Although Vidal's novel is historical, his writing does not belong with those of a naturalist or even the realist school of writing. The events and many of the characters Vidal includes did exist and so are realistic in that respect, but the way in which he manipulates the characters' places in space and time, and the acceleration of time from chapter to chapter until the fast-forward to the new millennium at the end, places him outside this vein. In terms of Vidal's writing as a whole, he owes credit to Italo Calvino, a writer Vidal greatly supported who brilliantly employs the techniques of metafiction. Calvino's novels such as Invisible Cities and The Baron in the Trees also use a historical backdrop with a modern reconfiguring, but in both of these novels, the historical backdrop is considerably more distant than the one that Vidal employs here. Calvino's...