"As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together."
His novel- A Boy’s Own Story (I still have my original copy, purchased in 1982 at The Different Drummer Bookstore on Capital Hill in Seattle) was the first important coming out story that I read, & the first to treat the story of a gay boy where the subject was not portrayed as sick or a "problem". As a young man in my 20s, I thought the novel was brazen & intimate. I was very moved.
White is one of the most prominent & highly acclaimed figures of contemporary gay literature, Edmund White works in many genres of fiction & nonfiction.
A Boy's Story is about the search for identity against the expectations of family & friends, White expertly couples the cosmic & the commonplace. The narrator & his friend Kevin explore the boundaries of their common masculinity: “When he turned his face my way it was dark, indistinguishable; his back & shoulders were carving up strips of light, carving them this way & that as he twisted & bobbed. The water was dark, opaque, but it caught the sun's gold light, the wavy dragon scales writhing under a sainted knight's halo. At last Kevin swam up beside me; his submerged body looked small, boneless. He said we should go down to the store & buy some Vaseline."
I’ve always admired White’s refusal to get all PC, & he takes on gay hypocrisy & prudish gays that condemn promiscuity in the hope that this will make them more normal & palatable for straight people. White is a veteran of the early 1970s: NYC bathhouses, back room bars & along the piers. Edmund White is an old style gay guy, proud to be gay, obsessed with coming out, & attacking those that refuse to do so.
White keeps on putting out fiction, biographies & essays. His States of Desire was written pre-HIV, &contains some of the most graphic & moving depictions of gay male America. White feels that "gay" is a very male concept, having almost nothing to do with lesbians or transsexuals (GLBT !). I have read him, followed him, & I appreciate his place in American gay culture as pioneer & story teller.
White shares a cozy, book-lined Chelsea apartment with his life partner, 46 year old writer Michael Carroll, but White says: "I'm a sex junkie; I believe in promiscuity. Am I a sex addict? I guess. But I'm also a prickly moralist & a weak-willed pleasure lover”. White turns 73 today.
His work so far:
Fiction
• Forgetting Elena (1973)
• Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)
• A Boy's Own Story (1982)
• Caracole (1985)
• The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)
• Skinned Alive: Stories (1995)
• The Farewell Symphony (1997)
• The Married Man (2000)
• Fanny: A Fiction (2003)
• Chaos: A Novella & Stories (2007)
• Hotel de Dream (2007)
Plays
• Terre Haute (2006)
Nonfiction
• The Joy of Gay Sex, with Charles Silverstein (1977)
• States of Desire (1980)
• The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Politics & Sexuality 1969-1993 (1994)
• The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (2000)
• Arts & Letters (2004)
Biography
• Genet: A Biography (1993)
• Marcel Proust (1998)
• Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel (2008)
Memoir
• Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1995)
• My Lives (2005)
• City Boy (2010)
When I was young (I was young once, despite what The Husband may tell you), I would scour the library for books with clues about being gay. The material I found was mostly clinical & the information decidedly depressing. It must be so much easier for baby queers in this era, with a shelves if offerings of gay writings by gay authors of every stripe & disposition.
2 of his newest books are on top of a tall stack of books on my side of the bed. He is one of my favorite authors & one of his books is in my top 10 favorite gay themed books of all time. I am looking forward to his just released new novel- Jack Holmes & His Friend & his book of essays- Sacred Monsters, released in November.
His novel- A Boy’s Own Story (I still have my original copy, purchased in 1982 at The Different Drummer Bookstore on Capital Hill in Seattle) was the first important coming out story that I read, & the first to treat the story of a gay boy where the subject was not portrayed as sick or a "problem". As a young man in my 20s, I thought the novel was brazen & intimate. I was very moved.
White is one of the most prominent & highly acclaimed figures of contemporary gay literature, Edmund White works in many genres of fiction & nonfiction.
A Boy's Story is about the search for identity against the expectations of family & friends, White expertly couples the cosmic & the commonplace. The narrator & his friend Kevin explore the boundaries of their common masculinity: “When he turned his face my way it was dark, indistinguishable; his back & shoulders were carving up strips of light, carving them this way & that as he twisted & bobbed. The water was dark, opaque, but it caught the sun's gold light, the wavy dragon scales writhing under a sainted knight's halo. At last Kevin swam up beside me; his submerged body looked small, boneless. He said we should go down to the store & buy some Vaseline."
I’ve always admired White’s refusal to get all PC, & he takes on gay hypocrisy & prudish gays that condemn promiscuity in the hope that this will make them more normal & palatable for straight people. White is a veteran of the early 1970s: NYC bathhouses, back room bars & along the piers. Edmund White is an old style gay guy, proud to be gay, obsessed with coming out, & attacking those that refuse to do so.
White keeps on putting out fiction, biographies & essays. His States of Desire was written pre-HIV, &contains some of the most graphic & moving depictions of gay male America. White feels that "gay" is a very male concept, having almost nothing to do with lesbians or transsexuals (GLBT !). I have read him, followed him, & I appreciate his place in American gay culture as pioneer & story teller.
White shares a cozy, book-lined Chelsea apartment with his life partner, 46 year old writer Michael Carroll, but White says: "I'm a sex junkie; I believe in promiscuity. Am I a sex addict? I guess. But I'm also a prickly moralist & a weak-willed pleasure lover”. White turns 73 today.
His work so far:
Fiction
• Forgetting Elena (1973)
• Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)
• A Boy's Own Story (1982)
• Caracole (1985)
• The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)
• Skinned Alive: Stories (1995)
• The Farewell Symphony (1997)
• The Married Man (2000)
• Fanny: A Fiction (2003)
• Chaos: A Novella & Stories (2007)
• Hotel de Dream (2007)
Plays
• Terre Haute (2006)
Nonfiction
• The Joy of Gay Sex, with Charles Silverstein (1977)
• States of Desire (1980)
• The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Politics & Sexuality 1969-1993 (1994)
• The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (2000)
• Arts & Letters (2004)
Biography
• Genet: A Biography (1993)
• Marcel Proust (1998)
• Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel (2008)
Memoir
• Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1995)
• My Lives (2005)
• City Boy (2010)
