Dark Green, Bright Red

Last updated
Dark Green, Bright Red
Dark Green, Bright Red.jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Gore Vidal
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Political fiction
Publisher E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York City
Publication date
1950
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages296
ISBN 0233989137
Preceded byA Search for the King 
Followed byThe Judgement of Paris 

Dark Green, Bright Red is a novel by Gore Vidal, concerning a revolution headed by a former military dictator in an unnamed Central American republic. The book was first published in 1950 in the United States by E. P. Dutton. [1] [2] It drew upon Vidal's experiences living in Guatemala during the Guatemalan Revolution. [3]

Contents

Vidal re-wrote a significantly shortened version of Dark Green, Bright Red in 1968. However, when the book was published in a new United Kingdom edition in 1995 by Andre Deutsch, the longer, original text was used. [3]

Plot summary

With the backing of a U.S. fruit company, a court-martialled American army officer and a French advisor, General Alvarez, a deposed Central American dictator mounts an attempted coup d'etat to regain power. The first part of the book is set mainly in jungle, yet most of the military action takes place elsewhere. It was the first of Vidal's books to explore the idea that the United States was an imperialist country. [3]

Critical reception

The novel received mixed to negative reviews. A review in The New York Times called it "a sad waste of real narrative gifts and wit", [4] while Kirkus Reviews considered it "[w]ell-written, with authentic atmosphere, ... but not up to the mark of [Vidal's] earlier work." [5] Saturday Review deemed it "an interesting failure." [6]

Related Research Articles

Political fiction employs narrative to comment on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction, such as political novels, often "directly criticize an existing society or present an alternative, even fantastic, reality". The political novel overlaps with the social novel, proletarian novel, and social science fiction.

<i>The Cardinal of the Kremlin</i> 1988 thriller novel by Tom Clancy

The Cardinal of the Kremlin is an espionage thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on May 20, 1988. A direct sequel to The Hunt for Red October (1984), it features CIA analyst Jack Ryan as he extracts CARDINAL, the agency's highest placed agent in the Soviet government who is being pursued by the KGB, as well as the Soviet intelligence agency's director. The novel also features the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a real-life missile-defense system developed by the United States during that time, and its Russian counterpart. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gore Vidal</span> American writer (1925–2012)

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives, and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate.

<i>Tarzan of the Apes</i> 1912 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan of the Apes is a 1912 story by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the first in the Tarzan series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine The All-Story beginning October 1912 before being released as a novel in June 1914.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Shusterman</span> American novelist

Neal Shusterman is an American writer of young-adult fiction. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his book Challenger Deep and his novel, Scythe, was a 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Parini</span> American writer and academic (born 1948)

Jay Parini is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, and Herman Melville.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Aldridge</span> Australian-British writer and journalist

Harold Edward James Aldridge was an Australian-British writer and journalist. His World War II despatches were published worldwide and he was the author of over 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction works, including war and adventure novels and books for children.

The American Revolution spanned from 1775 to 1783, after which the United States received recognition of independence by and from Great Britain. Second American Revolution is a rhetorical or hyperbolic historiographical term that has been invoked on a number of occasions throughout the history of the United States. While it has been used as a metonym for past events, another ideological as well as political revolution has also been called for by some groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Count Gore de Vol</span>

Count Gore de Vol is a television horror host who originally appeared on Washington, D.C.'s WDCA from 1973 to 1987. Originally named M.T. Graves and played by announcer Dick Dyszel, the character first appeared on the WDCA version of the Bozo the Clown program. When the character got a positive reaction, he was given his own program, called Creature Feature. The choice of Gore de Vol as the character's name was either a pun involving the name of acerbic author Gore Vidal or the name of a prominent Washington, D.C. funeral home, "de Vol". Gore de Vol became the Washington/Baltimore area's longest-running horror host, broadcast every Saturday night on WDCA from March 1973 to May 1987. He returned to the D.C. airwaves for a one-time special, Countdown with the Count, on New Year's Eve 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Politics in fiction</span>

This is a list of fictional stories in which politics features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this list.

Sally Gardner is a British children writer and illustrator. She won both the Costa Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Maggot Moon. Under her pseudonym Wray Delaney she has also written adult novels.

<i>Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal</i> Novel by Gore Vidal

Live from Golgotha: The Gospel according to Gore Vidal is a novel by Gore Vidal, an irreverent spoof of the New Testament. Told from the perspective of Saint Timothy as he travels with Saint Paul, the 1992 novel's narrative shifts in time as Timothy and Paul combat a mysterious hacker from the future who is deleting all traces of Christianity.

Mike Bond is an American novelist, ecologist, war and human rights journalist, and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banana republic</span> Political-science term for a politically unstable country

In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor; thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.

John Horne Burns was an American writer, the author of three novels. The first, The Gallery (1947), is his best known work, was very well received when published, and has been reissued several times.

<i>Jungle Lovers</i>

Jungle Lovers (1971) is the fifth novel by American author Paul Theroux. Set in post-colonial Malawi, it was published by Houghton Mifflin (US) and The Bodley Head (UK). The author worked in Malawi from 1963 to 1965 with the United States Peace Corps, before being deported for public criticism of dictator Hastings Banda. Because the Banda regime did not like the novel, it was banned in Malawi for many years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kent Harrington</span> American novelist

Kent Harrington is an American novelist most known for Dia de los Muertos, The American Boys, and The Tattooed Muse.

Cat Hellisen is the South African author of fantasy novels When the Sea is Rising Red, House of Sand and Secrets, and Beastkeeper..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elliot Ackerman</span> American author

Elliot Ackerman is an American author and former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader. He is the son of businessman Peter Ackerman and author Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and the brother of mathematician and wrestler Nate Ackerman.

References

  1. "Dark Green, Bright Red". Harper's Books. Archived from the original on March 17, 2014. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  2. Vidal, Gore (1950). Dark Green, Bright Red . Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 "The Early Fiction of Gore Vidal: 1946-1956" . Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  4. Barr, Donald (October 8, 1950). "From Patio and Jungle". The New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  5. "Dark Green, Bright Red". Kirkus Reviews. October 9, 1950. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  6. Brooks, John (October 14, 1950). "Fighting Somebody Else's Revolution". Saturday Review.