The Smithsonian Institution
by Gore Vidal
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Description
Good Friday, 1939, and T., a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, arrives at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The museum is closed, but T. manages to slip in, and it would appear that somehow, he is expected. An old man, Bentsen, shows him around, and T. realises that all is not as it seems. As he goes to examine a Native American exhibit, he is drawn magically into the nineteenth-century world of a reservation of Sioux Indians. They like what they see of T. and immediately get the pot show more boiling. T. is forced to take refuge in the tent of a young Squaw. They become lovers, and she helps him to escape back to the safety of the Smithsonian. Back with Bentsen, T. explores the Smithsonian further and begins to fathom the mysteries of time travel. The Smithsonian scientists have discovered how to get back to the past, but still don't know how to travel to the future. T. puts his brilliant mathematical brain to the problem. However, given a glimpse into the future, T. sees his own untimely death, and becomes determined to prevent the outbreak of WWII... show lessTags
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In 1939, a teenage prodigy is taken to live at the Smithsonian where he is involved with the development of the atomic bomb and time travel. At night the displays at the Smithsonian come to life which lead to lots of interesting situations. I loved this novel and was sorry when it ended because I will never have the priviledge of reading it for the first time again.
A light, unmemorable book, certainly my least favorite of Vidal's novels. Donated to Goodwill.
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Author Information
168+ Works 31,160 Members
Gore Vidal was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. on October 3, 1925 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He did not go to college but attended St. Albans School in Washington and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1943. He enlisted in the Army, where he became first mate on a freight supply ship in the show more Aleutian Islands. His first novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946 when he was twenty-one years old and working as an associate editor at the publishing company E. P. Dutton. The City and the Pillar was about a handsome, athletic young Virginia man who gradually discovers that he is homosexual, which caused controversy in the publishing world. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel and gave a negative review of it and future novels. He had such trouble getting subsequent novels reviewed that he turned to writing mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box and then gave up novel-writing altogether for a time. Once he moved to Hollywood, he wrote television dramas, screenplays, and plays. His films included I Accuse, Suddenly Last Summer with Tennessee Williams, Is Paris Burning? with Francis Ford Coppola, and Ben-Hur. His most successful play was The Best Man, which he also adapted into a film. He started writing novels again in the 1960's including Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Myron, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, Live From Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal, and The Golden Age. He also published two collections of essays entitled The Second American Revolution, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982 and United States: Essays 1952-1992. In 2009, he received the National Book Awards lifetime achievement award. He died from complications of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Smithsonian Institution
- Original publication date
- 1998
- People/Characters
- Robert Oppenheimer; Albert Einstein
- Important places
- Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., USA; Washington, D.C., USA
- First words
- War clouds were gathering over Europe as T. came out of the lower school dormitory of St. Albans and hailed a taxi.
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3543 .I26 .S65 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 490
- Popularity
- 61,556
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.31)
- Languages
- 5 — Bulgarian, English, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook
- ISBNs
- 15
- ASINs
- 5
