The City and the Pillar
Gore Vidal • 1948
Devastation Rating
queer nostalgia obsession 1940s
Our Take
Jim Willard spends his entire life trying to return to one summer afternoon, one first love, one moment before everything fractured. Vidal understood in 1948 what takes most people decades — that nostalgia for an idealized past is the most effective form of self-imprisonment. The ending is a crime against hope.
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