THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN...

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE by Gore Vidal (Odonian Press: $5; 95 pp., paperback original). This collection of speeches and magazine articles reads like an 18th-Century political pamphlet. Vidal draws a withering portrait of a government he perceives as utterly corrupt and in flagrant violation of the Constitution it’s supposed to embody. In response to the charge that his ideas about the American political system are outrageous, he replies, “As I think a lot more about it than any of those journalists who are paid to present an irreal picture of these bad times, I cause a degree of outrage if not, as I would hope, rage.” Even readers who dismiss Vidal’s devastating thesis will agree that he writes with a pointed eloquence and a waspish vitriol that are never less than stimulating. Odonian is issuing “Decline and Fall” in conjunction with Noam Chomsky’s “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” in its “Real Story” series of sociopolitical tracts.