The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal

A literary cause célèbre when first published in 1948, Gore Vidal's now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience.
 
Jim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut boy-next-door, is haunted by the memory of a romantic adolescent encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love, in awe of the very same masculinity he possesses himself, his progress through the secret gay world of 1940's America unveils surreptitious Hollywood affairs, the hidden life of the military in the Second World War and the underworld bar culture of New York City.
 
With the publication of his daring third novel The City and the Pillar in 1948, Gore Vidal shocked the American public, which has just begun to hail him as their newest and brightest young writer.It remains not only an authentic and profoundly important social document but also a serious exploration of the nature of idealistic love.
 
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'Gore Vidal, a writer of lustrous and fabulously readable prose, was always ahead of his time, so it is wonderful to see some of his finest works being republished for an audience who will be ready to (re)discover his daring, his insight and his wickedly waspish wit' -  Stephen Fry
 
"Certainly one of the best novels of its kind ... It isn't sentimental and it is frank without trying to be sensational and shocking. These are enormous virtues." - Christopher Isherwood