content: If I want to read a cultural history of the United States in the nineteenth century, then I read a cultural history of the United States in the nineteenth century. This boring, pretentious, rambling, self-involved, pontificating mess passes itself off as fiction, but it reads like one of those junior-high assignments where students are told to imagine themselves living in another time or place. How on earth it could have received a National Book Award is a mystery, even considering the spotty reputation of the award. One or two times I began to feel swept up in the narrative (I appreciated Bogdan's journal entries, his unrequited pining for lovely young boys), but quickly enough that narrative flow was dammed by another lengthy, boring letter or monologue. I would refer those who want to read a masterful book about an eastern European artist coming to America in the nineteenth century to read Josef Skvorecky's 'Dvorak in Love'. Now there's a book!