Talk:The City and the Pillar

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Update Rationale[edit]

I have significantly updated this article trying to provide more reliable citations and better organization. Specifically I have moved reactions, analysis, and The City and the Pillar Revised to their own sections. There is one fact that I found 100% wrong - at least according to my 1965 source - the assertion that "In 1965, Vidal changed the ending to what he had originally in mind, no longer having to bow to the wishes of his publisher, in The City and the Pillar Revised." Bowing to publishers is specifically denied by Vidal in the afterword to The City and the Pillar Revised. If perhaps this is not true and Vidal has made contrary statements in newer, verifiable, publications then this information can definitely be switched back.

I think the statements about Ben Hur need better citation and the themes, although I do not disagree with them, appear to be original research. I have tagged these accordingly.

Npd2983 (talk) 19:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ass backwards[edit]

Since the form of the novel available now (cf. Vintage Press), and, presumably, most readily marketed post-1965, is the "revised" edition (not even described as such in current printings), it would appear that the viewpoint of this article is askew, i.e. the reader is being subtly persuaded that the earlier version of the book is the "real" version, and then, at the end, we are told, "oh, yes, there was this revision in 1965...". I suggest that the book, and especially the rape, not murder, at the end, be the main object of discussion, and that the differences in the earlier version be mentioned after that. After all, the article should be a description of the book as it now stands, not an historical account of how it developed.Jakob37 (talk) 11:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC) p.s. Please excuse me for overlooking the rather oblique references to spattered semen after the "sex scene" early on. (cf. a revision I suggested several months ago).[reply]

Comment: I think this article overall provides a good summary. I know both versions well (and have a signed first edition of the original!). There is no difference in the two versions other than a stylistic one. The original version of the novel is written in a very hard-bitten Studs-Lonigan-meets-Nick-Adams style, a sort of museum-piece parody. This was virtually unreadable in the 60s, so that was the main reason for the revision, according to Vidal in the Foreword to the newer edition. If you don't have a problem with a deliberately affected style, I'd say this 1948 version is slightly better because it provides a raw slice of '40s sociology instead of Gay Lit Lite. The killing/beating of Bob Ford is ambiguous in both versions. Vidal cleaned the '65 edition up a little for reasons of political correctness (mainly remarks about Jews, and references to now-forgotten celebrities) although the plotline and the characters remain identical. Sallieparker (talk) 02:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

problem sentence[edit]

"Jim, to whom it has already occurred that girls do not appeal to him as much" you can't have both "to X" (whom and him refer to the same entity) in the same clause; "as much" as what? Jakob37 (talk) 07:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]