I get what he's doing, I really do. I'm interested now to read Myra Breckinridge as apparently that's his first and supposedly better effort in this style. The two biggest things about this that make it less successful than it should be are, for me, that it isn't anywhere near as funny as it should be and that I could have written something like this. I am not trying to brag, far from it. I am just alarmed that something remotely within the grasp of an amateur like me could get so much praise. Vidal's is this style for the masses, easy to digest. He mentions the master, Pynchon, but he's nowhere near on the same level. It's all easy and obvious. It's mildly entertaining, and it works - there are only a couple glaring mistakes (which is why I am giving it an above average rating) - but it could be so much better. It is plain to me that his genre is alternative historical fiction and he should've stuck to it.
 Vidal)