The Veneer of the Gilded Age EMPIRE

By Paul Gray

This novel is the fifth installment of a burgeoning saga that might be called "The U.S. According to Gore." Vidal's ambitious retelling and revamping of American history began on a modest scale with Washington, D.C. (1967), a novel set in the middle of this century that mixed real and fictional people in a struggle for the nation's soul. Then came Burr (1973), a witty revisionist look at the Founding Fathers, as recorded by Aaron Burr's amanuensis and illegitimate son Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. In 1876 (1976), an older Schuyler returned home after years of self-imposed exile to witness both the theft of a presidential election and his daughter's cynical campaign to land a rich American husband. Lincoln (1984) was a lumbering but best- selling attempt to portray the legendary President through the eyes of three associates during the war-torn White House years.

Empire can be understood with no knowledge of the four novels that precede it, but a number of nuances will be missed in the process. Vidal's version of American society from 1898 to 1906 comes heavily cross-referenced not only to the historical past but to his other books. For example, the fictional heroine, Caroline Sanford, is Charles Schuyler's granddaughter and thus linked to Burr and 1876; she has an affair with an equally fictional Congressman named James Burden Day, who will one day seek the presidency in Washington, D.C.

These echoes contribute a great deal to a novel that is stronger on atmosphere than plot. In the beginning, the U.S. has just defeated Spain, gaining sway over the Caribbean and, by way of the Philippines, a foothold in the Pacific. A lot of talk ensues about whether an American empire is a good idea. The speakers include William McKinley, McKinley's Secretary of State John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Adams, William Randolph Hearst and Henry James, who comes onstage briefly to wonder, "How can we, who cannot honestly govern ourselves, take up the task of governing others?" James' point is valid, but the outcome of the debate is never in doubt.

Stuck with the emptiness of a foregone conclusion, Vidal improvises diversions to fill in the space. One involves Caroline Sanford's battle with her half brother Blaise over their late father's $15 million estate. Temporarily blocked from her share, Caroline sells four Poussin paintings, buys a money-losing Washington newspaper, and spices it up with sensationalisms a la Hearst, the man whom Blaise admires as "something new and strange and potent." Hay muses, "The contest was now between the high- minded few, led by Roosevelt, and Hearst, the true inventor of the modern world. What Hearst arbitrarily decided was news was news; and the powerful few were obliged to respond to his inventions."

The most striking of these, Vidal claims, is Teddy Roosevelt, who parlays ; the inflated Hearstian ballyhoo about his heroics on San Juan Hill into a political career that eventually, after McKinley's assassination in 1901, lands him in the White House. Empire is, to put it mildly, not kind to Roosevelt. Nearly all the characters extol his predecessor. Hay tells McKinley, "You may be tired, sir, but you've accomplished a great deal more than any President since Mr. Lincoln, and even he didn't acquire an empire for us, which you have done." Roosevelt, by contrast, is the "fat little President," a bellicose figure of fun with a falsetto voice, a habit of clicking his "tombstone teeth" and laughing like a "frenzied watchdog." These denigrations largely fall flat. In Burr, Vidal turned a villain into a hero, suggesting that another truth could be found on the dark side of legend; here the issue of Roosevelt's buffoonery hardly matters, since he is portrayed as simply following in the revered McKinley's footsteps.

In lieu of suspense there is plenty of attention to the veneer of the gilded age: high society in New York, Newport and Washington, with occasional forays into England and France. Vidal handles the gatherings of the very bright and very rich with meticulous attention to the furnishings and small outbursts of naughty wit. Mrs. John Jacob Astor appears, commenting on the trials of idle affluence: "Now I play bridge. It is exactly like being alive." Vidal also throws in teasers to keep knowledgeable readers on their toes. Roosevelt's outspoken daughter Alice is quoted on her desire to leave Washington: "Scenes of former glory sort of thing. I don't want to be a fixture." That, of course, is exactly what Alice Roosevelt Longworth became for much of this century. When Oklahoma is admitted to statehood, Roosevelt rails that the new citizens have "in their infinite Western wisdom sent us a blind boy for one Senator." The Senator in question is Thomas Gore, Vidal's maternal grandfather.

Empire offers many small pleasures in place of an absorbing whole. Vidal obviously sees his characters stumbling into the same folly of worldly dominion that has undone all previous empires. On the other hand, the end is not yet. And while life remains, it is probably smarter and more profitable to be charming than to despair.