Its literary sources are plain enough-Wilder’s The Caballa, South Wind, the early Huxley, together with more than a hint of Firbank. That novel was a modern version precisely of the judgment of Paris, who, in Vidal’s pages, is a young American in Europe tempted in turn by beautiful women representative of power, wisdom, and love respectively. Indeed, despite the complete dissimilarity of ostensible subject, form, period and setting, Julian in a real sense recapitulates the themes and attitudes of The Judgment of Paris, which appeared in 1952. There is no reflection of these activities in Julian instead, it brings together and dramatizes more effectively and with much greater authority than ever before preoccupations that have been present in his fiction almost from its beginnings. Julian is Gore Vidal’s first novel for ten years, during which time he has been writing plays for television and the stage, working in movies, and campaigning in and commenting on politics.
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