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Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Remembering Edmund White: When he proved himself wrong
In his 2005 autobiographical book, My Lives, Edmund White recalls being shamed as an adolescent by a psychologist and family friend, writing, 'Foolishly, I had imagined I could transform the dross of homosexuality into the gold of art, but now I saw I could never be a great artist.' Starting in 1973 with Forgetting Elena, to his relief and that of a world in which he is today known as the 'the pioneer of gay literature in America', he repeatedly proved himself wrong. White, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, belonged to a generation of 'gay writers' who were not writing for a straight readership. He came to prominence at a time when homosexuality was illegal and publishing houses would routinely get sued for pornography over a 'kiss between two men'. White's visceral writing style and autobiographical works forced readers to get up close and personal with the grief of being 'different' in a cold and cruel world. White's father was ashamed of his son's sexuality, and his mother, a psychologist, saw him, as a 'guinea pig'. From trying to 'cure himself' to becoming one of the leading voices responsible for the explosion of queer writing in the mainstream was a long journey. White's The Edmund Trilogy — a coming-of-age tale of a gay man's life from childhood to middle age — tells this story. The first in the series, A Boy's Own Story, became an instant classic. At a time when queer writers often had to work in isolation, White, along with six of his contemporaries, formed The Violet Quill — a club with 'a mixture of gay male friends, lovers and enemies' — to build a network for writers like himself. Four of the seven founders died in the AIDS epidemic. Through all this grief and love, White wrote 30 books, each bold in its own way, leaving a legacy of freedom.
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Edmund White – the ‘godfather of gay literature'– is no more: 6 books you should read
Edmund White, the author who redefined queer literature, passed away on June 3, 2025, at the age of 85. A prolific writer, White penned over 30 books, including autobiographical novels and biographies, that captured the complexities of gay life with wit, sensuality, and emotional depth. His work chronicled everything from the liberating hedonism of pre-AIDS New York to the devastating losses of the epidemic, cementing his legacy as one of the most important gay writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. White wrote fearlessly, blending high literary style with raw, often explicit accounts of desire and identity. Below is a guide to some of his most essential books. 1. A Boy's Own Story (1982) A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel that became a cornerstone of gay literature. Set in 1950s America, A Boy's Own Story follows an unnamed teenager grappling with his homosexuality in a repressive, homophobic society. White's protagonist is introspective and conflicted, simultaneously drawn to and ashamed of his desires. The novel captures the loneliness of adolescence as the boy navigates fraught relationships with his distant father, troubled mother, and a series of older men who both fascinate and confuse him. What makes this novel canonical is its refusal to sanitise the queer experience. The protagonist is neither a victim nor a hero but a complex, sometimes selfish young man trying to understand himself. White turns personal memory into something universally resonant. A Boy's Own Story remains one of the most influential coming-out novels ever written. 2. The Farewell Symphony (1997) An elegiac novel about gay life before and during the AIDS crisis. Named after Haydn's symphony (in which musicians leave the stage one by one until only silence remains), The Farewell Symphony is the final installment in White's autobiographical trilogy. It follows an unnamed narrator—a stand-in for White—through the sexual liberation of the 1970s and the devastation of AIDS in the 1980s and '90s. The novel is both a celebration and a eulogy, capturing the hedonistic freedom of pre-AIDS New York and Fire Island, where sex and art intertwined effortlessly. But as friends and lovers begin to die, the tone shifts to one of mourning and survivor's guilt. White's ability to balance humor, eroticism, and grief makes this one of his most powerful works—a definitive account of a generation lost. 3. My Lives (2005) A memoir structured thematically rather than chronologically, offering intimate glimpses into White's psyche. Instead of a linear life story, My Lives is divided into chapters such as 'My Shrinks,' 'My Hustlers,' and 'My Blonds,' each exploring a different facet of White's identity. The result is a kaleidoscopic self-portrait that is funny, self-deprecating, and unflinchingly honest. Highlights include his hilarious yet painful recollections of therapy (where psychiatrists tried to 'cure' his homosexuality), his complicated relationship with his abusive father, and his candid accounts of sexual escapades. What makes My Lives so compelling is White's refusal to conform to conventional memoir tropes. 4. Genet: A Biography (1993) A masterful biography of the infamous French writer and criminal-turned-literary-icon. White spent seven years researching Jean Genet, the gay outlaw whose novels (Our Lady of the Flowers, The Thief's Journal) glorified theft, betrayal, and queer desire. The biography is both a meticulous study of Genet's life and a meditation on the intersections of art, transgression, and politics. White's deep empathy for his subject shines through, particularly in passages about Genet's impoverished childhood and later activism for the Black Panthers and Palestinians. The book won critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, solidifying White's reputation as a formidable biographer. 5. The Joy of Gay Sex (1977, co-authored with Charles Silverstein) A sex manual that celebrated gay desire without shame. Written before the AIDS crisis, The Joy of Gay Sex was an affirming guide that treated homosexuality not as a pathology but as a source of pleasure and connection. Covering everything from cruising to BDSM, it combined practical advice with White's elegant prose, making it both useful and literary. Though some sections are dated (particularly in light of HIV), the book remains a fascinating artifact of a freer era. It was one of the first mainstream books to discuss gay sexuality openly, paving the way for future queer writers. 6. The Married Man (2000) A heartbreaking novel about love, mortality, and the lingering scars of AIDS. Loosely based on White's relationship with his partner Hubert Sorin (who died of AIDS in 1994), The Married Man follows Austin, an American writer in Paris, as he falls for Julien, a married French architect. Their romance is sadly shadowed by Julien's declining health. White's novel, unlike most AIDS narratives, is unsentimental yet deeply moving. He captures the small, everyday intimacies of love alongside the bureaucratic horrors of illness such as hospital visits, insurance battles, the slow erosion of a body. It is one of his most emotionally resonant works.
New York Times
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In His 80s, and Recalling All the Men He's Loved Before
Some people celebrate turning 85 with grandchildren, gardening or a nice cake. Edmund White has published a sex memoir. 'The Loves of My Life,' which follows 'My Lives,' (2006) City Boy' (2009) and recollections of Paris and reading, is gaspingly graphic, jaunty and tender: a guided tour of a foreign land — foreign to this female hetero at least — where libido is the wellspring of just about everything. It's far from a solemn capstone to White's long and distinguished career. More like a mischievous rock-skipping in the moonshadow. 'We'd dance in the nude in the dark,' he rhapsodizes of an entanglement with a ballerino, 'or rather he'd dance and I would stumble about, like Bottom pursuing Titania, breathily caressing him across those bare boards in front of those walls of mirrors illuminated just by the distant, feeble streetlights.' This is a PG-rated passage from a book for which we should claw back the now-cursed letter X — as in explicit, yes, but also excavatory and excellent. White's escapades include streams of urine ('We both competed for it like seals begging for fish. I make it sound comical but it was as serious as a christening'), flexing bowels, pubic lice, an incalculable amount of semen. The revolution will not be sanitized. Devoted fans might find some of the material familiar. White recaps his body count (some 3,000 men: 'One of my contemporaries asked pityingly, 'Why so few?'') and revisits that William Blake line about sooner strangling an infant in its crib than nursing unacted desires. Readers who have encountered White before will not be surprised either to find mentions of kilts, and Proust. But though I'm not a White completist — by his count he's written 32 books, including novels and biographies, and there's also the occasional play — I'm not sure he's ever delivered it in such concentrated, gleeful hits. Prose poppers, with a few poems as well. White is not just a Bottom but, as he'll tell you 90 percent of men in New York City are, a 'bottom,' preferring to be penetrated. On Page 1 he mentions his small penis — later modified to 'tiny.' He has long worried about his weight, and struggled with self-acceptance even as he wrote the classic manual 'The Joy of Gay Sex' with one of his therapists. In one instance he imagines himself Mr. Snuffleupagus from 'Sesame Street'; in another he rues his 'feeble filiform arms, these useless pale appendages.' Yet who better than a beast to assess and appreciate a beauty? 'His complexion was faultless and glowing, as if a light were shining through the best Belgian linen,' White writes of Stan, a depressive aspiring actor with whom he cohabited long ago in New York (touchingly, they're still in touch). Of a Spanish Ecuadorean man he met more recently on a website called SilverDaddies: 'Pedro had a delicate, shame-faced manner, as if he'd just broken an expensive goblet and was tiptoeing away from the shards.' A blond Floridian body builder's impressive member, when tumescent, is compared to 'the Christ Child in its hay crèche.' White has told the story of his Midwestern Gothic family before, but there are more peeks here. His grandfather was a Klansman and the racist senator Strom Thurmond was a distant cousin, the memory of which quickly chills White's adventures with a sexual 'slave.' In shocking passing he mentions that his sister was impregnated at 13 by their horrible father, and survived to become happy and productive and at work on her own memoir. Their mother, a psychologist from Texas and an alcoholic, 'colonized every corner of my mind she could understand and made me pick her blackheads and put her into her Merry Widow foundation garment.' Despite these glimpses, though, the narrative roves and alights rather than burrowing. White's husband, Michael Carroll — they've been together since 1995 — appears only in the acknowledgments and a fleeting anecdote about a pickup on an airplane. 'I've always thought that writing about someone is the kiss-off,' White writes. While seeming to hold back nothing, he clings to what is most essential. Danger colors the entire book, first that of being discovered, shunned, blackmailed, robbed, arrested and jailed; then of AIDS; White, who found out he was H.I.V. positive in 1985, outlived many lovers and friends. 'We should also recognize we're still being pushed off cliffs in Yemen — and from the top fronds of Florida palms, for all I know,' he writes. He has witnessed and endured so very much: the upholstered repression of the 1950s, the way the orgiastic 1970s reassessed the '60s as a time of 'misguided rhetoric, bad haircuts, and fake velvet and near-fur,' the fearful '80s and the dashed promise of the internet. In the current political climate, twisting back toward repression, 'The Loves of My Life,' slim as it is, lands louder and prouder than it otherwise might have.
