Jim’s parents

The conventional Virginia family Jim leaves behind while pursuing Bob’s memory.

What they want

For Jim to follow a recognizable and respectable adult path.

The book

The City and the PillarGore Vidal, 1948

A young man carries one attachment through a world determined to make him live as someone else.

Spoiler-free

Jim’s parents represent the respectable Virginia home in which he grows up.

Their world assumes an ordinary path of work, marriage, and heterosexual family life.

Jim leaves geographically and emotionally rather than explaining himself.

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

ConventionalTheir expectations are ordinary for their place and time.
Social baselineHome establishes what Jim’s life is expected to become.
Emotionally distantJim’s wandering keeps family life at the edge of his attention.
Marked by lossHis father dies while Jim is away.

What Jim finds on returning homeHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

He learns his father has died.

The return also brings the news of Bob’s marriage, which threatens Jim’s private future fantasy.

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