Gore vidal palimsest gay book club

INGore Vidal published his groundbreaking novel The City and the Pillarwhich depicted a brief affair between two high school boys and its tragic repercussions. The effect of the novel was electric. Nevertheless, Vidal was not satisfied. Ina paperback edition appeared with an important change to the ending, and ina major revision was published with yet another ending.

A reprint in contained some final tweaks. For readers of the postwar era, it came as a revelation that there was a vast yet unacknowledged gay world, or underworld, out there. As the protagonist, Jim Willard, travels through the gay subcultures of the early s: we learn of gay life in the merchant marines, in Hollywood, and in New York.

Jim Willard is handsome, athletic, and able to pass as straight, though he does gradually come to accept himself as homosexual. He cannot forget the idyllic encounter he had with his close high school friend Bob Ford while the two were spending a weekend alone in the woods. Jim would study himself in the mirror and would be pleased to find no trace of a woman in his face or manner.

Similar views are expressed by Paul Sullivan, a writer with whom Jim hooks up in Hollywood. During a heated moment in a New Orleans bar, Paul expresses the need for gay people to be open about their sexuality:. The real dignity is the dignity of a man realizing himself and functioning honestly and according to his own nature.

Gore Vidal, Gay Hero in Spite of Himself

Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love but the emotion itself and let them respect anyone, no matter how different he is, if he attempts to share himself with another. As for homosexuality itself, it has always existed and always will and probably no explanation can be given for it. No, I was thinking of the thousands like ourselves.

Perfectly normal men and women, except for this overdevelopment of the other sex in them. They live in hiding now all over the country; I think that only a few ever practice what they feel. Most of them marry and have children and try to destroy the other sex in vidal they never succeed, of course.

Although Paul expresses the view that there is probably no explanation for why homosexuality exists, Vidal manages to posit several explanations that are wildly disconcerting and psychologically suspect at gore. These include palimsest possibility that homosexuality is a normal stage of human development that is sometimes arrested adolescent boys will fool around, but most become straight or, alternatively, that some unspecified fear is haunting American society and could be the cause were the insecurities of capitalism to blame?

But the most perplexing hypothesis is that the dominance of women in American society may be responsible for homosexuality. This latter theory is most fully explored through the banter of a group of gay men attending a New York cocktail party hosted by one Rolly Rolloson, an effeminate, campy figure.

They see Jim as the Teutonic and club type, who would be embodied by the most virile men in Germany, those who are involved in athletics or the military and engage in homosexual behavior. In contrast, it is the effeminate, oversensitive type that becomes homosexual in England and America, a phenomenon that they attribute to the dominance of women in these countries.

Upon rereading these pages after many years, I was stunned. These passages are extremely bizarre and seem to be an exercise in gay misogyny that does little to explain the origins of homosexuality. Consequently, it is book noting that when Vidal published his revision of The City and the Pillar inall of this material was excised.

Byas Vidal was turning forty, he had solidified his basic view that there gay no such thing as a gay personality.