It is the day after the end of the Spanish-American War. It does not take place in Washington, but at an English country house, currently being rented by the newly retired senator from Pennsylvania, Don Cameron.

The opening scene is one of the great set pieces I know. Vidal handles this huge cast brilliantly. They include Henry Adams, Caroline's equally fictitious brother Blaise, several Astors and a congressman named Day. And there are at least 10 more crowding in close. But there are actually three other characters competing for center stage: Teddy himself, William Randolph Hearst, and the fictional Caroline Sanford. The central character, at least in theory, is John Hay, once Lincoln's private secretary, now secretary of state first under McKinley and then under Roosevelt. Having written about Aaron Burr and Lincoln and Grant and the second Roosevelt, now he has turned to the age of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Certainly his new novel, Empire, is.Įmpire is the fifth of Gore Vidal's historical novels about American politics. The answer, of course, is all of the above - though as a writer he is nearer, I think, to Updike than to Krantz. Is he famous Judith Krantz-style, because he has so deft a finger on the public pulse, and hence so assured a place on best-seller lists? Or is he, like John Updike and Philip Roth, famous because he is a novelist of undoubted distinction? Vidal has run for Congress on the Democratic ticket in New York, tried for a senatorial nomination in California, been secretary of state-designate of the People's Party.) What's he famous for? Is he famous for being famous, like any other TV personality or politician? (Mr. OF WELL-KNOWN American writers, Gore Vidal is surely the hardest to classify.

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