“History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place,” said Gore Vidal. Of course, history is more than gossip and what Vidal did in his narratives is not just gossip; he includes myriad resources of historical analysis. But he makes a valid point when he says that the truth of the past, including official history, can never be completely known.

Hollywood, as the other novels of the Narratives of Empire, suggests that there was never a point which the republican not been corrupted, there was no garden of Eden in the American politics. Of course, that is true of any political system, there is no presumption of innocence in politics. Attempts have been made by individuals to change things, but they have been usually doomed. Nevertheless, people were intrigued by this extraordinary experiment that started with George Washington “pursue of happiness” as an aim for a secular government so different from the European political establishment, which under the influence of Christianity had related happiness with the afterlife.

The American experiment responded to the challenges of the ages. It has gone through phases from a young Republic to become an empire which has totally corrupted the country, to today’s wreckage of this empire.

“This country is far too dedicated to freedom to allow freedom of speech” _Gore Vidal in Hollywood.

Hollywood is the fifth episode in the Narratives of Empire. It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In a small place in California, a new industry, the “picture-play”, is born which will irreversibly transform America. The novel expands into the Harding Administration and Harding’s death.

Gore Vidal taught me, among other things, what a writer is, what an essayist is. If you want to learn what happened to this great American experiment, then read the lucid and bright work of Gore Vidal.