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Julian falls flat in its delivery due to the novel’s approach to its subject. The novel is presented as Emperor Julian Augustus’s autobiography spanning his short life. Julian’s writing is augmented by commentary from two old philosophers who lived during the emperor’s reign.

The result of this autobiographical structure is that the novel reads like a history book. The emotions of the events are flattened down to the point where human emotions such as happiness, anger, sadness, etc. are all presented as adjectives on the page as opposed to actions by the characters. The old writing adage of “Show, don't tell� is excluded from these pages and makes this novel very dry and unexpressive. Given this scholarly feel to the novel, it seemed a bit wasteful to read a fictional history about Julian Augustus when factual accounts, told in the same historic tone, must certainly exist.

In reading Julian, I kept remembering a similar work written by John Williams (of Stoner notoriety) that was entitled Augustus. In William’s novel, he presents the fictional biography of Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. In addition to the similarity in subject, Williams also used first-hand manuscripts to tell his story.

The contrast between the two books, however, is striking. While Julian is dry and slogging, Augustus reflects the human elements of life that surrounded Caesar Augustus. The difference is that Williams told his story with manuscripts that were never intended for publication such as letters and journal entries. This approach begged an intimacy in writing while the self-written autobiographical format of Julian does not.

The main point of the novel may have been Vidal’s desire to offer criticisms of Christianity and religious beliefs in general. Vidal points out Christianity’s inherent contradictions, hypocrisies, and its blatant borrowings from the pagan rites that preceded it. For emphasis, Vidal transforms Julian into a pagan equivalent of Jesus and proceeds to highlight some of same criticisms made of Christianity through Julian’s actions and pagan beliefs. These points are interesting but they are extremely diluted by countless characters, places and events that have no actual bearing on the story. The overall effect is that the interesting elements are lost to significant disinterest in mostly everything else in the novel.