[In an early essay Vidal wrote] that the shrinking audience for fiction was really a good thing, because it left the novel only "the best things: that exploration of the inner world's divisions and distinctions where no camera may follow."… (p. 1)

[In contrast,] "Kalki" is a potboiler: subspecies, disaster movie. Drugs, sex, espionage, apocalypse, even the morally damaged Vietnam Vet, who has become whatever-comes-after-ubiquitous—the synopsis reads, as in part the novel does, like a compendium of television specials. Recalling the language of Mr. Vidal's 1958 essay, it should be noted that this novel is careful never to go where the camera may not follow with ease….

"Kalki" is so calculated, so replete with salable clichés that it raises in the sharpest way the question that must nag even Mr. Vidal's admirers: How can taste and intelligence so palpably superior spend themselves on such trendiness?

The question isn't...