HOLLYWOOD

Caroline Sanford, half-sister of the newspaper tycoon Blaise Sanford from WASHINGTON, D. C., and a newspaper publisher herself, is transformed into actress Emma Traxler in the early days of the motion picture industry, just before the US entry into World War I. In his deliciously catty, unfailingly witty HOLLYWOOD, Vidal chronicles the rise of the industry and the rest of the country's conflicted feelings about it, peopling his story with characters like William Randolph Hearst, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Woodrow Wilson, the Roosevelts, the rascally Warren G. Harding, and Vidal's own grandfather, Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma.