“The City and the Pillar” is a book about the first feeling of Virginia schoolboy Jim Willard for his friend Bob Ford. Ten years pass between their first barely descending night of pure love and the pitch-black night of cruelty and violence. All this time, Jim is waiting for a meeting, keeping the light of a flared passion in his heart, and youth melts, turns into maturity. And men know how to love... men - Jim leads the author to this conclusion. Very soon the fact of his impeccable masculinity becomes important. Regardless of what role, active or passive, he plays in sex. The main thing is that Jim is not a mannered “queen”. Jim Willard is a bigger man than all his fellow sailors who have long since started families... But the main sign of their manhood is the company of cheap prostitutes in every port.