The City And The Pillar

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In 1965, E.P. Dutton published Vidal's updated version of The City and the Pillar, titled The City and the Pillar Revised. Numa nota pessoal fiquei "irritado" e "zangado" pelas dificuldades que o protagonista Jim Willard enfrenta. Mas, por outro lado encantado com o modo como constrói elementos de resistência ao longo do romance para que a sua vida tenha algum prazer e significado. Gunn, Drewey (2009). The Golden Age of Gay Fiction (1sted.). Albion, NY: MLR Press. ISBN 978-1-60820-048-1. Jim Willard is uncertain and confused in his adolescent sexuality. One perfect summer night by the moonlight, he and his best friend Bob Ford, are romping about in the nude by the lake, splashing and shouting and reveling in their youthfulness. They begin to wrestle and suddenly the urge takes hold and they make out and make love. For Jim, it is the perfect and defining moment of his life, and he wants more of it. But, of course, the two boys live in a world where what they have just done is simply not done, or discussed. They chalk up what they had just done as "kid stuff." But, that doesn't seem to square with Jim's true feelings. Unfortunately, it is the waning days of summer, and life has different plans for the two and they are forced to go their separate ways. Sarotte, Georges-Michel (1978). Like a Brother, Like a Lover: Male Homosexuality in the American Novel and Theatre from Herman Melville to James Baldwin (1st Englished.). New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-12765-3.

Ma è ciò che rende la vita interessante. Come possiamo valutare una cosa fino a che non è finita?». Hoping to run into his runaway lost love, Jim travels from New York to Alaska to Hollywood and Mexico. Along the way, he meets many diverse and intriguing characters and even a few stand-in lovers but none will replace the proverbial one that got away. The meandering search for Bob could be tedious or tiresome for some but the frequent fresh additions to the narrative including exciting locations rich with new adventure manage to make the odyssey enjoyable and diverting.In the meantime, World War II has started in Europe and Paul and Jim are determined to go to New York to enlist in the Army. This of course also means their separation. Jim gets transferred to a Colorado Air Force base, where his sergeant is clearly sexually interested in him. But Jim has set his sights on a young corporal. Unfortunately, the corporal does not seem to like him in "that" way, even though the sergeant later seems to succeed with the corporal. This book could've been puffed up with a bunch of facile sentimentality and I still probably would've enjoyed it, because, hey: gay love story in WWII-era America! Brave and necessary message about sexual morality! It is both of those things, I do love it for that, but it's also something more brutal and existential. Jim's path through the world of this book is experimenting with ways of conforming his world to his own desires (to the extent he understands them), and he's even further from attaining that goal by the end than he was at the start. Drewey Wayne Gunn, ed. (2003). The Golden Age of Gay Fiction. Albion, New York: MLR Press. p.3 (Ian Young).

a b Bronksi, Michael (2003). Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. p.343.I dug up what I wrote when I originally finished this book. Almost six years old, so can't say I remember what everything meant, but there's interesting things going on anyway and it pulls together a bunch of what I was reading at the time (and also it has no capital letters, which was a thing I was still doing then): Ma per quanto viaggi, per quanto si muova, per quanto conosca altre persone, Jim è ancorato, da allora, allo stesso porto. The plot centers on Jim Willard, a handsome youth in Virginia in the late 1930s, who is also a very good tennis player. When his best friend Bob Ford, one year his senior, is about to leave high school, the two take a camping trip into the woods. Both are elated to be in each other's company and, after some moaning from Bob about how difficult it is to get the local girls to have sex with him, the two have sex, even though Bob thinks this is not a "normal" thing for two men to do. Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981). Bronski, Michael (2003). Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps (1sted.). New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-25267-0.

Jim, who does not find girls so appealing, hopes Bob can stay and is crushed when Bob is insistent on joining the United States Merchant Marine. The next seven years of Jim's life will be an odyssey, at the end of which he hopes to be happily reunited with Bob. I’ve heard younger readers complain that the book is not good queer representation. Please. Perhaps from our 21st century perspective… But in 1948 it was groundbreaking enough to have a novel in which the LGBTQ+ characters weren’t simply killed off! For the rest of the novel, Jim loses complete touch with Bob Ford for all those intervening years and obsesses over him during hopeless travels of the world in search of him -- an epic journey that takes him to various ports of call as a civilian seaman, and then across the US and Mexico as a Hollywood tennis instructor, a private in the air force in World War II and more. During this time, he meets a succession of male lovers who for him can never match the ideal of his first love and that first encounter, and thus all of these relationships are empty for him, reminding him of what he doesn't have and so desperately wants. Also, spoiler: he literally sexually assaulted men and even raped one, from my understanding (and the edition I listened to).Their affair is ended when Jim meets the writer Paul Sullivan, who is in his late twenties, at a party. Jim is drawn to Paul because he seems so different from the other, more stereotypical homosexuals he meets at Hollywood parties, even having married once (although that marriage was later annulled).