Books: “The City and the Pillar” by Gore Vidal
In 1948, a young Gore Vidal wrote a novel called “The City and the Pillar.” Its subject was a friendship between two young men in a small Virginia town—which quickly caused shock and awe in the publishing world.
Vidal’s publisher, W. P. Dutton, hated the manuscript on sight. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel, and when it finally did get published, no major magazine or newspaper would review Vidal’s books for the next six years. Despite the brouhaha, TCATP became a best-seller and eventually drew muted praise from such muckety-mucks as novelist Thomas Mann and English poet Stephen Spender.
The novel opens in the 1930’s. Jim, a handsome young tennis player, and his best friend Bob, a recent HS graduate, decide to spend a weekend at a deserted cabin down by the river. One things leads to another and they…well, you can figure it out, right? Bob considers what they did “kid stuff” but for Jim, the experience is revelatory. He discovers his North Star, and it is Bob.
Bob shoves off for the Merchant Marines. But Jim, who had been destined for college, abandons that idea and decides to track Jim down, even going so far as leaving for New York and joining the service as a deck hand. He eventually winds up in Seattle, where on shore leave he is humiliated on a forced date with a woman, and jumps ship.
Jim then moves on to Los Angeles, where his athletic ability and masculine appearance land him in the arms of a handsome closeted actor named Ronald Shaw. When Shaw tires of him, Jim finds a scholarly but attractive new partner in young screenwriter Paul Sullivan. They move to New Orleans, then to Mexico, then after a few months, they go their separate ways. Jim continues to drift, landing in New York where he cruises gay bars and ekes out a living as a tennis instructor.
After an absence of 10 years from his family, Jim returns to Virginia, where he reunites with neighbors who unaware of his sexual orientation try to fix him up with women. He finally meets up with his long lost idol Bob, who has returned from WWII and who’s become a husband and father. The novel culminates a year later when Bob meets up with Jim in New York—an ending Vidal had to revise several times.
Today Hollywood produces gay rom-coms, a gay man serves as Secretary of Transportation, and two men (or two women) can get married without the world blinking an eye. A novel like “The City and the Pillar”, written in non-flashy Hemingway-like prose, sadly reminds some of us that it wasn’t always so rosy.
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