The City and the Pillar (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gore Vidal
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The late 1930’s to the mid-1940’s
- Setting: Rural Virginia, Seattle, Beverly Hills, New Orleans, the Yucatán, and New York City
- Principal Characters: Jim Willard, Bob Ford, Ronald Shaw, Paul Sullivan, Maria Verlaine
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, New York City, 1940’s, 1930’s, California, West, U.S., New Orleans, Mexico or Mexicans
- Locales: Virginia, New York, NY, New Orleans, LA, Seattle, WA, Beverly Hills, CA, Yucatán, Mexico
The Novel
The subject of The City and the Pillar is Jim Willard’s coming of age. The novel is an Entwicklungsroman reminiscent in some respects of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile: Ou, De l’éducation (1762; Emilius and Sophia: Or, A New System of Education, 1762-1763) or Roger Martin du Gard’s Jean Barois (1913; English translation, 1949). The crucial difference in The City and the Pillar, however, is that Jim Willard is homosexual, and the novel focuses on his growing sexual awareness, on his first sexual encounter, and on his...
[The entire page is 2179 words long]
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