White, Edmund

The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris

Average customer rating:

Step back in time
Cruising Paris
Annoyed By Most Travel Books?
Fun little frolic
A good alternative to travel guide books

The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1582341354

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

If a place is best known by its particulars, then Edmund White is an expert on Paris. Fortunately, he's generous with his secrets: he reveals a Paris not found in any other guide in this first book in the Writer and the City series. White's Paris is seen on foot, as a flâneur, a stroller who aimlessly loses himself in a crowd, going wherever curiosity leads him and collecting impressions along the way. Paris is the perfect city for the flâneur, as every quartier is beautiful and full of rich and surprising delights. But this is no typical tour of monuments and museums; it is much more intimate and surprising. As a flâneur of Paris for 16 years, White knows where to find the very best of everything--silver, sheets, plum slivovitz. He can tell you where to get Tex-Mex surrounded by a dance rehearsal hall, where to rent an entire castle for a party, or even where to get Skippy peanut butter. He eschews the pearl-gray city built by Napoleon and roams the places where the real vitality lives, the teaming quartiers inhabited by Arabs and Asians and Africans, the strange corners, the markets where you can find absolutely anything in this city that accommodates all tastes. White's Paris is a place rich in history with a passion for novelty and distractions. So a walk through the Jewish ghetto leads to the history of the little-known Musée Nissim de Camondo, with its impressive collection of Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, created by a family of Jewish bankers ultimately killed in the Holocaust. White shares other favorite and obscure museums, such as the Hôtel du Lauzun, where writers like Balzac and Charles Baudelaire and the painter Edouard Manet met for long evenings of music and hashish-induced hallucinations. Reminiscences in Montmartre reach back to the thriving jazz culture created by African Americans in the years between the world wars and include stories about Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. While White may ignore Notre Dame, he has fascinating tidbits to share about kings and queens and their heirs who still fight for the throne. The variety of Paris, White remarks, is matched by the voraciousness and passion of its people. With his own remarkable flair, he reveals a thriving and alluring city where tourists rarely tread. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

Bloomsbury is proud to announce the first title in an occasional series in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the city they know best. These beautifully produced, pocket-sized books will provide exactly what is missing in ordinary travel guides: insights and imagination that lead the reader into those parts of a city no other guide can reach.

A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, esthetic or erotic. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, taking us into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. Entering the Marais evokes the history of Jews in France, just as a visit to the Haynes Grill recalls the presence-festive, troubled-of black Americans in Paris for a century and a half. Gays, Decadents, even Royalists past and present are all subjected to the flaneur's scrutiny.

Edmund White's The Flaneur is opinionated, personal, subjective. As he conducts us through the bookshops and boutiques, past the monuments and palaces, filling us in on the gossip and background of each site, he allows us to see through the blank walls and past the proud edifices and to glimpse the inner, human drama. Along the way he recounts everything from the latest debates among French law-makers to the juicy details of Colette's life in the Palais Royal, even summoning up the hothouse atmosphere of Gustave Moreau's atelier.

Customer Reviews:

Step back in time.......2005-09-04

I bought this book while holidaying in the Marais in the summer of 2005. I read it on my return to Sydney as a means of returning to the backstreets of Paris as I also remember it.

If you've been to Paris much of this book will seem familiar. If you haven't, It's the closest you'll come to enjoying the pleasures of this most magnificent city.

Much like Paris itself, this book is brilliant.

Cruising Paris.......2005-01-18

Of course this isn't really about cruising. If it were it would be awfully boring, and this book is anything but boring. Even so, there is nothing quite so pleasurable as a stroll down almost any street in the French capital. Edmund white, who lived there for a long time, offers a distillation of his experience in this delightful little book. Reading it is almost as good as being there. Second best. Whie writes elegantly and intelligently. The part I most enjoyed, and from which I learned most, is about the Camondo Museum and the tragedy of the family that built and owned it. After reading this book I went to visit it and it turned out to be all White says it is. Delightful. But the book contains other wonderful descriptions of people and places as well. Highly recommended.

Annoyed By Most Travel Books?.......2004-06-30

Edmund White gives a very different "travel book" in FLANEUR: A STROLL THROUGH THE PARADOXES OF PARIS. If you don't delight in books that compare prices of hotels and restaurants or books in which the author traces the difficulty of restoring and furbishing a fabulous villa all while beguiling and amusing the locals then White's book will offer you a refreshing alternative.

Sixteen-year resident, White, offers a view of Paris that is at once personal and historical. It is more accurately described as a memoir of Paris rather than a standard travel book. One feels as though a friend is offering a leisurely tour of the city showing you his favorite places and telling stories offering insight and historical tidbits not dragging you through a checklist as an impersonal tourist. The changes in neighborhoods and the histories he describes particularly those of expatriate Americans in Paris are all insightful. White's tone is erudite and conversational without being tedious or condescending. The term flaneur is key in the title. The pace of the book is strolling but always interesting. It seems to have no direction but the end result is both illuminating and satisfying. Most remarkably it offers an enjoyable read whether one is immediately traveling to Paris or armchair traveling or whether one is living in a villa in Europe or a small apartment in the States.

Fun little frolic.......2003-10-15

This book is a meandering discussion of both the ideal of Paris and its geography. White has lived for over 15 years in Paris, and he provides an introduction of sorts to the city for Americans with an intellectual bent. The book can't really serve as a guide book or book with city walks, since there are no directions or street names, and certainly no itineraries. As White explains, a flaneur is someone who just wanders around, allowing himself to be drawn in the direction of anything of interest. Thus, White strolls with us through several Paris districts, commenting at length on artists or authors who lived there. Along the way, we find entire chapters on African Americans in Paris, gays in Paris, and Jews in Paris. The book assumes a certain familiarity with both the city itself and Parisian people. If you're a complete newcomer, you may find parts of the book somewhat confusing. But if you're an American who has spent at least several weeks in the city, you may find this book to be a delightful diversion.

A good alternative to travel guide books.......2003-06-28

I read The Flaneur as part of a research for my undergraduate dissertation (tourism). It offers an alternative view to the rosy pictures many travel guides have painted of Paris. Although one has to infer and read between the lines in this book for academic purposes, it remains a relatively good source of leisure reading as well.

Average customer rating:

Beautiful & moving story but lacked depth
Henry James with a homosexual twist
a most beautiful book
Not What I Expected
Not really worth reading

The Married Man
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375400052
Release Date: 2000-05-30

Amazon.com

Edmund White majored in sexual explicitness with his boldly autobiographical trilogy--A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony. Now, explicitly as ever, he trains his unflinching eye on a new subject: a young man's death from AIDS. Austin is a fiftysomething American expat in Paris; Julien is a young married man he meets at the gym. Much to Austin's surprise, Julien calls him and soon they are sharing a bed and a life. The Married Man is White's Henry James novel: the first couple hundred pages show us a satirical portrait of young Julien as a stuffy Frenchman and a more elliptical portrait of Austin's apprehension of French culture through his lover. With Julien, "Austin was always learning things, not necessarily reasoned or researched information but rather all those thousands and thousands of brand names, turns of phrase, aversions and anecdotes that make up a culture as surely as do the moves in a child's game of hopscotch."

But White wants to take us all the way to the end of this relationship. Austin is HIV positive, and it soon becomes clear that Julien has AIDS. As Julien's health unravels, the two travel to Providence, to Key West, to Venice, to Rome, and ultimately to Morocco. The author coins a darkly appropriate phrase for this urge to move: he calls it "AIDS-restlessness." White, in fact, unveils a whole gallery of startling images as Julien nears death. Julien is "the bowler hat descending into the live volcano." Thin and brown and bearded, he looks "like the Ottoman Empire in a turn-of-the-century political cartoon." Though he can't read it, Julien acquires a copy of the Koran. "It was the perfect book for a weary, dying man--pious, incomprehensible pages to strum, an ink cloud of unknowing." White has found a language both magical and clinical to describe a horrible death. --Claire Dederer

Book Description

Austin is an American furniture scholar living in Paris. He is pushing fifty, loveless, drifting. One day at the gym he meets Julien: French, an architect, much younger and married. Against every expectation, this chance acquaintance matures into profound romance.

As the two men dash between bohemian suppers and sophisticated salons, their only impediments are the easily surmountable and comic clashes of culture, age and temperament. Inevitably, however, Julien's past catches up with them. With increasing desperation, in a quest to save health and happiness, they move from the shuttered squares of Venice to sun-drenched Key West, to Montreal in the snow and Providence in the rain. But it is amid the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara that their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.

Haunting and deeply moving, The Married Man carries the reader along with its protagonists into uncharted emotional territory, over the rim of love and loss. It is Edmund White's finest novel.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful & moving story but lacked depth.......2004-11-29

Edmund White has written a very beautiful book on a very dark subject. I agree with most of the 5 star reviews that praised this book and the 2 star reviews that were disappointed with parts of this book. Yes, I am very conflicted about this book. I felt very cheated with the way this book ended. I actually kept looking over the blank pages at the end of the book to make sure an extra chapter or an epilogue wasn't accidently left out. I felt like I didn't get an ending at all. I know, I know, life isn't like that. It goes on and on no matter what tragedies happen in your life. And people do things with no explanations but I wanted an explanation, dang it! But maybe that's me. I read fiction because I want everything nice and neat. A reason for every action. I also wanted a happy ending as impossible as it might be in real life under these settings. I wanted that silver lining. That, I did not get. But I am not at all sorry that I read this book. Far from it, I recommend it. Just know that the ending is very unexpected. I expected it way before or else a reason for going on to that point.

Mr White is a very detailed story-teller full of rich descriptions and a very clear easy-to-picture images. But I never felt like I knew who the main character Austin was. I know what foods he served when he entertained but not how he felt about always being on the giving end. Austin's lover Julian I knew even less. How did Austin really feel about Julian? What did Julian really think about Austin? Sure, I knew all about the motions they went thru but the dialogue between them was lacking at best.

Both Austin and Julian seemed almost shallow only because I knew what clothes they wore more than what they really felt. This book read more like a non-fiction (detailed descriptions)than a fiction (detailed emotions and feelings). Heck, I knew more about how Austin felt about a past lover of his than how he really felt about his current lover who he was with all throughout this book.

When I finished reading the Married Man, I knew I enjoyed reading the book but I didn't have that satisfied full feeling. I felt cheated somehow. I wanted more revealing emotions. I want to write Mr White and ask him a million questions about Julian's motivation for his deception or his lack of explanations. Again, I know things in real life are not spelled out just as it was in this book and we should draw the obvious conclusions based on the few details and hints that were revealed to us. Julian would probably call me a spoiled lazy helpless American who has to be spoon-fed everything.

For those of you who would rather draw your own conclusions, connect your own dots and would consider it an insult to have to be spoon-fed the obvious will really devour The Married Man and the realistic story-telling of this exotic book.

On a pet-peeve side note: I really liked the hardback cover of the man and his dog.(It also relates to, and fits the overall mood of the story) I wish the cover art had not been changed on the paperback edition.

Henry James with a homosexual twist.......2004-10-23

Austin Smith has picked the wrong century to be a furniture scholar and intellectual. He's pushing fifty, lacking direction, and his biggest claim to fame is hosting parties for the Parisian youth in his apartment on the Île St. Louis, or irritating PC maniac students of American universities. His largest commitment in life is to his former lover Peter, dying of AIDS. Until he meets younger married architect Julien, whose lack of known-last-name typifies his character. He is an enigma for much of the book, steadfast only in his devotion to his secrets and to Austin, to whom he says during an intimate pillow-talk session, "I chose you, Petit, and after that there were no other choices to make." The master of artifice who dislikes American big-toothed girls, Julien shows depth by telling Austin, when he discovers Austin's HIV status, "I'm going to stay with you. I'll take care of you...You're the way a man your age should look. I don't want a starved little queen." However, in an elaborate twist of irony, Julien develops AIDS and needs Austin's constant devotion.

Acclaimed award-winning writer Edmund White pens a deeply moving love story of two individuals with illusions about their own lives that create a real, solid and enduring love.

a most beautiful book.......2004-09-26

I loved this book. I loved the writing, and read it very slowly to savor the language. How could it be that a story so ulitmately tragic, could be so rich and full of life? It dazzled me.

Not What I Expected.......2004-07-11

I guess I looked for White to provide thought provoking insight into the older/younger gay relationship. I found the book dull and lacking any real direction. The characters were uninteresting and one demensional. The plot dragged on and on and never really went anywhere. I actually found myself skipping paragraphs trying to get to the point of the story. I apologize to anyone who might find this review offensive, but I didn't enjoy this book at all.

Not really worth reading.......2004-03-12

Austin Smith is a middle-aged American writer, living in Paris, looking for new love from men. He meets Julien, a young married man...

I enjoyed reading 'A Boy's Own Story', written by this writer, which I rated very highly, and therefore I thought I would read another book by Edmund White. However, 'The Married Man' was a disappointing read.

'The Married Man' lacks much in the way of plot. Instead, its content depends mainly on the main character leading a not spectacularly unusual life, but travelling from place to new place and to new venues far too often, extravagantly, rather than working, so the writer can then describe in detail yet another set of new scenes and events and characters and yet more huge expenditure in the new place/venue. That method of creating a book, and the absence of much interesting plot besides, made the book tiresome after a while. I felt I was being made to read material that had being written simply in order to pad the book out unnecessarily.

The content itself becomes quite depressing in the second half of the book.

The style of writing, often with very long turgid sentences and over-complicated similes, suggests the book has been too overwritten ('A Boy's Own Story', in contrast, had a much more interesting, direct, snappy style of writing to it).

Frankly, the main characters aren't likeable (apart from Ajax).

This book was slow going to read, and not a pleasurable experience: more a grim slow turning of the pages, just to finish the thing off.

The writer hasn't really attempted any form of climax to the book, or even a good ending, either. He just lets the book tail off into nothingness after 310 pages.

Book Description

David Hockney (b. 1937) is one of the most significant artists exploring and pushing the boundaries of figurative art today. Hockney has been engaged with portraiture since his teenage years, when he painted Portrait of My Father (1955), and his self-portraits and depictions of family, lovers, and friends represent an intimate visual diary of the artist’s life.
This beautifully illustrated book examines Hockney’s portraits in all media—painting, drawing, photography, and prints—and has been produced in close collaboration with the artist. Featured subjects include members of Hockney’s family and private circle, as well as portraits of such artists and cultural figures as Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente, R. B. Kitaj, Helmet Newton, Lawrence Weschler, and W. H. Auden. The authors reveal how Hockney’s creative development and concerns about representation can be traced through his portrait work: from his battle with naturalism to his experimentation with and later rejection of photography, and from his recent camera lucida drawings to his return to painting from life.
Featuring more than 250 works from the past fifty years, David Hockney Portraits illustrates not only the fascinating range of Hockney’s creative practice but also the unique and cyclical nature of his artistic concerns.

Customer Reviews:

Maniac.......2007-05-12

Generally the portrait images were too small to really study his painting style. That is my only complaint. Interesting stories in the section describing all his sitters, famous or not. What a productive maniac he has been. 41 portraits of his dogs!!!

A Very Personal and Tender Survey of the Works of David Hockney.......2006-04-24

David Hockney is an artist whose works are familiar to everyone, whether from exposure to his many museum shows, his paintings and drawings included in every major survey of contemporary art, to his magical sets for operas such as The Magic Flute, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, The Rake's Progress, Tristan und Isolde, etc.

This current book DAVID HOCKNEY PORTRAITS is, for this reader, the most sensitive presentation of Hockney not only as an artist but also as a tender, feeling, caring human being. The book accompanies an exhibition soon to travel and includes over 250 examples of Hockney's view of his family, himself, his friends - famous and not so famous-, lovers, and pets. The result is a survey of Hockney's people-oriented works over the past fifty years.

Included are early pen and ink drawings from the 1950s, gentle and simple line portraits of his mother and father and himself, and progresses to the development of his large-scale paintings of life size portraits of family, lovers, and self-portraits. Many of the people depicted in these works are no longer alive and there is a sense of memory in some of the works that barely hides Hockney's sadness at their parting.

The book also opens the door to Hockney's experimentation with photography as an art medium, with several of his multiple view Polaroid collages of a single 'sitting' telling more stories than a movie. And after Hockney's excursion into that medium the portraits turn to painting his subjects from life.

Most of the works in this book have been published in other volumes or have become familiar to the public by other means, but it is the curatorial hand that makes his survey so fine and so immediate, a success not easily accomplished with an artist as private as Hockney: the collection is under the encouraging guidance of the artist. This is an excellent overview of a very special artist whose works continue to capture the imagination of viewers and fellow artists alike. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 06

Average customer rating:

White Mischief
Edmund White is a Magical Biographer
Uneven Tales
A Brilliant Memoir
Disarming frankness of a gay life spanning Stonewall

My Lives: An Autobiography
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0066213975
Release Date: 2006-04-11

Book Description

No one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity.

From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to "cure his homosexuality" but found him "unsalvageable," he emerged into a 1960s society that redesignated his orientation as "acceptable (nearly)." He describes a life touched by psychotherapy in every decade, starting with his flamboyant and demanding therapist mother, who considered him her own personal test case -- and personal escort to cocktail lounges after her divorce. His father thought that even wearing a wristwatch was effeminate, though custodial visits to Dad in Cincinnati inadvertently initiated White into the culture of "hustlers and johns" that changed his life.

In My Lives, White shares his enthusiasms and his passions -- for Paris, for London, for Jean Genet -- and introduces us to his lovers and predilections, past and present. "Now that I'm sixty-five," writes White, "I think this is a good moment to write a memoir. . . . Sixty-five is the right time for casting a backward glance, while one is still fully engaged in one's life."

Customer Reviews:

White Mischief.......2006-12-05

Edmund White has/is living a rich life. A Life that may or may not be rich in the monetary sense (though this changes throughout his life) but in the sense of being rich with the exalted currency of true friendship. Time and time again in this latest edition of his autobiography (though he may not call his other books "autobiographies," all of his works are drawn from his life as he states herein), "My Lives," White writes about men and women with whom he has remained friends over the course of his entire life: people that are compelled to keep in touch, both Gay and Straight. Some are formers Lovers, Some were objects of White's Lust and sometimes Love. The women, though never lovers, are still his friends because White is the consummate comrade: always available emotionally at least and at best available in the flesh to lend a hand.
"My Lives" is divided into nine sections with names like My Mother, My Shrinks, My Hustlers, Mr. Genet, etc. but naturally all the sections bleed together as White excels in the fine art of straying from the topic. Along the way we get some sterling observations:
"In the 1950's people were ashamed that they were inadequate; in the 1960's they were proud to announce that they were victims...Rilke had said, You must change yourself! But now people said: Everyone else must change."
Though some of what he writes about his Mother, Lila Mae makes me wince, a lot of what White writes about her is very funny: "...Lila Mae's baseless optimism, her coquetry, her insistence that she was an old fashioned gal, 100 % feminine made us (White and his sister Margaret) cackle like gargoyles. Adolescents are wretchedly conventional as they tiptoe nervously into the great crowded ballroom of adulthood."
As he does with all facets of his life, White's examination of his sexual obsessions is exhaustive and brutally honest: "...but all of these encounters with hustlers were as much an expression of fear as of desire, and above all they were animated by curiosity. I was swallowing the sperm of strangers and this feast convinced me that I possessed all of these men. I was like one of those nearly insane saints who must take communion several times a day..."
So real, precisely expressed and profoundly learned...so much there to cause any number of people to bleed out the eyes.
Edmund White is nothing if not blunt, honest: sometimes maybe to a fault but "My Lives," as with much of what White has written, is profoundly observant and beautifully composed. Though White is of course a fine writer particularly when it has to do with his own life, I think that in the long run as an observer of life in all its forms and as a commentator of all he sees, White's greatest contribution both personally and cosmically is his remarkable ability to earn the trust and retain the friendship of those with whom he has remained emotionally tied for many, many years. If a man is judged by how many true friends he has made and kept then White is a truly great human being.

Edmund White is a Magical Biographer.......2006-11-07

Edmund White is a magical biographer. And, when it comes to writing his own autobiography, he is beyond compare. White's autobiography is breathtaking from the first paragraph. It is truly a work of genius.

Uneven Tales.......2006-07-02

Like the literary conceit on which the book is based, My Lives is all over the place both in the quality of its writing and in the quality of its insights. For long streches I felt almost resentful at White's rambling discourses on the females, friends, and foes in his life--alleviated by occasional flashes of almost lyrical beauty (such as his description of the Ile St. Louis in winter) and sociological insight. Much of the time I felt robbed at having paid for the book rather than being paid for what seemed like asynchronous therapy sessions like which my dispersed hours with the book seemed to feel.

I am still not quite sure how much of his narrative is whining and how much bemused narrative about his foibles as one who grew up in the pre-Stonewall era. No one seems to come off well, except perhaps his long-suffering current lover, about whom White maintains a virtual silence; and perhaps this is just as well.

A Brilliant Memoir.......2006-06-24

What sets this memoir apart from others I've read is the way White chose to write it. By dividing his book into chapters or sections that explore topics that he felt colored the life he's led, I feel that I know more about him than I ever would have had he chosen to start at his birth writing the events in the order that they happened. In these ten sections, White writes about topics that set the stage for who he became as in "My Shrinks", "My Father", and "My Mother". In other sections he writes about topics that were passions for him at different times in his life as in "My Europe", or "My Genet". In "My Hustlers", and "My Master" he explores his sexual preferences, whereas in "My Blondes" he discusses the type of men with whom he chooses to fall in love. The sections "My Women" and "My Friends" round him out as a person capable of giving and receiving affection and loyalty. All of these topics overlap within sections and the result is a clearer picture of who Edmund White is as an individual and as a writer.

Never in this book does White come across as the elder statesman or older gay male guru who has learned things in his life and now is ready to teach them to us the reader. It is so refreshing to see him as a person who knows that he hasn't rid himself of all his foibles and he comes across as more human because of it. He's never politically correct or ashamed of the things that he's done nor does he apologize for them as he shouldn't. He has always been and still remains a very sexual person in spite of his HIV status. Age (he's in his mid-sixties) hasn't turned him into a eunuch as evidenced by his passion for "T" in the section "My Master".

White's writing is always good, always fresh, and often brilliant. There are excerpts here that are as good or better than the first page of Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward Angel", or the excerpt on "Joey" in the beginning of James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room". I won't tell you which ones they are; I'll let you find them yourself.

Disarming frankness of a gay life spanning Stonewall.......2006-06-22

How many well-known gay people are there who are "out" and whose adult lives span Stonewall -- a Democratic Party politician? an English singer? For a thoughtful interesting life story who is left but Lily Tomlin, Larry Kessler, Ian McKellen, Rosie O'Donnell and writers like White, Felice Picano, Paul Monette, Stephen MacCauley, Rita Mae Brown and Tony Kushner (not that they've all written memoirs, and there are certainly other major personalities who don't come to mind at the moment). In terms of its simple beauty, Monette's On Becoming A Man is one of a kind. For sheer joie de vivre, Picano's "memoir in the form of a novel" Men Who Loved Me, would be hard to top. But for refreshing honesty and frankness about an indulgent gay sex life, White's My Lives is in a league of its own.

Unlike Monette and Picano though, White's frame of reference is disconcerting. He seems to be removed from the society the rest of us are, for better or worse, floundering around in. While he apparently has many non-celebrity friends, he also travels in an elite circle of literati. There are few social observations outside his own personal world. There is the note about his Hitler-loving fellow student who gets a few paragraphs, and the speculations about the lives of his French and Kentucky hustlers. But that's about it. Perhaps this remove is the survival-oriented response to the torture of growing up as a little gay boy, but it also feels like someone born to wealth who doesn't want to deal with the problems of ordinary people. He seems to be disdaining those who take social reality seriously, or so one might think by reading between the lines about a subject -- the larger world around him -- that is notable in this book only by its almost complete absense. He seems not be concerned about this larger world (except with regard to the gay experience), which is the attitude of those who are only too happy to live above the fray. One might say that this is a biography and therefore doesn't necessarily deal with society at large. Certainly this collection of biographical essays is not the whole story of the life of Edmund White. But after sex and the literary life, what else? He does have a second life in France whose description is fascinating. It is the degree of his frankness, though, particularly about his sex life, that makes this book worth the price of admission -- and not because of a titillation factor. One feels grateful for his trusting us to know the details of his sexual life and to be nonjudgmental about it, to accept it as part of the human reality. His honesty about the rest of his life is equally refreshing. With the reservations above, this book is written, like the best autobiographies, for that disarmed place within us that accepts the reality of one human life on its own terms.

A Boy's Own Story (Modern Library Classics)

Average customer rating:

So beautiful and so important
A touchstone for millions of young gay men
Eloquent, Elegant, Incisive, Provocative
A Boy's Somewhat Tedious Story
disappointing

A Boy's Own Story (Modern Library Classics)

Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Farewell Symphony
The Married Man: A Novel
Dancer from the Dance: A Novel

ASIN: 0679642544
Release Date: 2002-05-07

Book Description

For more than two decades, Edmund White has been widely recognized as America’s preeminent gay writer. “He has a novelist’s eye for the telling detail or the remarkable phrase and, like Proust himself, concentrates upon the minutiae of the past so that it might live again,” wrote The New York Times Book Review. “White possesses the rare combination of a po-etic sense of language and an ironic sense of humor,” declared Newsweek. “[He] is unquestionably the foremost American gay novelist.” Commemorating the twentieth anni-versary of A Boy’s Own Story, this Modern Library edition presents White’s autobiographical novel together with an Introduction by prizewinning novelist Allan Gurganus and a new Afterword by the author himself.

A Boy’s Own Story, with equal parts stunning lyricism and unabashed humor, traces a nameless narrator’s coming-of-age in the 1950s. Struggling with his homosexuality, the narrator seeks the consolations of a fantastic imagination and fills his head with romantic expectations (“I believed without a doubt in a better world, which was adulthood or New York or Paris or love.”) His distant, divorced parents exacerbate his hunger for emotional connection, and he endures the unhelpful attentions of a priest and a psychoanalyst. In time, he recognizes the need to be loved by the men in his life and, in the surprising conclusion, escapes his childhood forever with one unforgettable act.

“With A Boy’s Own Story, American literature is larger by one classic novel,” wrote The Washington Post Book World. “No reader, straight or gay . . . can fail to experience shock after shock of recognition in these pages, and few, I would bet, will be able to withhold a one-to-one sympathy from the unnamed narrator, even when he is being, by the standards of only yesterday, ‘shocking.’”

Customer Reviews:

So beautiful and so important.......2005-11-15

We have been partners/lovers for 14 years, and we found this book to be so important for young gay men everywhere. It was our story. White's new autobiography is also seminal reading. Thank you, Edmund!

A touchstone for millions of young gay men.......2005-09-26

This novel has been read by millions and is worth your time if you are young and gay. I read it many years ago, and remember little, other than it was an enjoyable and enlightening experience, that helped me realize I was not alone.

As to whether Baldwin's book, "Giovanni's Room," is better, I don't know. I tried Baldwin, but it seems he never got over being black. It was difficult for me to relate to him--not saying others can't. I am not going to apologize, like a dumba**, for prefering a white writer, at least when it comes to issues of sexuality. If that strikes some people the wrong way, then they will just have to be struck.

Edmund White is one of the elder statesmen of white gay writers, and deservedly so. He was open (maybe too open) in times when open wasn't rewarded, an early pioneer, and thereby gained a cult status, the reward of early pioneers.

I don't like everything about his writing, and can agree with some of the criticisms posted here, but in general I can relate with his world and his feelings, and I think he is all right. His heart is in the right place. I am not so sure about some of the neg reviewers, though.

Eloquent, Elegant, Incisive, Provocative.......2005-09-11

What exquisite and marvelous prose! White has mastered the English language in an artful, florid, and elegant manner exceeding the great Nabokov himself. This novel, my first, but by no means last, to read, is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about an upper-crust, well-educated, youth in the years of his gay discovery. Common to many a gay youth, a distant, unapproving father, a surrogate, unengaged step-mother, and a self-absorbed, fickle mother are found emotionally wanting. Coming of age with hormones raging, sexual exploration searches for an outlet of its expression. Attracted to his own gender, he finds satisfaction, but remains conflicted. White soughs the seeds and watches the growth of almost every gay man's deepest yearnings. It's a soft, yet vibrant tale. Poetic, yet visceral. Masterful writing. Highly recommended.

A Boy's Somewhat Tedious Story.......2005-07-25

Yeah, I'm aware of all of the comparisons to J. D. Salinger and Oscar Wilde but this book doesn't get me to put author Edmund White in those leagues. Sure, the writing is high-falutin' - "ectoplasmic", "extravagant mendicancy", "colloidal" - but that doesn't necessarily make for a better story. One creative approach is that the narrator is never named. Whoever he is is a deeply disturbed individual who, at fifteen, seems to have more baggage than a fully-loaded 747. The scenes with the shrink he finally turns to are among the most unsatisfying in the 218 pages. Here's the central issue: instead of moving along the story, White meanders into long, long, confusing, boring soloquies citing obscure literary references (see above). For someone so talented, perhaps he could write a less esoterical and more interesting book.

disappointing.......2004-07-22

When i stumbled upon this book in the library, i decided that it looked interesting enough to read. As soon as i got home, i read it all the way through, and was not impressed in the least. As i look at everyone elses reviews, i am confounded as to how this book has garnered so much praise. i have no idea why this is considered a classic, or why it is published by Modern Library. It doesn't deserve it. If you want a good book about homosexuality, read Giovanni's room by James Baldwin. Don't waste your time, as I did, on a book that fails even to elevate itself above bad soft-core porn.

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Eloquent Coming-Out Experience
The Beautiful Room
A Boy's Own Story, continued
the best title ever
The coming out of young America

Beautiful Room Is Empty
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Boy's Own Story (Modern Library Classics)
The Farewell Symphony
My Lives: An Autobiography
The Married Man: A Novel
Skinned Alive: Stories

ASIN: 0394564448
Release Date: 1988-03-12

Book Description

When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising--and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink-- The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.

"With intelligence, candor, humor--and anger--White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression.... An impressive novel."--Washington Post book World

Customer Reviews:

Eloquent Coming-Out Experience.......2005-10-01

White is clearly one of the finest prosaists in the last half of the 20th C. America. His mellifluous writing and lucid exposition have earned him the wide respect that he deserves.

"The Beautiful Room is Empty" is a sequel to his earlier "A Boy's Own Story," the evolving process of coming-out gay in the Sixties. The first novel scouts the adolescent years; this novel covers early adulthood. Much has changed in the way that people come-out today, versus the time when being gay was stigmatized by everybody. Curing homosexuality was seen as viable by both the queer himself and by the anti-queer establishment. Fortunately, while coming-out may still be a demanding process, it is far less traumatic than a few score ago, because of these earlier pioneers.

In an almost plotless chronicle of coming-out, the focus is on the author's first-person's introspection of dealing with himself and the gay world as it was then. The ways in which people connected were far more convoluted, clandestine, and often illegal. It wasn't much of a life, until the Stonewall riots liberated gays from their false imprisonment. It not only opened new avenues by which to meet and socialize, but it also rejected the premise that gays should be neither heard nor seen. The toll these older restrictions had on men and women must have been truly appalling, causing much externalized homophobia to turn inward.

To see how far the GLBT community has come in the past 40 years is itself a witness to these earlier pioneers. We owe it to them to hear their story, especially when it's this well-told.

The Beautiful Room.......2002-08-04

Edmund White's 'Beautiful Room' is a moving, wonderful story, crafted around the late teens to late twenties of the narrator, known only as 'Bunny' to his friend Lou, one of the many lively, memorable characters encountered along the way, as well as Tex, a flaboyant bookstore owner, who gives 'Bunny' his earliest education in 'gay slang.'

'Bunny', at the beginning of the novel, is a prep-school student coming to terms with his homosexuality, by engaging in anonymous sexual encounter after encounter in the boy's bathrooms, where his lovers are seen only from waistline to knees. He dresses and plays the part of the dutiful prep school student by day, but once class is out, he drifts toward the bohemians, gracing the coffee shops of their 1950's and 60's lives, watching them paint, sharing their surrealist literature and poetry, and secretly lusting after the males. A child of divorced parents, his father determined to make a man out of him, his mother convinced that all he needs is a cure, the narrator carries us along on his ride, meeting many notable characters along the way, that shape and influence his gradual acceptance that he is gay.

Following his school years, when he enters the work force and the real world, the words of a school-friend come back to haunt him, that 'some day he will have too much freedom,' freedom to choose where he goes, what he does, and who he is. He drifts along from job to job, from lover to lover, Lou, Fred, and the frequent pick-ups from Christoper Street, until he meets Sean, a closeted young man who leads 'Bunny' to question his own identity as they both enter group therapy to try and overcome their 'illness' and go straight, with very different results.

Culminating at the famous Stonewall site, Edmund White provides readers with a grand tour-de-force of growing up gay in the 50's and 60's in Chicago and New York.

Sometimes poignant, sometimes emotional, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, 'Beautiful Room' is a beautiful book, with a beautiful story to tell. The narrator, presumably White himself, as the book is supposed to be autobiographical, slips from identity to identity as he tries to find his own. Young and unsure of himself, he tries to be what everyone else wants him to be until he finds himself.

Although this story centers on a gay man, the book speaks volumes to anyone struggling to find their own identity, and the choices and mistakes we all make along the way.

A Boy's Own Story, continued.......2002-06-03

A continuation of A Boy's Own Story, this book is no less well written and no less brilliant. It is no wonder that White is considered--by the worthy, literate critics, at least--the finest gay writer in America. I would modify that to say he is one of the finest writers (gay or otherwise) in the world today. This book cronicles the life of ABOS from shortly after that book leaves off through the Stonewall riots in New York in June of 1969. The narrator's growth is evident from the end of the last novel through the end of this one. This is one of the most important works by one of our most important writers; White is the nearest writer to Proust to write since, though minus the cork-lined apartment and with quite a few more social graces.

the best title ever.......2002-04-08

The Beautiful Room is Empty is extemely poetic, and it is deeply moving. i love this book, and cannot express how well i related to the character. granted, i would suggest that you read the first autobiographical book A Boy's Own Story first, because it will enable you to feel for the characters better.

The coming out of young America.......2001-08-15

Edmund White's "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" is an impressive coming of age novel of how young gay bohemians in the arts and literary circle struggled furtively with their secret and self acceptance long before they had the confidence that came with political recognition as a minority group in liberal America to emerge from the closet. So, it shouldn't surprise us to find the narrator and his friends coping with their own sexual condition as a malady, each unconsciously but surely searching for a cure to restore himself to the mainstream. Indeed, with parents like the unnamed narrator's, who can blame them for developing a complex ? The protagonist worries that he isn't thin or handsome enough. His friend, Sean, suspects he isn't intelligent enough. Even Maria, the jokey intellectual, finds herself on shaky grounds, flitting from being a radical activist one day and a sloganeering feminist the next. She only lets her mask slip when she falls briefly in love with Maeve. What's clear is that despite the honesty they uphold with each other, they're in denial over their "condition". That's why the spectacle of young gay males lining up at public toilets (even school toilets) to indulge their fetish is both sad and funny. That's also why there's an unmistakably celebratory feel about the coming out of the narrator's sister during more progressive times. In her own words, "there's nothing secure about suffering". The novel ends on a pregnant note of expectation, with the uprising at Stonewall Tavern marking the beginning of the gay movement to gain political rights for itself as a minority group. White is both humourous and serious and his intimate understanding of the subject lends a special authenticity to his writing. "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" may be the second of a three part trilogy but it succeeds well enough on its own. I haven't read either the prequel or sequel but those who have seem to find it even better.

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The Freshmen Team Does Well
Another Anthology & Largely A Good Thing Too...
Excellent Stories of Life in the Gay Community
An Outstanding Book

Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction

Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786714212

Book Description

Certain to become a literary touchstone, Fresh Men collects the best new writing by emerging gay authors from around the nation. The critically acclaimed author Edmund White, chair of the Creative Writing program at Princeton and the author of more than 17 gay works, selects 20 original stories from the new crop of extraordinary writers. With equal parts sensitivity and irreverence, Fresh Men speaks to the broad range of gay experiences. From stories of coming out, coming of age, self-representation and family to sex and love in the time of AIDS, from living in the closet to loving in a post-gay world, this book highlights the complexities of gay life. This groundbreaking collection also embodies a wide spectrum of literary tastes, from works rich in experimental, transgressive elements to more conventional, traditionally crafted stories.

Customer Reviews:

The Freshmen Team Does Well.......2005-07-20

First, this new anthology of gay writing, FRESH MEN, has a clever title with at least two meanings. Secondly, the writers are all for the most part unknown. Edmund White, who selected them says that not one writer has had a book published yet. Third, they come from all areas of the United States as well as the British Isles. And they are not all Caucasian. The stories are set in a variety of locales and are not all about gay men picking up other gay men in bars. We can finally read about gay men who interact with other people besides other gay men and live outside a gay ghetto in a large city, usually New York. As you would expect from most any collection of stories, some are better than others. Some of the stories are excellent. I would put "ONJ.com," "Acqua Calda," "TV Dinner" and "Teamwork" in that category. "ONJ.com" by Vestal McIntyre, the first story in the book, is about a young woman in the world of advertising who wishes to "make a gay friend," a silly wish on its face, and gets more than she bargains for. In Keith McDermott's "Acqua Calda" a young American wrestles with how and when or if he should tell an Italian whom he is attracted to that he is HIV positive. "TV Dinner" by Reed Hearne is a funny account of a minor TV personality's filming of a day in the life of a waiter in the California Bay Area. Kevin Reardon's "Teamwork," which according to the biographical data about the authors won the 2003 Richard Hall Memorial Short Story Contest, is a great little story about proofreaders at Healthco, "a pharmaceutical advertising agency. The narrator has a crush on Todd, a perfectly drawn character, who when he gets fired over an ampersand by Gregory, a gay art director who "played for the team," responds: "'You're a bastard, man. . . I am so out of here.'" He is just so "kwel."

This is a very good collection and introduces the reader to writers he wants to read more of. Several of the selections are from novels in progress and should be available soon if not already.

Another Anthology & Largely A Good Thing Too..........2004-12-18

These twenty stories seemed to me excellent, also okay, few deficient. I found a quarter of them to be good art.

(1) Five stories seem artistically meritorious. Plus the gay-specific content seems to universalize to general human themes.

"TV Dinner" is a romp. Set in a high-end status-snob restaurant, it serves up the real "menu" of human discomfort-food. Several "courses." The waiter's rage at being a "candy-ass bootlick," and his terrors too. The chef's self-deluded egotism. The society matron's gorging unhealthily on Status Cake. The smarmy politico mayor exposed as being a gross feeder. The cast of workers in the out-caste system, pretty petty frustrated in the all-too-subhuman jealousies and other deadly-sin ingredients. But the author is a master-wordchef who concocts up these raw materials gourmet-style with his buttercup-swirl of tall-food diction, aesthetically-nourishing word-candy, a just-desserts confection whose sauce-iness is perfectly balanced with sweet-sour imagery plus insight. This many-course tasting menu moves right along madcap but on point!

Not so shabby either is "Teamwork," about a proofreader at an advertising agency. Poignant specifically about the "beautiful young man named Todd D'Onofrio," fetching but unobtainable, the protagonist's Harlow or shepherd boy... But pointed generally about the universal human tangle of miscommunications, pettiness about font-styles, power and status issues, insecurities, insensitivities. The miscast of characters in the office seem to carry these warts and blemishes like a virus re-infecting those whose Psychological Immune Systems are not mature enough. Solid and sprightly, madcap and satirical.

Adult men with younger or teenage males is the subject of both "Some Speculations on the Bob Uncertainty" and also "Chicken." But the former, pondering why a young hunk continues to revisit an older man, seems to do so with much enjoyable grace, verve, bemused and appreciative non-needy distance aesthetic not emotional.

"American Widow" portrays a woman inundated by giant waves of major depression. It energetically risks sentimentality in the depicting of her almost-melodramatic multiple missteps, but it does powerfully paint her pathos.

(2) A second set of stories seems (to me) more simply to simply narrate events, almost diary style. In "Aqua Calda," an American on a film shoot in Italy, scores with an Italian. Okay... In "Taking Pictures," a highschooler sees that a teacher of his takes videotapes of the guys working out. Okay...

(3) Minority perspective is represented by "Wave," His Five-Year Sentence," and "Rondo." New here is local color and representativeness I guess.

(4) Psychological insight however Politically Non-Correct I saw in three stories. "ONJ.com" shows gay man and straight woman but can candidly ask whether this man at least is as he describes gay men generally, as being "damaged, dangerous people. They feel wronged and are looking for vengeance." Refreshing anyhow to investigate. In "Advanced Soaring," why why why does moonstruck Mark keep on seeking after louche lax Luke at all? And in "The Inadvertant Headshot," the protagonist fears becoming a soiled type: "the humorless, thin-skinned gay man, the art fag, the prissy prude who trafficked in disdain" contemptuously to "rue, resent and scorn again" because feeling out of control. Something gay here; something human also. We are well past the Dark Age when a hoity (and hetero) reviewer would allude to the above dirty laundry as indicating something like "the pathology of homosexuality," blah blah. (Of course, it is still verboten now, to even reference in the same sentence, "homosexual males," and the issue of "attachment disorder" or problems-with-intimacy...)

Finally in its own category, "Ground Control" sends us home with a take-out treat. The 16-year-old gay highschooler has his problems, with self-image, self-acceptance. But his, and our, hero is his 14-year-old brother Frankie. This kid comes out to his dysfunctional family simply by drawing Star War cartoons of himself and Luke Skywalker. At the kitchen table. Just going about his business. Utterly unbugged by his sister's or anyone's reaction to his being his own true if socially-despised self so early. A universal model for us all, gay, straight, bi, or plaid...

Then six more stories I haven't mentioned. But all told, the anthology is quite valid for those interested in some quality and much variety in current gay male short fiction.

Excellent Stories of Life in the Gay Community.......2004-11-17

"Fresh Men" is a collection of twenty short stories selected by distinguished author Edmund White. All are interesting. There are stories with African-American, Hispanic, Filipino, and Asian characters, as well as the usual types. There are stories set at school, in the family, at work, at cruising, and around relationships. The variety is good, at least as it has been understood.

The last two sentences of Edmund White's introduction read: "If this anthology is thought of as a house, it's a big rooming house inhabited by every kind of client, of every age and color and background, some on their way up and some in quick descent; some of the roomers are shacking up and others are breaking up. It's a very full house."

When I look at the "About the Authors" section, the twenty stories' authors now live in or near the following places: New York City 7, Yale University 2, 1 each at Boston, San Francisco, Long Beach, Montreal, London, Austin, and 5 unknown. When I read the stories, the locations are New York City 6, coastal California 6, with additional locations in Montreal, Dublin, London, Sicily, Honolulu, New Orleans, Tucson, Florida (near the Space Center), rural Maine, and over the Atlantic {Some stories have multiple locations). There is a feel of gay cosmopolitans writing for other gay cosmopolitans. This has been a successful approach for previous anthologies.

Still, after the November elections, I have heard endless commentary on the divide between 'blue' and 'red' states, on the need to counter 'religious' criticisms, on the fear of being transferred from a state with domestic partnerships and state permission to raise children to one without. These stories do not feature material anti-gay characters or people considering marital status-related issues. The stories are personal and relationship-oriented, not political.

I do worry that writers from or directed at socially conservative areas are not part of the "new voices in gay fiction" that "Fresh Men" proclaims. One of the reasons for the setbacks in the recent elections was the inability of a large part of the Midwestern and Southern electorate to imagine a different, improved world. Having local voices is a large part of moving ahead.

This is a fine collection. I can relate to the stories. I do recommend the book highly.

An Outstanding Book.......2004-10-15

I recommend this book to anyone, gay or straight. The writing is top-notch, often hilarious, and always compelling. From beginning to end it will hold your interest and impress you. We'll be hearing from these authors in the future, I'm certain, and this is a wonderful opportunity to get in the "ground floor" of their careers. You won't be disappointed!

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My Lives: A Memoir (P.S.)
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Suite Francaise

ASIN: 0060937963
Release Date: 2007-04-03

Book Description

Book Description

What happens when one of our most celebrated writers combines talents with a French artist and architect to capture life in their Parisian neighborhood? The result is a lighthearted, gently satiric portrait of the heart of Paris -- including the Marais, Les Halles, the two islands in the Seine, and the Châtelet -- and the people who call it home. It is an enchantingly varied world, populated not only by dazzling literati and ultrachic couturiers and art dealers but also by poetic shopkeepers, grandmotherly prostitutes, and, ever underfoot, an irrepressible basset hound named Fred. The foibles and eccentricities of these sometimes outrageous, always memorable individuals are brought to life with unfailing wit and affection.Below the surface of the sparkling humor in Our Paris, there is a tragic undercurrent. While Hubert Sorin was completing this work, he was nearing the end of his struggle with AIDS. The book is a tribute to the loving spirit with which the authors banished somberness and celebrated the pleasures of their life together.

Customer Reviews:

If you can't go to Paris (or even if you can), read this book!.......2005-07-13

A delightful book about White and Sorin's life in Paris, with an inevitable undercurrent of sadness, because Sorin is dying. Yet his inability to practice his work as an architect led him to develop the "unique, exuberant drawing style" that illustrates this book.

Here you will meet all sorts of interesting people. The concierge, Madame Denise, and the coiffeuse who tries out all the latest hairstyles on her. Father Pierre Riches, the "kind and elegant" Catholic priest whose hair had been stroked by Cavafy and whose photograph had been taken by Mapplethorpe. Billy Boy, the jewelry designer with 16,000 Barbies (who, tiring of them, invents a doll called Mdvany, a trendy Parisienne who "will not have unlined skirts like certain dolls we could name . . .". PIerre Guyotat, who wrote in a "strange subvocal language of his own devising, one that omitted vowels among other unnecessary luxuries."

And the places in Paris! How nice to live above a bookstore, especially one that revels in the splendidly punny name, Mona Lisait. To write at the Café Beaubourg, where the waiters will be equally attentive to you and your dog, and where the "tabletops were all painted by celebrated French artists but not signed lest they be stolen." To wander the Marais with its delicatessens and seventeenth-century townhouses, its "Kiki Boys" and dogwalkers.

If you have visited Paris, this book will bring back memories. If you haven't, you may find yourself calling a travel agent!

Parisian anecdotes told with American-style intimacy.......2003-01-30

I picked up this little book for a return flight from Paris to LA. It looked like perfect plane reading -- short, gossipy, topical. And although it lived up to each of those expectations, the devastation implicit in the book (and explicit at the end) hit hard. The book is not easily forgettable -- and probably no less memorable for the passengers and crew of American Airlines flight 45 who watched me become a sniffling, tear-stained disaster.

It's very intimate, shockingly un-French. White and Sorin invite you into their lives. You feel as if you're at a dinner party listening to them recount(even bicker a little about) their recent mundane adventures. But this intimacy also means that you feel very close to the heartbreaking loss that is the real subject of the book.

It's a beautiful, touching book. The illustrations complement the text (or the text complements the illustrations) perfectly. But if you want to avoid the mess entirely, try The Flaneur.

Grand Deception.......2000-05-10

I love deceptive books.

Example: _Our Paris_, by Edmund White and Hubert Sorin, is ostensibly a series of short essays, written and illustrated in a fairly direct style, pertaining to life in the city. But in a stunning, disarming preface, White alerts us to the real subtext: his partner's slow death from AIDS. It's this subtext that transforms the book from a pleasant travelogue to a devastating account of loss.

Lurking beneath the book's shimmering surfaces, and within its numerous lacunae, is the emotional life of a couple threatened by the fast-approaching specter of death. An attentive reading of White's text and Hubert Sorin's illustrations reveals the mauvaise foi, the daily negotiations, the implicit contract of domestic denial that enables an endangered couple to keep death at bay for just a little longer.

_Our Paris_ looks slight, as if it were merely a pleasant evening's worth of travel anecdotes and gossip. But if you take yourself into this book's confidence, it will reveal unexpected secrets.

Paris, the French, love, and travel -- and eventual loss........1998-01-19

This is a sweet collection of short pieces, quirky and personal, about a tiny Parisian neighborhood, Paris itself, the French, lots of friends, and a great dog named Fred. Most of all: about Edmund White and his lover Hubert Sorin. Economical yet enjoyably gossipy, kind-hearted, opinionated, informative. Achingly sad, though, because Hubert is dying of AIDS, and in fact does die at the book's end. Definitely worth reading -- especially for fans of Edmund White. Engagingly illustrated by Sorin, who was trained in architecture and took up drawing when he became ill.

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An eminent man of letters
A Treasure Trove

Arts and Letters
Edmund White
Manufacturer: Cleis Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1573441953

Book Description

Reading Edmund White is like sharing a café table with a witty professor, a clove-smoking aesthete, and a boy of fifteen. You never know who will speak the next line, but you know it will turn your head.

In these 39 lively essays and profiles, best-selling novelist and biographer Edmund White draws on his wide reading and his sly good humor to illuminate some of the most influential writers, artists, and cultural icons of the past century, among them Marcel Proust, Catherine Deneuve, George Eliot, Andy Warhol, André Gide, David Geffen, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Whether he's praising Nabokov's sensuality, critiquing Elton John's walk ("as though he's a wind-up doll that's been overwound and sent heading for the top of the stairs"), or describing serendipitous moments in his seven-year-long research into the life of Genet, White is unfailingly observant, erudite, and entertaining.

Customer Reviews:

An eminent man of letters.......2005-08-25

Who would have thought in the 1980s that the author of "States of Desire" would become this eminent man of letters? In this book, Edmund White shows us that he is not only a masterful writer, but also can exhibit great empathy for the subjects of his writing. I admit that I envy his polymath's command of every topic (and his ability to use words like "polymath" so casually). Perfect book if you're looking for a thoughtful, reflective read.

A Treasure Trove.......2004-10-18

In Arts and Letters veteran novelist Edmund White shows again why he is one of the most inventive English language writers. It's a salmagundi of commissioned pieces and articles that originally appeared in a variety of slick and gay magazines. Taken them all together, and you get a lot of insight into White's own irresistible personality, even more so than in some of his celebrated autobiographical novels and memoirs. Plus, it's like being at the same party with some of the most intriguing personalities in the world today, as well as some dead immortals. White's style when he profiles these luminaries is never fawning--well maybe once or twice, but he does it so well you forgive him anything. He's fearless, and asks the people in question exactly the kind of questions you think you'd ask yourself, if you were there on the scene and you had balls of brass. Cleis Press is to be commended for bringing out this jumbo volume. I only wish there were more.

There's just enough of a selection of White's writing about art to make you wish he'd jump in and write a whole book about the art and artists he admires. It's hard to find anything new to say about (for example) Jasper Johns or Robert Mapplethorpe, but after reading White's articles on both you will be viewing their work with new eyes. And he provides wonderful introductions to artists whose profiles may not be quite as high as these guys--Rebecca Horn, perhaps, or Steve Wolfe.

One after another of these articles are stunners--there's a fine piece on the half-forgotten French New Novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, which takes you back to the day in which he was regarded as a wunderkind of depthless talent, and then shows today why he is still a writer worth studying.

White is not always Mr. Goody Two Shoes either. In one case, the Ned Rorem profile, you watch in helpless delight as Rorem gets skewered on the high kebab spears of White's erudition and wit. I also thought that printing a brief review of James Baldwin's "Just Above My Head" and labeling it "James Baldwin" leads the reader to think JB will be getting the full-blown profile treatment and instead it rebounds and just akes the review seem skimpy. And in some cases the reader will disagree, perhaps violently, with White's assessment of this or that subject, and you will still feel he has won the right to deliver it. I don't believe for an instant that James Merrill is the equivalent of Cavalcanti crossed with Noel Coward, but it's amusing to hear someone say so.

By and large these essays are compelling, entertaining, and wise. It's a book that deserves all the praise it will doubtless receive.

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