keep the Union together, now the central issue of slavery was finally at the forefront. Were the Confederacy to lose, the Union would be reformed with the institution of slavery destroyed. It did define the Civil War, just as the Civil War defined then, and, along with race itself, in many ways continues to define America.

Crossroads Of Freedom by James M. McPherson
Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0195135210

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: THE GUARDIAN OBIT

My obituary of the historian David H Donald is in today's Guardian, you can find it here. Because it was trimmed somewhat, particularly in its lede, here's my original copy:

As the leader most crucial to America's psyche, Abraham Lincoln's life has been open to constant re-interpretation; all things to all people, he has been seen as everything from hallowed genius to demented fanatic. 2009, which marked Lincoln's bicentennial (he was born the same day as Charles Darwin), saw also the inauguration of Barack Obama, often compared to his Illinois predecessor, and consciously encouraging such comparisons by choosing Lincoln as a model. These factors brought new renown for historian David Herbert Donald, who has died aged 88. Donald's writing about Lincoln spanned nearly 50 years, and his 1995 biography, titled simply 'Lincoln', is considered the best, and certainly most balanced, account of the president's life. The book gained a new audience after receiving lavish praise from the historian Eric Foner, part of the Lincoln bicentennial programme on America's National Public Radio. Donald's Lincoln is a determined man struggling to find the inner reserves to cope with immense crises always threatening to overcome him; the parallels with the current president were there to be made.

Ironically, though Donald twice won the Pulitzer Prize, neither award honoured his work on Lincoln. His first Pulitzer came in 1961 for the opening part of his two-volume biography of the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner, best-remembered today for receiving a savage beating on the floor of the US Senate during a debate on slavery. Covering Sumner's career up to the Civil War, Donald presented him as a radical whose Republican leadership placed the newly-elected Lincoln in an almost untenable position. By the time the second volume was published in 1970, by which time Donald had been influenced by changes brought on by the civil rights movement, his Sumner was more of a visionary moral leader.

He won his second Pulitzer for Look Homeward, his 1987 biography of the novelist Thomas Wolfe. It was a more personal project because, as Donald put it, 'Wolfe told my story'. Like Wolfe, Donald was a southerner transplanted to the world of Yankee intellectuals, and spent his career examining the roots and the effects of the great divide between North and South. Donald also considered himself a frustrated novelist, saying biographies ought to 'let the story tell itself and have it as ambiguous, as ambivalent as a modern novel.'

Donald was born on a farm in Goodman, Mississippi, where his mother was also a teacher. He graduated from Millsaps College, in Jackson Mississippi, then received his PhD in history in 1946 from the University of Illinois, studying under the Civil War scholar James G. Randall. He began teaching at Columbia, in New York, and in 1947 published his first book, 'Lincoln Reconsidered', a collection of essays, which was followed in 1948 by 'Lincoln's Herndon', with an introduction by the poet Carl Sandburg, a study of Lincoln's Illinois law partner and early biographer. Although he claimed he originally found Lincoln a tedious subject, Donald's studies of Lincoln's relationships to people close to him would lead him to conclude Lincoln was ambitious, politically shrewd, and 'much more sensitive and human than I had thought before'.

In 1954 Donald edited 'Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon Chase', and during the Civil War centennial, which began in 1961, edited 'Why The North Won The Civil War', and a revised edition of his Lincoln essays. He also revised his mentor Randall's key 1937 study 'The Civil War And Reconstruction', and followed with his own 'The Politics Of Reconstruction' (1965), breaking ground by using statistical analysis to detail how the relative safety of a Congressional seat was the prime determinant in how fiercely politicians pursued radical policies.

Donald also taught at Smith, Princeton and Johns Hopkins before joining Harvard as Charles Warren Professor of History in 1973, a post he held until assuming the emeritus title in 1991. He was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford and also taught at University College London. In all he wrote or edited 30 books, the last of which, 'We Are Lincoln Men', a study of the president's friendships, appeared in 2004. When he died, of heart failure, he was working on a study of John Quincy Adams' life after his defeat in the 1828 presidential election.
He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Aida DiPace Donald, former editor of Harvard University Press, and a son.

David Herbert Donald, historian and biographer
born 1 October 1920 Goodman, Mississippi
died 17 May 2009 Boston, Massachusetts