Latest news with #ForgettingElena
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Happened to Edmund White? ‘A Boy's Own Story' Author Passes Away
The death of Edmund White, acclaimed author of A Boy's Own Story, has shocked many. Widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to gay fiction and memoirs, White was a major figure in LGBTQ+ literature for decades. His death has led to an outpouring of tributes from fans and the literary world. Here are more details about Edmund White's death. Edmund White, the acclaimed American author who helped redefine gay literature, has died at the age of 85. According to his agent Bill Clegg, White passed away on Tuesday evening while waiting for an ambulance after suffering symptoms related to a stomach illness. White became a leading voice in LGBTQ+ literature beginning in the 1970s. He was best known for his 1982 novel A Boy's Own Story, which reflected his own experience growing up gay in mid-20th-century America. It was the first in a semi-autobiographical trilogy that also includes The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony. Born in Ohio in 1940 and raised in Illinois, White initially planned to attend Harvard but chose the University of Michigan so he could stay close to a therapist who claimed he could 'cure' homosexuality. He went on to live in New York and San Francisco, building a career in freelance journalism and magazine editing before publishing his debut novel, Forgetting Elena, in 1973. (via The Guardian) Over the years, White published more than 30 works. These include memoirs, essays, and biographies of literary figures like Jean Genet and Marcel Proust. His final memoir, The Loves of My Life, was released in 2025. White's husband, Michael Carroll, remembered him as kind, generous, and wise. He said, 'He was wise enough to be kind nearly always. He was generally beyond exasperation and was generous. I keep thinking of something to tell him before I remember.' The post What Happened to Edmund White? 'A Boy's Own Story' Author Passes Away appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Edmund White, queer literature trailblazer, dead at 85
Trailblazing author Edmund White — a pioneer in queer literature — has died at age 85. Sign up for the to keep up with what's new in LGBTQ+ culture and entertainment — delivered three times a week straight (well…) to your inbox! On Wednesday, White's husband, Michael Carroll, said the author had suffered a "vicious stomach bug" that caused him to collapse, although the exact cause of his death is not clear, The New York Times reports. White was considered a courageous trailblazer for being candid about topics that were considered taboo at the time (and unfortunately still are, even today). Notably, he was present at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 when its historic uprising took place. In April 2019, White recalled those experiences at Stonewall in his foreword to 2019's The Stonewall Reader. White had been in an open relationship with Carroll since 1995 (CNN), and they married in 2013. White had once opposed marriage for same-sex couples because he considered it assimilationist, but in 2012 he wrote that he became pro-marriage equality once he realized "how opposed to it the Christian right is in our country." White also was open about being a person living with HIV — even in the 1980s, when the taboo surrounding the virus was at an all-time high. In 1982, he helped found Gay Men's Health Crisis, one of the first organizations addressing the AIDS epidemic. Over the years, he survived two strokes and a heart attack. Related: He was hailed as "the godfather of queer lit" by the Chicago Tribune, and the author's impact on gay literature was evident in his 1973 debut novel, Forgetting Elena, and the career-defining 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex. He had just released a new book — The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir — in January. White's best-known works also included 1978's Nocturnes for the King of Naples, 1980's States of Desire, 1982's A Boy's Own Story, 1988's The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and 1997's The Farewell Symphony, to name a few. Beyond his work in fiction and self-referential nonfiction, White authored high-profile biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, and Arthur Rimbaud. The Genet biography was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Over the years, White received accolades such as the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1983) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (1993). Filmmaker Tiziano Sossi released a documentary in 2007, Edmund White: A Conversation in New York, in which the author was seen recalling legendary encounters with people like writer Truman Capote and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Related: White was born in Cincinnati and lived in Michigan, Illinois, and Texas after his parents divorced when he was 7. He attended the University of Michigan and moved to New York City after graduating in 1962, taking a job at Time-Life Books. The experience of observing Stonewall was life-changing, he recalled. 'Up till that moment we had all thought that homosexuality was a medical term. Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group — with rights, a culture, an agenda,' he wrote in the memoir City Boy. Shortly afterward, he quit Time-Life and devoted himself to writing and teaching. He was a member of the gay writers' salon known as the Violet Quill, along with Felice Picano, Andrew Holleran, and others. In 1980-1981, the group would meet to read and critique one another's work. Picano died in March at age 81. White collaborated with Charles Silverstein on the original edition of The Joy of Gay Sex, and Picano joined Silverstein in writing subsequent editions. "While some of his peers tried to separate their sexuality from their work, Mr. White embraced the term 'gay writer,'' the Times notes. 'If I'd been straight, I would have been an entirely different person," he wrote in City Boy. "I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others.' Additional reporting by Trudy Ring
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Edmund White, acclaimed novelist and pioneer of queer literature, dies at 85
Edmund White, a pioneer of queer literature who broke ground with his semi-autobiographical novels chronicling gay life and the gay revolution, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85. White's agent, Bill Clegg, confirmed his death to Entertainment Weekly, saying the author died of natural causes. "Ed was a groundbreaking writer whose candid depictions of gay life reshaped American literature," Clegg said in a statement to EW. "As a novelist, critic, memoirist, and biographer, he expanded the boundaries of identity and desire on the page and in the culture. He was also a wickedly funny, deeply generous, brilliant man who was beloved by many. He will be much missed. " White had been H.I.V. positive since the 1980s, and survived two major strokes in 2012 and a heart attack in 2014. Despite his medical scares, the author continued adding to his prolific literary catalogue well into his later years. His most recently published work, titled The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, was released in January 2025. White was born in Cincinnati in 1940 and moved to the Chicago area with his mother when his parents divorced. He wrote books and plays even as a young child, although he didn't publish his first book until 1973, after he spent years as a journalist at various publications such as Newsweek, Time-Life Books, Saturday Review, and Horizon. Starting with his debut novel, Forgetting Elena, White made his mark in the publishing world, writing honestly about the queer experience and chronicling the evolution of a community no longer afraid to declare and celebrate its existence. He wrote more than 30 fiction and nonfiction books, including notable novels like A Boy's Own Story and The Married Man, which drew from his life, and Fanny: A Fiction, a historical novel about the author Frances Trollope and social reformer Frances Wright. Several of his works were best-sellers. The Chicago Tribune once called him "the godfather of queer lit." "Among gay writers of his generation, Edmund White has emerged as the most versatile man of letters," cultural critic Morris Dickstein wrote in The New York Times in 1995. "A cosmopolitan writer with a deep sense of tradition, he has bridged the gap between gay subcultures and a broader literary audience." White also published five memoirs: 2009's My Lives in 2005; City Boy, about his life in New York in the 1960s and 1970s; 2014's Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris; 2018's The Unpunished Vice, about his tastes in literature; and The Loves of My Life. He was the recipient of Lambda Literary's 2018 Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2018. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993. White taught at Brown University and became a professor of creative writing at Princeton University. In early 1982, shortly before he was diagnosed as H.I.V. positive, White cofounded and served as the inaugural president of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, a collective care unit aimed at advocacy amid the AIDS epidemic. He moved to France the following year, eventually returning to the U.S. in the late '90s. White is survived by his husband, Michael Carroll, whom he married in 2013, and his older sister, Margaret Fleming. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Edmund White, Pioneer of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 85
Edmund White, who mined his own life story, including his vast and varied catalog of sexual experiences, in more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction and hundreds of articles and essays, becoming a grandee of the New York literary world for more than half a century, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85. His death was confirmed by his husband, Michael Carroll, who said Mr. White had collapsed while weakened by 'a vicious stomach bug.' The precise cause of death is unknown. Mr. White had been H.I.V. positive since the 1980s and survived two major strokes in 2012 and a heart attack in 2014. Mr. White's output was almost equally divided between fiction and nonfiction. Many of his books were critical successes, and several were best-sellers. The Chicago Tribune labeled him 'the godfather of queer lit.' He was a star almost from the beginning. The New York Times called 'Forgetting Elena' (1973), about the rituals of gay life on a fictionalized Fire Island, 'an astonishing first novel, obsessively fussy, and yet uncannily beautiful.' His second novel, 'Nocturnes for the King of Naples' (1978), took the form of letters from a young gay man to his deceased ex-lover. 'A Boy's Own Story' (1982), a tale of coming out set in the 1950s, was narrated by a teenager who bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Mr. White. His other semi-autobiographical novels, 'The Beautiful Room Is Empty' (1988) and 'The Farewell Symphony' (1997), follow the same unnamed protagonist into adulthood during the 1960s, then through the horrors of AIDS as he approaches middle age. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
US novelist Edmund White, chronicler of gay life, dead at 85: agent
Edmund White, the influential American novelist who chronicled gay life through his semi-autobiographical work, including dozens of books, several short stories and countless articles and essays, has died, his agent said Wednesday. He was 85. "Ed passed last night at home in NYC (New York City) of natural causes," agent Bill Clegg told AFP, adding White is survived by his husband Michael Carroll and a sister. The literary pioneer's books includes "Forgetting Elena," his celebrated debut novel from 1973, "A Boy's Own Story," his 1982 coming-of-age exploration of sexual identity, and multiple memoirs, notably the revelatory "The Loves of My Life" published this year. From his earliest publications, homosexuality was at the heart of his writing -- from the 1950s, when being gay was considered a mental illness, to the sexual liberation after the Stonewall riots in 1969, which he witnessed firsthand. Then came the AIDS years that decimated an entire generation. White himself would be affected directly -- he was diagnosed HIV positive in 1985 and lived with the condition for four decades. Tributes to the award-winning writer began pouring in on social media, including from his longtime friend and fellow prolific American author Joyce Carol Oates. "There has been no one like Edmund White!" Oates posted on X. "Astonishing stylistic versatility, boldly pioneering subject matter; darkly funny; a friend to so many over decades." Fellow author and playwright Paul Rudnick said on X that White was a "gay icon" whose novels, memoirs and non-fiction "changed and enhanced American literature." White was an avid traveler, spending years researching biographies of French authors Jean Genet and Marcel Proust. In the 1970s he co-wrote "The Joy of Gay Sex," a how-to guide and resource on relationships, which was a queer counter to "The Joy of Sex," the hugely popular 1972 illustrated sex manual. In the 2010s White suffered two strokes and a heart attack. But he kept writing. In this year's "The Loves of My Life," he recalled all the men he had loved -- White numbered his sexual partners at some 3,000. The New York Times described the book as "gaspingly graphic, jaunty and tender." White himself acknowledged that literature was a powerful conduit for revealing the intimate sides of ourselves. "The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books," as he once wrote. eml-mlm/sms
