The American novel of manners has a surprisingly long tradition, reaching back to Henry James and Edith Wharton, or to James Fenimore Cooper's ITomeward Bound (1838) and Home As Found (1838).

This is more than academic, for Berger has published an essay on Cooper. In recent times, the comic novel of manners has been practiced in highly idiosyncratic ways by novelists as different as John Barth, Alison Lurie, and Anne Tyler.

However, the main influences on Berger in this novel are the works of Saul Bellow and Berger's own earlier novels.