the city and the pillar

I started and finished an entire book en route to Amsterdam. It’s been a minute since I’ve done that. It’s like I downloaded hours and hours of TV shows on my iPad for nothing. I tore through The City and the Pillar like a man possessed. A few days ago I realized that I’d read twenty of Gore Vidal’s books — the most by any author except P. G. Wodehouse —, but I had yet to read one of his most infamous works. Libby came in clutch. From the very first page of the Introduction, I felt the familiar warmth of a homecoming. This is where I belonged; among these polished, biting, and ennnuied phrases. The sarcastic wit on which I modeled my own; the casual learnedness that I’ve tried to emulate in my FIITJEE stories and fan fiction, with varying levels of success. 

He was only twenty-three when he wrote this book, and he was appropriately punished for it. It makes me sad. It is a beautiful book that deserves to be read and celebrated, even if it’s not exactly a guidebook for a moral life. In a different age Gore Vidal wouldn’t have been written off as a writer of filth. Maybe that Gore Vidal would have been less cynical, less bitter. Happier. Would have peaked in the fifties and faded away. Here’s a quote from the Introduction that shows the double standard he was subjected to: “There were those who found the original ending ‘melodramatic.’ (Jim strangles Bob after an unsuccessful sexual encounter.) When I reminded one critic that it is the nature of a romantic tragedy to end in death, I was told that so sordid a story about fags could never be considered tragic, unlike, let us say, a poignant tale of doomed love between a pair of mentally challenged teenage ‘heteros’ in old Verona.”

I feel like this book was a direct precursor to Garth Greenwell, who, to be fair, is the only other LGBT writer I’ve read. It is an important book, despite criticism from within and without the community, and I’m glad I read it, and I’m glad I read it now instead of some years ago, when I wouldn’t have seen it in quite the same light.