[Mr. Charyn's] operating principle is to behave as if there were no such thing as an anti-climax; as if, whether or not there's a palace of wisdom at the end of it, the road of excess is the only road to take. He is determined at all costs to be the sort of novelist that appalled Ford Madox Ford—a novelist of the new breed as described and exemplified by Wyndham Lewis: "Letting off brilliant fireworks. Performing like dogs on tight ropes. Something to give them the idea they're at a performance." Mr. Charyn's best previous performances might arguably be located in the early childhood section of "On the Darkening Green" (1965) or in the grotesqueries of "Blue Eyes" (1974), a thriller with an unfollowable story but plenty of energy in the paragraphs and sentences. At other moments, particularly in "Eisenhower, My Eisenhower" (1971), he pulls out all the stops in...