Jim Willard
A Virginia athlete whose adult life is organized around one teenage memory of Bob.
To recover the perfect union he believes he once had with Bob.
The book
At a glance
- Virginia
- Tennis
- Bob Ford
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJim is a handsome Virginia athlete and tennis player who is less interested in girls than his friends expect.
A sexual weekend with Bob becomes the ideal around which he organizes every later relationship.
His physical confidence and conventional masculinity do not give him honest self-knowledge.
How the book draws them
- AthleticTennis and physical ability let him appear conventionally masculine.
- Romantically fixedHe treats one teenage encounter as the destiny of his adult life.
- RestlessHe travels through ships, cities, Hollywood, and the Army without building a stable home.
- Resistant to labelsHe has sex with men while insisting that Bob is an exception.
- PrejudicedHe distances himself from gay men he considers too visible.
- Ultimately violentHe tries to force the remembered bond onto the adult Bob.
Bob’s marriage and rejection do not make Jim abandon his fantasy.
In 1948 Jim kills Bob; in the 1965 revision he rapes Bob and leaves him alive.
If you like The City and the Pillar
If you like Gore Vidal
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast; his pared-down style, developed in 1920s Paris, became the most imitated in American prose.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Henry Miller
The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.
View author