The hero of this novel, Jim Willard, is accurately enough described as a "dumb bunny" by one of the characters in Two Sisters (1970). He is an incarnation of a certain brand of typically American innocence — a descendant of Billy Budd and Huck Finn and a slightly older brother to Holden Caulfield.

Vidal has shrewdly exploited the effect of placing this traditional character in a milieu never before revealed in mainstream fiction, and he has made Jim a sympathetic character by the slowness with which he comes to act on the feelings that he has had from the time of his junior year in high school, when the book begins. Bob Ford, his love object, is an idea rather than a developed character, but the way he overlooks the implications of boyhood sexual experimentation while drifting into a conventional adulthood is realistically presented. Ronald Shaw is a closeted...