As a prose stylist, White is a master. What he says about Ruggero’s conversational style—“full of radical shifts in register from hieratic to demotic, serious to frivolous, flipping lightly from a big subject (the Czech baroque) to a small one (the best way to cook perfectly round potatoes fondant in the oven)”—very much describes his own literary mode. It’s a style I’d call Classical High Gay. It will delight some readers and probably turn others off.