Books Like The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal | Suggested Reading

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The City and the Pillar.

Books Like The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal | Suggested Reading

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The City and the Pillar.
This section contains 163 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy The City and the Pillar Short Guide

The sympathetic portrait of homosexuality in the first version of the book, published in 1948, was not at all explicit. By 1968, however, public sensibility had changed so much — at least in part because of Vidal's work — that he found this early work of his to be conventionally melodramatic. As a result, he published The City and the Pillar Revised. The style and narrative remain substantially the same, but the ending is altered. Again Jim finds Bob, but he no longer murders him; this time he rapes him. This change is inimitable Vidal; while the ending is still melodramatic, it is both far more likely and far more threatening to readers unacquainted with the homosexual subculture. As a result, Vidal scandalized and disturbed a whole new generation of readers and made them see homosexuality as part of the real world. He did this, of course, without...

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This section contains 163 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy The City and the Pillar Short Guide
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The City and the Pillar from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.