Novel
The City and the Pillar
Gore Vidal · 1948
Synopsis
Jim Willard and Bob Ford, two boys from a small town in Virginia, spend a weekend together in a cabin by the river before Bob leaves for the merchant marine. Jim in turn ships out as a cabin boy, then becomes a tennis instructor at a hotel in Los Angeles and lives with the actor Ronald Shaw. He then follows the writer Paul Sullivan to New Orleans and to the Yucatán, where they meet Maria Verlaine, and then goes through the war in uniform. For years, he holds on to the idea of finding Bob again just as he left him.
Context
Completed in 1946, the novel was published by Dutton on 10 January 1948, dedicated to “J. T.”, Jimmie Trimble, a childhood friend of the author who died on Iwo Jima. The New York Times refused a paid advertisement, and its critic Orville Prescott subsequently ignored Vidal's novels; the book nevertheless sold well. In 1965, Vidal published a revised version: he removed the passages he judged melodramatic and changed the ending. Philippe Mikriammos's French translation, since 1981, follows this version.
Who it is for
A short novel, in a flat, hard prose, intended by the author. Two versions, 1948 and 1965; the first French translation, of 1949, followed the original version.
Prizes and reception
Seventeenth on the list of the hundred best gay and lesbian novels compiled in 1999 by the Publishing Triangle.
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