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In a Yellow Wood: A Novel
REVIEW
"An extraordinarily observant novel...moody, moving and rather melancholy." --The Gore Vidal Index
DESCRIPTION
Robert Holton has just returned from the strife of war to carve out a career on Wall Street. But money and office romance are poor substitutes for the haunting memories of nights of love spent in Florence. And when Carla turns up unexpectedly from his passionate past, Robert must choose between the fixed path of convention and the fraught path of love and freedom. The story plays out against a background of manic Manhattan nightlife.
Vidal dedicated this meditation on passion to Anais Nin, embodied in the fiery Carla.
"An extraordinarily observant novel...moody, moving and rather melancholy." --The Gore Vidal Index
DESCRIPTION
Robert Holton has just returned from the strife of war to carve out a career on Wall Street. But money and office romance are poor substitutes for the haunting memories of nights of love spent in Florence. And when Carla turns up unexpectedly from his passionate past, Robert must choose between the fixed path of convention and the fraught path of love and freedom. The story plays out against a background of manic Manhattan nightlife.
Vidal dedicated this meditation on passion to Anais Nin, embodied in the fiery Carla.
- GenresFiction
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1947
8 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Gore Vidal
416 books1,871 followersWorks of American writer Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, noted for his cynical humor and his numerous accounts of society in decline, include the play
The Best Man
(1960) and the novel
Myra Breckinridge
(1968) .
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
People know his essays, screenplays, and Broadway.
They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy.
Vidal, a longtime political critic, ran twice for political office. He was a lifelong isolationist Democrat. The Nation, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and Esquire published his essays.
Essays and media appearances long criticized foreign policy. In addition, he from the 1980s onwards characterized the United States as a decaying empire. Additionally, he was known for his well publicized spats with such figures as Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Truman Capote.
They fell into distinct social and historical camps. Alongside his social, his best known historical include Julian, Burr, and Lincoln. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as the first major feature of unambiguous homosexuality.
At the time of his death he was the last of a generation of American writers who had served during World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Perhaps best remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a "gentleman bitch" and has been described as the 20th century's answer to Oscar Wilde
Also used the pseudonym Edgar Box.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Gore Vidal é um dos nomes centrais na história da literatura americana pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Nascido em 1925, em Nova Iorque, estudou na Academia de Phillips Exeter (Estado de New Hampshire). O seu primeiro romance, Williwaw (1946), era uma história da guerra claramente influenciada pelo estilo de Hemingway. Embora grande parte da sua obra tenha a ver com o século XX americano, Vidal debruçou-se várias vezes sobre épocas recuadas, como, por exemplo, em A Search for the King (1950), Juliano (1964) e Creation (1981).
Entre os seus temas de eleição está o mundo do cinema e, mais concretamente, os bastidores de Hollywood, que ele desmonta de forma satírica e implacável em títulos como Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1975) e Duluth (1983).
Senhor de um estilo exuberante, multifacetado e sempre surpreendente, publicou, em 1995, a autobiografia Palimpsest: A Memoir. As obras 'O Instituto Smithsonian' e 'A Idade do Ouro' encontram-se traduzidas em português.
Neto do senador Thomas Gore, enteado do padrasto de Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, primo distante de Al Gore, Gore Vidal sempre se revelou um espelho crítico das grandezas e misérias dos EUA.
Faleceu a 31 de julho de 2012, aos 86 anos, na sua casa em Hollywood, vítima de pneumonia.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 4, 2021
Not so good as expected....
I am smooth-reading this book and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
I am smooth-reading this book and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
February 28, 2019
Vidal’s second novel flirts with some of the themes he would subsequently tackle in The City and the Pillar, eschewing a dependence on plotline and paying more attention to character development. The introductory prose feels somewhat stilted—as if, as with Williwaw, in emulation of writerly minimalists like Hemingway—but loosens up as the narrative progresses. He also tends, here, to overwrite (“Holton crossed his legs, giving himself time to think,” p.181) and is sometimes unnecessarily overt (“She said this in a way to let him know she was being humorous.” p. 81). Vidal does love his adverbs, but can do so stunningly (“He was thin and moved stiffly, self-consciously, like a woman thinking of rape,” p. 145) and I loved the way he referenced lighting in allusion to the social isolation of the novel’s era (“The room was dark except for the lighted dots of windows in the buildings opposite and, over the buildings, like unorganized window lights, cold stars shone clearly,” p. 186). Other then having come from a very young Vidal, the novels principal value may well be as an illumination of this social anxiety—rampant during the short-lived interim of post-War/pre-Imperial America.
Reading the novel now, as meticulous as it is, I can’t help but wonder how different Vidal’s life would have been if he had decided not to publish The City and the Pillar. In its absence, I can see him easily becoming the type of academic he came to scorn—publishing, once or twice a decade, the kind of meticulous novel whose principal use is pedagogical. I also wonder if this second novel—skirting issues of homosexuality, sometimes stereotypically—gave Vidal a sense of obligation to treat the topic in a more forthright way (precipitating his decade under a publisher’s anathema) and if, without this pressure to write for a larger audience, Vidal would still have developed into the premiere writer of his generation.
Reading the novel now, as meticulous as it is, I can’t help but wonder how different Vidal’s life would have been if he had decided not to publish The City and the Pillar. In its absence, I can see him easily becoming the type of academic he came to scorn—publishing, once or twice a decade, the kind of meticulous novel whose principal use is pedagogical. I also wonder if this second novel—skirting issues of homosexuality, sometimes stereotypically—gave Vidal a sense of obligation to treat the topic in a more forthright way (precipitating his decade under a publisher’s anathema) and if, without this pressure to write for a larger audience, Vidal would still have developed into the premiere writer of his generation.
November 22, 2022
Somewhere between a three and a four, this is another interesting early Vidal novel that is probably only of interest to completists.
With an almost embarrassingly obvious title alluding to one of the most famous poems of all time, I was a little apprehensive about this one. Williwaw is a minor classic of WWII lit; like most first novels, it benefits from a healthy dollop of autobiographical insight. While this second novel is also full of autobiographical parallels, it represents Vidal's first attempt to write a "serious" novel of ideas. It is equally indebted, in Vidalian fashion, to modernist literature of the 1920s (in its shifting interior POV and attempts to catalog the minutiae of one 24 hour span in NYC) as well as (at least for me) classic Hollywood melodrama.
Vidal's novel focuses on Robert Holton, a veteran who has returned from the war and is dutifully taking his place in the growing post-war capitalist society. While he knew adventure, traveled widely, and had a number of sexual relationships during the war, he makes a conscious effort to forget those experiences and emotions as he attempts to fulfill what he understands to be his duty. This effort faces immense pushback when, unexpectedly, he runs into his former overseas lover at a well-described cocktail party. Suddenly our main character faces a choice.
As other reviewers have noted, the book is overwritten and really only comes alive about halfway through. I enjoyed the minute descriptions of office life in the late 1940s from a historical perspective, however, and found there to be a fair amount of ironic horror present in Vidal's exacting descriptions of day-to-day drudgery at an office 9-5. There are a number of other strengths here as well:
1) As Elizabeth Samet's "The Good War" points out, then-contemporary fiction was considerably more ambiguous about the role of veterans in a postwar society. Vidal's book has a lot to say about this topic and comes at it from an interesting angle.
2) Vidal is also extraordinarily prescient in his critique of postwar American society. Written as the era we think of as "the 50s" was just getting off the ground, Vidal masterfully sees through the falseness of a capitalistic society that reduces bright young men to glorified number crunchers in brokerage houses while also dooming complicated women to a life defined by their relationship to said men;
3) The book also brilliantly dissects the way that the war was, paradoxically, a freeing and liberating experience for most American soldiers (rather than a horrific ordeal) in that it showed them alternatives to a constrained version of American middle-class existence;
4) It's also very frank about sexual relationships and the presence of gay men in a society we are retroactively taught to think of in terms of a second Victorian age.
However, the book also has numerous flaws, including its reliance on Hollywood-style melodrama, a persistent overwriting, and an ending that simply churns on too long despite the brief length of the book.
An interesting footnote to the era, but not the work of a generation that Vidal was obviously thinking of when he wrote it. An enjoyable and idiosyncratic read but, again, not essential.
With an almost embarrassingly obvious title alluding to one of the most famous poems of all time, I was a little apprehensive about this one. Williwaw is a minor classic of WWII lit; like most first novels, it benefits from a healthy dollop of autobiographical insight. While this second novel is also full of autobiographical parallels, it represents Vidal's first attempt to write a "serious" novel of ideas. It is equally indebted, in Vidalian fashion, to modernist literature of the 1920s (in its shifting interior POV and attempts to catalog the minutiae of one 24 hour span in NYC) as well as (at least for me) classic Hollywood melodrama.
Vidal's novel focuses on Robert Holton, a veteran who has returned from the war and is dutifully taking his place in the growing post-war capitalist society. While he knew adventure, traveled widely, and had a number of sexual relationships during the war, he makes a conscious effort to forget those experiences and emotions as he attempts to fulfill what he understands to be his duty. This effort faces immense pushback when, unexpectedly, he runs into his former overseas lover at a well-described cocktail party. Suddenly our main character faces a choice.
As other reviewers have noted, the book is overwritten and really only comes alive about halfway through. I enjoyed the minute descriptions of office life in the late 1940s from a historical perspective, however, and found there to be a fair amount of ironic horror present in Vidal's exacting descriptions of day-to-day drudgery at an office 9-5. There are a number of other strengths here as well:
1) As Elizabeth Samet's "The Good War" points out, then-contemporary fiction was considerably more ambiguous about the role of veterans in a postwar society. Vidal's book has a lot to say about this topic and comes at it from an interesting angle.
2) Vidal is also extraordinarily prescient in his critique of postwar American society. Written as the era we think of as "the 50s" was just getting off the ground, Vidal masterfully sees through the falseness of a capitalistic society that reduces bright young men to glorified number crunchers in brokerage houses while also dooming complicated women to a life defined by their relationship to said men;
3) The book also brilliantly dissects the way that the war was, paradoxically, a freeing and liberating experience for most American soldiers (rather than a horrific ordeal) in that it showed them alternatives to a constrained version of American middle-class existence;
4) It's also very frank about sexual relationships and the presence of gay men in a society we are retroactively taught to think of in terms of a second Victorian age.
However, the book also has numerous flaws, including its reliance on Hollywood-style melodrama, a persistent overwriting, and an ending that simply churns on too long despite the brief length of the book.
An interesting footnote to the era, but not the work of a generation that Vidal was obviously thinking of when he wrote it. An enjoyable and idiosyncratic read but, again, not essential.
August 7, 2012
I had only read essays and articles of Vidal's and had been meaning to read his fictional work for years now. I'll admit I only really checked In a Yellow Wood out because I stumbled across it in the library the day after his death and I've got to say, I enjoyed this much more than I expected.
Aesthetically, the imagery and character stereotypes of In a Yellow Wood were evocative of what I know of the golden age of Hollywood. I even mentally pictured a young William Holden portraying the protagonist Robert Holton from start to finish (alternatively I couldn't help but think of the effete George Robert Lewis being played by Beverly Leslie). The conversations throughout the book seemed contrived and predictable like their contemporary celluloid counterparts, but they were as equally charming and rewarding.
On paper (pardon the pun), a novel this simple with a seemingly unexceptional core story would have been something I'd write off after a short while, but there was an underlying allure to In a Yellow Wood that kept me hooked and let me blow through it in a matter of hours. Still waters really do run deep and the internal conflicts of seemingly cliché characters of post-WWII America drew me right in.
Aesthetically, the imagery and character stereotypes of In a Yellow Wood were evocative of what I know of the golden age of Hollywood. I even mentally pictured a young William Holden portraying the protagonist Robert Holton from start to finish (alternatively I couldn't help but think of the effete George Robert Lewis being played by Beverly Leslie). The conversations throughout the book seemed contrived and predictable like their contemporary celluloid counterparts, but they were as equally charming and rewarding.
On paper (pardon the pun), a novel this simple with a seemingly unexceptional core story would have been something I'd write off after a short while, but there was an underlying allure to In a Yellow Wood that kept me hooked and let me blow through it in a matter of hours. Still waters really do run deep and the internal conflicts of seemingly cliché characters of post-WWII America drew me right in.
November 30, 2020
Not a gripping tale but well written in a direct Hemingway-esque style, with smartly drawn characters.
The novel deals in part with a post WW2 sense of lostness, and the attempt to adjust to workaday civilian life. At the same time the main character struggles to choose between a conventional, unsatisfying path but one which is known and safe, versus a free and full life, and the risk of the unknown.
The novel deals in part with a post WW2 sense of lostness, and the attempt to adjust to workaday civilian life. At the same time the main character struggles to choose between a conventional, unsatisfying path but one which is known and safe, versus a free and full life, and the risk of the unknown.
September 2, 2025
What a marvelous discovery it was Gore Vidal. The book started out slowly but the pace picked up and one discovers the characters in such a deep and personal way, it is clear we are dealing with a humanist writer, who know America deeply and is not afraid to dive into the soul. The main character is trying to fit it and emerging himself into the capitalist dream rejects love and adventure - and even though we can blame him, we discover ourselves wondering what our own decision would be. So many other characters orbitate around him and although it shouldn't work, Vidal clearly is a master of storytelling. I look forward to reading more from this author.
February 25, 2022
A little bit like Death of a Salesman, but Vidal's work was published two years before the play.
May 24, 2022
Gore Vidal was an exceptional writer and this is one of his finest reads.
September 16, 2025
Good early novel from Gore Vidal.
November 3, 2023
In a Yellow Wood (1947) is Gore Vidal’s second novel and more in the personal vein of later works like The Season of Comfort (1949) and the Judgement of Paris (1952). Robert Holton, a WWII veteran, has returned to civilian life in New York City as a financial analyst for a big firm. He’s trying to live the conventional life, but his past continues to interrupt his present. He runs into a war colleague who he has trouble reconnecting with and a past lover from Italy who he deeply cares for but is unable to commit to. He’s a man at a crossroads, and he chooses the path of least resistance in the end, trying to conform in an age of oppressive conformity.
Much like some of his early work, this is a novel where Vidal is finding his style as a writer, with all the limitations therein. I think his novels are better when they tackle bigger issues of philosophy, religion, history, and politics. The novel doesn’t really address any major themes, beyond having to choose between the past and the present, and I found myself a little bored at times with the writing. Its prose is rather utilitarian, similar to Williwaw (1946), but it doesn’t have the narrative thrust that novel had. My favorite part of the novel is Holton’s interactions with a diner waitress, and I hoped that maybe they would form a more meaningful connection as the story progressed, but alas, that didn’t happen. This is a read for Vidal enthusiasts only, but for the general reader interested in learning about his work, his later, more substantive novels are better fare.
Much like some of his early work, this is a novel where Vidal is finding his style as a writer, with all the limitations therein. I think his novels are better when they tackle bigger issues of philosophy, religion, history, and politics. The novel doesn’t really address any major themes, beyond having to choose between the past and the present, and I found myself a little bored at times with the writing. Its prose is rather utilitarian, similar to Williwaw (1946), but it doesn’t have the narrative thrust that novel had. My favorite part of the novel is Holton’s interactions with a diner waitress, and I hoped that maybe they would form a more meaningful connection as the story progressed, but alas, that didn’t happen. This is a read for Vidal enthusiasts only, but for the general reader interested in learning about his work, his later, more substantive novels are better fare.
April 1, 2015
gore vidal gives us an effortless seeming book about trying to find your place in the world, attempting to ascend to the place expected of you by social standards, and giving up on all possibilities for happiness. on a single day we follow a broker through his job and to a party where he confronts past friends and lovers, each giving him the opportunity to be happy and each opportunity yltimately rejected. the core of this novel is full of sad blood, frozen to its depths. it's a reminder of a quote the author gave outside of the text, "Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find: cold water." So it goes with In a Yellow Wood.
September 14, 2016
I enjoyed the first few chapters; I thought they were innovative and interesting. However as the story progresses the title character becomes increasingly unlikable.
January 26, 2024
Second Gore Vidal book and he really comes into his own here with this great little read.
It really takes you into the characters life and you feel like you are with him on the journey.
It really takes you into the characters life and you feel like you are with him on the journey.
April 30, 2014
Sorry, but this book is just bad. Makes "Williwaw" seem good.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews