the Pillar has also been called "the most notorious of the gay novels of the 1940s and 1950s." It sparked a public scandal, including notoriety and criticism, because it was released at a time when homosexuality was commonly considered immoral and because it was the first book by an accepted American author to portray overt homosexuality as a natural behavior. Upon its release, The New York Times refused to publish advertisements for the novel and Vidal was blacklisted to the extent that no major newspaper or magazine would review any of his novels for six years. Modern scholars note the importance of the novel to the visibility of gay literature. Michael Bronski points out that "gay-male-themed books received greater critical attention than lesbian ones" and that "writers such as Gore Vidal were accepted as important American writers, even when they received attacks from homophobic critics." Ian Young notes that social disruptions of World War II changed public morals, and lists The City and the Pillar among a spate of war novels that use the military as backdrop for overt homosexual behavior. Other notable works of the 1940s and 1950s include Jean Genet's semiautobiographical Our Lady of the Flowers (1943) and The Thief's Journal (1949), Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask (1949), Umberto Saba's Ernesto (written in 1953, published posthumously in 1975), and Giovanni's Room (1956) by James Baldwin. Mary Renault's The Charioteer, a 1953 British war novel about homosexual men in and out of the military, quickly became a bestseller within the gay community. Renault's historical novels The Last of the Wine (1956) about Athenian pederasty in ancient Greece and The Persian Boy (1972) about Alexander the Great and his slave lover Bagoas followed suit. A Room in Chelsea Square (1958) by British author Michael Nelson — about a wealthy gentleman who lures an attractive younger man to London with the promise of an upper crust lifestyle — was originally published anonymously both because of its explicit gay content at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, and because its characters were "thinly veiled portrayals of prominent London literary figures". A key element of Allen Drury's 1959 bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel Advise and Consent is the blackmailing of young US senator Brigham Anderson, who is hiding a secret wartime homosexual tryst. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal Scott Simon wrote of Drury that "the conservative Washington novelist was