■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → The City and the Pillar → cover → (6)

”[…] These views of The City and the Pillar show the variety of ways that publishers around the world and over time have represented the novel’s story, character and themes. In the row above, the French first edition, not surprisingly, chose neutrality for its cover and renamed the novel “A Young Man by the River.” In France in the 1980s, the title remained the same as the first French edition, but the cover became somewhat more true to the novel’s content, although with a classical bent. The Dutch first edition, “The Fortress and the Pillar of Salt,” captured a sense of the central character’s isolation. Two more Dutch editions, with different titles, and by different translators, followed in the next 30 years. In the 21st Century, translations of the book appeared in a changing Russia and a largely unchanged Arabic-speaking Middle East. […] Below, the Polish edition of The City and the Pillar depicts a nude man in an abstract and somewhat unnatural position. The text contains half a dozen similarly posed figures at the end of chapters where space permits, and the title means “don’t look back at Sodom.” The Spanish edition features a photo of Vidal from the 1940s - the same photo used on the cover of the 1995 American reissue of the novel. The images on the cover of the German first edition refer to Jim Willard’s Hollywood life as a tennis instructor but not to the novel’s sexuality, although the German title, which means “closed circle,” recognizes Jim’s story as a tragic Bildungsroman that ultimate brings him back to where he began. The discreet Brazilian edition merely depicts two figures locked in a Greco-Roman wrestling pose. Finally, as the world changes, Vidal’s reception grows. Who would ever have thought this book would appear in Russia or the Arabic-speaking world. And yet, in the 21st Century, they did. […]”

(sul sito della University of Pittsburg, una rassegna di moltissime -tutte?- copertine delle traduzioni di The City and the Pillar, comprese quelle italiane)

(l’edizione dei Elmo editore compare dotata di fascetta editoriale che recita: “Il dramma del terzo sesso”)

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

(Fonte: pitt.edu)

■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → The City and the Pillar → cover → (5)

”[…] My version of the cover for Gore Vidal’s novel. A personal work. In the collage were used engravings by Gustave Doré. […]”

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → The City and the Pillar → cover → (4)

He wrote his first book at 19 – Williwaw. His third novel, The City and the Pillar, featured a homosexual as a main character and bookshops refused to stock it. He was even forced to work under pseudonyms during the 1950s. He is also well known for his satire, Myra Breckinridge, and the historical novel, Lincoln.

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → The City and the Pillar → cover → (1)

menotaur2:

John was angry. “Well, that’s more than you do and you’re older than me. You don’t ever go out with girls.
I heard Sally say once she thought you were the best-looking guy in the school and she couldn’t understand why you didn’t go around more. She said she thought you were afraid of girls.”
Jim flushed. “She’s full of crap. I’m not afraid of her or anybody. Besides, I do my traveling on the other side of town.”
“Really?” John was interested and Jim was glad he had lied.
“Sure.” He was mysterious. “Bob and me go over there lots of times. All the baseball team does, too.
We don’t want to mess around with ‘nice’ girls.”
“I guess not.”
“Besides, Sally isn’t so fast.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“I’ll bet Bob Ford said that about her.”
Jim fixed the top of his bureau, ignoring his brother.
He was ill at ease and didn’t know why; it was seldom that John could irritate him.
Jim looked at the dusty mirror above his bureau and wondered if he needed his weekly shave. He decided he could wait till he got back. Absently he ran his hand over his short blond hair, glad that it was summer, the season of short hair. Was he handsome? His features were perfectly ordinary, he thought; only his body pleased him, the result of much exercise.
~ The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012)

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

“■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → (5)

[…] The City and the Pillar (1948), written when Vidal was just twenty-three years old, is the story of professional tennis player Jim Willard, a man who never outgrew his boyhood crush on his best friend Bob Ford. That men who enjoyed sex with other men could go undetected in straight circles was an idea that shocked and outraged many of the novel’s readers and critics. The New York Times was so put off by the forthright writing about homosexuals that it refused to review Vidal’s next five books. Although Vidal vehemently (and frequently) declared that there is no such thing as a homosexual identity because everyone is bisexual to some degree, The City and the Pillar was the first mainstream coming-out novel. Twenty years after its initial publication, Vidal published The City and the Pillar with a different ending. Most of Vidal’s subsequent literary works had prominent gay characters and gay themes, opening up the path for other writers to expanded gay visibility in mainstream fiction. […]”

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → (4)

”[…] “Gore Vidal is an author who will give vital books and strike at the core of a power lacking in fiction today….” - Anais Nin, praise for Vidal’s Williwaw (Dutton, 1946)

In memory of the irreplaceable Gore Vidal. […]”

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

■ infn ■ → Gore Vidal → (3)

Left: Warrant Officer Junior Grade Gore Vidal circa 1944, the Gore Vidal Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; right: Gore Vidal in 1989 © Stathis Orphanos

A proposito di Gore Vidal, materiali per una bibliografia italiana (1bis)

■ infn ■ → #AlanBennet  @adelphiedizioni  #LGBTQ (1)

Gli studenti di storia
(The History Boys)
di Alan Bennett

in capo al testo: Introduzione; Commento alla prima produzione, di Alan Bennett
traduzione di Mariagrazia Gini
[responsabilità grafiche non indicate]

178 p. ; 12€ | cartaceo
Adelphi – Piccola Biblioteca Adelphi 625, Milano 2012

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN di Gli studenti di storia, di Alan Bennett, Adelphi 2012)

■ infn ■ → #Harbach (10 e fine) @RizzoliST #LGBTQ

booksandpixels:

From the aforementioned Vanity Fair feature a look at different proposals for the US jacket (including the striking final blue version). Also, the different Italian versions up to the last one (which is our take on the American one).

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN de L’arte di vivere in difesa, di Chad Harbach, Rizzoli 2012)

■ infn ■ → #Harbach (6) #LGBTQ

littlejoeii:

On the left, the UK cover of The Art of Fielding. On the right, the US cover. 

Amazon.co.uk could get the book on the left to me in a few days time for just over £10. Speedier yet, I could take the tube into town and get it (the book on the left) from a real-world bookstore - make a day of it! - and have it by my bedside this time tomorrow for around £14, factoring in travel costs and the bottle of water I’d have to buy to sit in Foyles cafe for most of the day. That would be good. Their wi-fi can be a be flakey but it’s one of my favourite haunts and a good place to read. 

Instead I’ve got a amazon.com tab open in chrome and have worked out that for the not-at-all-as-expensive-as-I-was-expecting price of £14.60 I can have the US cover, that pretty one on the right, in my arms sometime during the estimated delivery window of Jan. 26, 2012 - Feb. 15, 2012. 

Easy decision, right? In the meantime I can just order Swamplandia to scratch my 2011 lit itch.

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN de L’arte di vivere in difesa, di Chad Harbach, Rizzoli 2012)

■ infn ■ → #Harbach (3) #LGBTQ

electrickirby:

Book Review: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Rating: 4/5

My friend Emily described The Art of Fielding as “fiction-y fiction,” which is pretty dead-on. It’s a big and meaty good old-fashioned novel about college, baseball and the Midwest. But before you stifle a yawn, it’s also about sexual identity, clinical depression, pain pill addiction and Steve Blass disease (a real phenomenon that’s super crazy— look it up). 

I’m a sucker for quarter-life crisis stories, and this is a good one. Chad Harbach really captures that directionless fear that comes after realizing that the life plan you were so sure about actually isn’t going to work out after all. He presents the mini-meltdowns of confused 21 to 24-year-olds in a realistic and thoughtful way, without an overdose of melodrama. Furthermore, he wrote a novel with countless baseball-as-a-symbol-for-Life commentaries, and somehow managed to NOT make it the most cliched, hackneyed thing ever. Amazing. 

“Schwartz, for his part, had vowed long ago not to become one of those pathetic ex-jocks who considered high school and college the best days of their lives. Life was long, unless you died, and he didn’t intend to spend the next sixty years talking about the last twenty-two. That was why he didn’t want to go into coaching, though everyone at Westish, especially the coaches, expected him to. He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer.”

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN de L’arte di vivere in difesa, di Chad Harbach, Rizzoli 2012)

■ infn ■ → #Harbach (2)

laviecharmee:

Is there anything in the world as good as a brand new hardcover? (Taken with instagram)

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN de L’arte di vivere in difesa, di Chad Harbach, Rizzoli 2012)

■ infn ■ → #Harbach (1)

(in occasione della segnalazione su FN de L’arte di vivere in difesa, di Chad Harbach, Rizzoli 2012)

■ infn ■ → #FNkitkit → Thomas Mann → Death in Venice (5)

in occasione della messa in rete della copertina di Morte a Venezia , i coralli Einaudi 1953

Su FN tutte le copertine de i coralli Einaudi, (1947 - 1976), scannerizzate con l’FNkitkit!

■ infn ■ → #FNkitkit → Thomas Mann → Der Tod in Venedig (4)

in occasione della messa in rete della copertina di Morte a Venezia , i coralli Einaudi 1953

Su FN tutte le copertine de i coralli Einaudi, (1947 - 1976), scannerizzate con l’FNkitkit!